Reflections on My Mother's Life

During the time when I was writing the eulogy for my mother, I had to ask my brothers and sister many questions about the family. I had to ask because I was not there - we had been living separately since I was 15 and we only saw each other maybe once a year afterwards. Since it was very painful for me to be separated from my family at that age, I had since subconsciously removed some, if not all the emotional attachments to my parents as part of my self-defense. The writing of the eulogy was a way for me to find out and rationalize what had happened, and to restore my emotional connections to them and the rest of my family.

Looking at your family can be both a terrifying and a rewarding experiences- for the same reason we look at primates and fossils, it tells us a lot about ourselves. In particular, I want to know the answers to these questions: Why did my parents decide to immigrate to Canada? Why did they decide to leave me behind in Taiwan? Did my parent really love each other? What had happened to my family since they immigrated? I was hoping the answers will not only help me understand myself, but will also help me reconnect with the the emotions that I've since lost.

While researching my mother's life, a distinct pattern had emerged and kept repeating itself - that is, my mother made decisions mainly based on her concerns of others, and that most of these decisions were wrong for herself, and she would spent enormous efforts to try to make them right.

From the very beginning, she decided to marry and to stay married to my dad, even though her parents are against him and that my dad was never a marriage material. She could have walked away after she found out, but chose to stay and tried to turn him around. She failed and never loved the same man again. For the rest of her life she was so exhausted from being the main provider for the family, that she would pay the ultimate price for not having either the time or the energy to nurture the affections between her and her own children.

In 1981, she decided to immigrated to Canada even though all but one of her children are doing well in Taiwan. She quit her tenured teaching job even though she was only 6 years away from a pension that guarantee financial security for the rest of her life. She left behind her 15 year old son in Taiwan due to the government age limit on immigration, and forever severed his relationships with the rest of the family. She decided to lend and lose a significant portion of our family assets to her friend, even though she knew their business was in trouble and they were paying her an unsustainable 20% interest rate.

In 1984, because a fortune teller told her that if she stayed in her current house, one of her sons would die, she decided to put the rest of the family assets into a bigger house, despite all but one of her children had left for college. At the time she should have down-sized, simplified, and invested more time with her youngest child, she took on more financial burdens and had to work for the next 20 years, while missing yet another of her child growing up.

She supported her daughter's marriage and help raised her grandchildren, despite her son-in-law never wanted the family burden to begin with. As a result, she had to care for her grandchildren, Mimi until she was almost 2, with minimum help from either her daughter or son-in-law. Later she would also play a significant part of taking care of all her other grandchildren at the expense of her own health.

Ironically, the closest person I can think of that exhibits the same character traits is the famous German general Erwin Rommel – like my mother, Rommel tend to make decisions alone and seldom consulted with others. He often made the wrong strategic decisions (e. g. ignore Tripoli in 1942 or built Atlantic Wall in 1944), and would stick to the wrong decision despite enormous human sufferings, only to fail in the end due to the impossibility of the situation. Not only my mother's decision making traits paralleled that with Rommel's, their personality are also quite similar, for both are very stubborn.

Most people in life would prefer status-quo and refrain from making the same kind of decisions my mother made. Less than 1% of Taiwanese chose to immigrate, and we were probably the only family that left a child behind. She was probably the only teacher in Taiwan to walk away from life-time pension that was only 6 years away. I don't know the percentage of mothers that would advise their daughter to marry someone who didn't believe in marriage, but it can't be very high.

Before my mother passed away, I asked her why she made those decisions: instead of complicated analysis, she would say simple things like: I did it so so and so will be better off, etc. While making those decisions, my father or other family members are never consulted. For example, they didn't tell me I will be left behind until 1 month before they got on the airplane. This would be the reason that she was often the only one left to pick up the pieces, in spite of those decisions are intended for the benefits of others.

I discovered the pattern after talking to various family members and reflecting on the flight back to California. It was quite painful since had I known these earlier, I probably could have done something about it. But could I? I wasn't even around most of the time. Also as I mentioned earlier, I had either consciously or subconsciously detached myself emotionally with my family to protect myself, and I had not even tried to reconnect with the my family until the time of my mother's funeral.

