Just Us

Goodbye, Paw Paw. I love you forever.

A candid moment between us at Noah's Ark Waterpark in Wisconsin Dells,
August 26, 1996.

My maternal grandmother died in her sleep around 5pm on August 16, 2024, in her house in Palatine, Illinois.

Mirroring the above, a candid moment between us on Class Day
of my college graduation, Columbia University, New York City,
May 19, 2009 (despite what her outfit would have you believe).
I wanted to take a photo in front of the chapel where
I ran a student art gallery in the basement.

I don’t have it in me to write an eloquent tribute like I’ve done in the past. Read those linked blog posts if you want something more meaningful and poignant. (Actually, definitely read the “A Tale of Two Grandmothers // On Memory” post (if you didn’t back then) before you continue with this one, since it provides some necessary background and I don’t want to repeat myself.) Instead, I feel drained; I have a headache from crying.

She’s always been one of the people I love the most. I’ve said it countless times before but she raised me while my parents worked and I was her favorite grandchild (something I liked to jokingly attribute to me just being really cool or whatever but also comes down to timing; when I was born she was perfect “grandma age”—63, old enough to spoil me, young enough to chase after me and deal with my shenanigans). We had a special bond.

Saturday the 17th was my birthday. My grandma died on Friday. My mom waited until Sunday to tell me, understandably. I knew something was off though; on Friday night right before dinner my mom spontaneously went to see my grandma (for the past year plus she and my Aunt 6 took turns going to my grandma’s house to take care of her, but their visits were usually scheduled ahead of time), and later that night her phone’s text notifications were blowing up (and I thought to myself, “Don’t look down at her lock screen”). And then my birthday itself felt odd. And it usually doesn’t rain on my birthday, but it did this time.

At O'Hare Airport to pick up my mom from her first business trip to San Francisco,
August 1988.

(I’m writing this on the 18th so my thoughts and emotions—including rage—are more immediate and raw, but I’ll wait a week to hit publish; I’d like to hold off until after I respond to everyone for all your birthday wishes (thank you all for the love).)

My grandma was 99 years old, and only three months away from 100. She was so close to reaching that milestone and I really thought she’d make it. Maybe I’m naïve. But in late April/early May 2023 the uncle, his wife, and his children who live in her house infected her with COVID, and she was never the same after that. She already had dementia but she used to have moments of sharpness before and was doing so well right until that point; the virus weakened her immensely and accelerated her physical and cognitive decline. And then last week they infected her with mumps. (For God’s sake wear a mask and wash your hands when you’re sick, especially around the elderly. Of course you should do so when you’re healthy too (my mom and Aunt 6 always masked up and were militant about their hygiene when they went).) She was apparently recovering from the mumps though, and her death came as a surprise; my Aunt 6 was there taking care of her when it happened.

Yes, she obviously lived a very long life. But it’s never enough time, you know? Your loved one could live to be a thousand years old but if you were born after them and also live to a thousand it’ll never be enough and it’ll always be too soon.

Celebrating my maternal grandparents becoming citizens (they, my mom, et al.
immigrated here in 1978), early 1990s (candid laughter as I, born troublemaker,
had the moxie to mess with a man who drank brandy with every meal).

Something that does bring me some semblance of comfort though: My grandma died exactly seven years, to the day, after her most filial child (and overall kind and good person), my maternal Uncle 4, who lived in California, died of cancer on August 16, 2017. I’m inclined to believe my mom that there’s something to that coincidence; she says maybe it’s a sign that he came to bring their mother home.

My paternal grandma on the right and my maternal grandma looking into the camera,
waiting to depart from the Big Buddha, Ngong Ping, Lantau Island, Hong Kong,
December 30, 1996. Also pictured are my parents, and, if you look closely on the left,
I'm in my then-favorite baseball cap and flannel pants
and snacking on peanut butter cracker sandwiches.

My mom accompanied the news with what might be considered clichés—my grandma’s in a better place now, she can eat whatever she wants now (her deterioration progressed to the point where she couldn’t eat solid foods, and recently she’d sometimes forget how to swallow), she can remember everyone now, she can finally be reunited with my maternal Uncle 4 now, she knew how much I loved her—but those sayings are common for a reason; they bring me comfort too.

At the closing reception of Exquisite Corpse, the first exhibition
I curated independently, Chicago, September 17, 2011.

(I guess a note on numbers/names. In Chinese we call our aunts and uncles by their birth order, followed by the specific word designated for their relationship to you; in our language it’s not just “aunt” and “uncle”—there’s a different name for, say, uncle who’s your mother’s elder brother vs. uncle who’s your mother’s younger brother vs. uncle who’s your father’s younger brother and so on.

As for my family, my parents are the same age (they’re high school sweethearts), but my dad’s the eldest on his side, while my mom’s one of the youngest; she’s number 7, out of 9, and is the youngest daughter. Her eldest brother (technically her half-brother since he was my maternal grandfather’s child from his first marriage, before his first wife died when they were young—my grandmother was a wonderful stepmother to him) was number 1 and lived in Manchester; he died in 1994 when I was six. I remember my mom locking herself in our bathroom to cry because she didn’t want to do so in front of me, and I drew her a picture that said “I love you” and slipped it under the door, and I heard her immediately stop crying. She was so moved she showed it to all her coworkers the next day.

The note on numbers also brings me to generations. Due to my dad having all younger siblings and my mom having mostly older siblings, most of my cousins on my mom’s side are Gen X, while most of my cousins on my dad’s side are Gen Z. My parents belong to the younger half of the Baby Boomer generation, now also known as Generation Jones (a newly coined but much appreciated distinction since my parents never related to older Boomers who they say had all the opportunities handed to them and refused to step aside and make room for younger Boomers). My maternal grandmother was part of the Greatest Generation. Around 2010 my friend Julia Alekseyeva introduced me to a generational theory that found patterns among generations; according to the theory, the Greatest Generation and Millennials have the same generational archetypes, and that’s why we feel so closely connected to one another within our families (for her, this connection was with her great-grandmother, and is the subject of her graphic novel memoir Soviet Daughter: A Graphic Revolution). All of this, I suppose, is to serve as affirmation for the timing I mentioned at the beginning of this post, of my Paw Paw being the perfect age when I was born—or of us being born at the perfect moments in history to be able to reach each other across time. If this tangent sounded self-important, I don’t care; we’re all important.)

I now no longer have any surviving grandparents. As you know, my paternal grandma died of pancreatic cancer in November 2020 at age 86. My paternal grandpa died in 2011. And my maternal grandpa died on Father’s Day in 1996, something that, as I also noted at the end of the companion post, changed the course of our lives. That’s kind of amazing for my maternal grandma though; she outlived her husband by over 28 years.

(I’m now a few months older than my mom was when her eldest brother died and only a couple years younger than she was when her father died, and I now understand why she described her father’s death as traumatic for her to experience when she was still young.)

(I also understand that this post is unintentionally riddled with math word problems.)

When Pixar’s Soul came out in December 2020, one year after it became official that my maternal grandma no longer remembered who I was, there was this instrumental on the soundtrack by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross called “Just Us,” that, for some reason, when I listened to it for the first time back then, made me picture me and her as little blue souls, holding both of each other’s hands and spinning through the air (my mind combined it with imagery from the end of Pearl Studio’s Over the Moon, which came out a couple months earlier), and we’re reunited in the afterlife and she remembers me, and it made me cry. I honestly can’t even start thinking about that track without being brought to tears.



In searching for some of the Facebook statuses I’ve shared throughout this post, I also found this one, a memory I’d myself forgotten until now:

Perhaps my vision of us as Soul-like blobs flying together was a happier reimagining of those childhood dreams.

Perhaps growing up means realizing there are things you can’t save your loved ones from.

I’m thinking about and in awe of my mom’s strength.

And also my grandma’s, of course. I always referred to her as a badass and I still think it’s the most accurate way to describe her.

My birthday on August 17, 2019.

She deserves more than the rants and ramblings of the grandchild she lovingly spoiled. She had dreams. She had regrets. One day I’ll write a proper tribute. Her life had a lot of hardship, but also happiness.

During my summer break in 2006 I interviewed her because I wanted to document her story in her own words. I recorded the interview on a cassette and knew exactly where the tape was for years when my parents still lived in my childhood home (I can tell you it was in the third bedroom a.k.a. the piano room / computer room / guest bedroom), but since they moved we have no idea where it is anymore (12 years later they still have moving boxes they haven’t unpacked—no offense to my dad but he was as haphazard as he was arbitrary when it came to what he put in each box and where he put each box). Once we find it I’d like to digitize it and share the audio, hear her voice. I do have with me a Word document of notes I had typed up in real time. This was towards the end of our second session:

I just realized I spent this entire blog post not even recounting any of our memories together, or conveying how she was as a person to honor her. How do you even choose which memories to write about when you’ve spent your formative years with someone? There’s her laugh. Her hilariously snarky commentary when she sat down to watch whatever I was watching on TV. Her green thumb, the abundant vegetable garden she grew in her backyard. The jade she wore. Mahjong. Werther’s. Condensed milk on Wonder Bread. Fried SPAM. “Bob Simpson.” The perfume bottles in her and my grandfather’s bedroom. The huge flat cushions I made forts out of. Her hardiness. Her resourcefulness. Yes she raised me all throughout my early childhood, so I spent countless afternoons after school with her up through age 8, but there are also those years I loved, ages 9-13, when she lived on her own in a newly built townhouse that felt so bright and airy and like anything was possible (and when she first moved in I’d climb around the stairs singing “Out There” from Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, my favorite film from ages 8-9) and she filled it with all new things—a fuzzy red and black flannel throw blanket for me to curl up with when watching TV on floral-patterned couches, crisp and cloud-like bedding (also floral) for my bedroom there when I’d stay the night every weekend—I can still feel and smell it in my mind—and in the morning she’d bake pizza Bagel Bites for me. All the delicious food she’d make. When she’d knit me scarves. How, as I got older, we shared the same taste in fashion. When she moved into her current house and remodeled the basement with all pink carpeting and walls and I used it to throw my sweet 16 birthday party. Her little pink laptop she used for playing solitaire. Her affinity for ordering a bucket of KFC whenever we had a holiday potluck. How she was always dressed as if it were freezing, even in the summer. When she started losing her short-term memory and I wore clothing she’d gifted me and she complimented it and asked where I got it every single time. The photos of me and her other grandchildren on her headboard. How her hands felt.

I could go on and on. I could write a novel, literally.

Another screenshot from the notes I typed in real time when I interviewed her,
second session, August 21, 2006.

The fact that this happened around my birthday has me ruminating on my own sense of mortality even more than usual. Our time is so limited, and the years are racing by (especially these pandemic years—I still feel stuck at the age I was when COVID hit). If you’re fortunate to have a good relationship with your parents (as I do), see them and spend as much time with them as you can (as I have and will). Ask them their stories and record them and remember them yes, but also make new memories. That thing that you’ve always wanted to do? Go do it.

(I’ve been asking you about your dreams for the past 16 years, after all.)

I wonder what it’s like for my grandma right now. Is it like a veil has been lifted? Suddenly she can see—all her memories flooding back, everything that’s happened these past few years revealed to her. I guess I’ll find out in time. Grandma, I’ll see you when we’re little blue blobs.