Ultimately, what does family mean? Unlike an economic or military unit – family has no objectives to achieve. Even if there is such a list, life is probably too short and unpredictable to accomplish them. A family is started because of love, and its sole purpose is to sustain, to nurture, and to teach the love to the next generation. When the love is gone, nothing else matters: be it the number of children, the number of degrees, or the size of bank account. In my mother's case, love was lost 45 years ago. What had happened since was a woman's quest for love that she should have had all along: the love between a mother and all her children.

My Mother's Eulogy

My mother, Martha Chang, was born Kai Jung-Hwa, in Octobor 16, 1938, in a small rural village in Shandong province, northern China. When she was born, her mother didn't have milk so she was fed only gruels. Luckily she survived but it left her with poor health for the rest of her life. My mother's last name, Kai, was quite rare amongst the Chinese last names. According to family legend, her ancestors migrated to Shandong in the late Ming dynasty from YuenNang province, and she's the 16^th generations of Kai living in the area.

Her father Kai Che-ming and mother Sun Shu-ying had 5 children, but only she and her older brother: Kai Jung-Wen survived. Together with her father's extended families, 15 people in total, they led a simple peasant life on a small farm about 3 acres, with no electricity, running water, access to basic medical services or even education.

In 1949, the tiny 3 acre farm was big enough to classify her family as land owners, and they had to flee to Taiwan in order to escape from the Communist persecutions. They began a new life in Taiwan as penniless refugees, however, the exodus also brought new opportunities to her and her family: at age 12, she finally got her chance to start her formal education starting from the 2nd grade. Her father, who lost everything at age 39 and had to start from scratch as a construction worker, would eventually build a successful construction business and built many catholic churches and schools in Taiwan. The junior high school that my brother and I attended was one of his projects.

Since my mother started school very late, she was three years older than her average classmates. She always excelled in school and became the first person from her village to get a college education. The formation of my mother's personality was heavily influenced by her father's refugee success story and her own schooling experiences. From early on in her life, she would carry herself with extreme self-confidence and seldom second-guessed her own ability to dictate her own destiny, in spite of life's many unpredictabilities. For my mother, the challenges in life often mean new opportunities.

In 1963, during the last year of her college, she married my father, her first boyfriend and an air force officer at the time. She graduated one year later and became an English teacher. Together they started a family and had 4 children: first a daughter: my sister Linda, followed by three sons: myself, Rick, and Eddy.

In 1981, after 18 years of tranquil middle-class life, my mother gave up her tenured teaching job and immigrated to Canada, so her children can have a better future. Like many immigrants, she had to re-invent herself at age 44. She held various jobs in order to support her family, and see to it that her four children got 4 college and 1 graduate degrees. She saw all her children marry, and played an active role in helping bring up her 5 grandchildren. 

Throughout her life, my mother was the bedrock and the main provider to her family, and she worked hard to see to it that our large family never had concerns about financial security. Between her job and the duties of raising four children, she tended to her own parents' last days in Taiwan while surviving her own breast cancer. She accomplished so many amazing things, and it wasn't until we got married years later and started our own families, that we began to realize the sheer number of challenges she had to overcome so we can grow up carefree.

Those of your who knew my mother well, also know her devotion is not limited to her family. Throughout her life she has helped countless friends, acquaintances, and even strangers. Sometimes she can be loyal to people to a fault. Despite occasional disappointments, she never lost her faith in the goodness of people and continued to offer her help to whoever came asking for it.

We often wonder how my mother, as a woman, can summon so much strength and energy and sacrifice so much for others for so long. The truth is, she couldn't, and she was simply drawing the last buckets from her well. Her youthful look not only disguised her age, but also helped to conceal her deteriorating physical condition.

In recent years, although she survived her breast cancer and a broken hip, she never regained her strength. Starting this year, she began to have a series of mysterious ailments that whose origins doctors failed to conclusively identify. The resulting prescriptions caused further health damages and made her even worse. Starting in May she was hospitalized many times due to sudden weakness, anemia, fever, and by September, she has lost the ability to live independently.  In her most recent and last hospital stay, her lung suddenly developed problems and she was admitted to the ICU at Mount Sinai hospital on November 28. On Tuesday, December 9, the Lord chose to take her back. She was 70.

Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, and going through the emails where we discussed her conditions since the summer, I cannot help but wonder that had any of us kids taken time off and tended to her medical conditions, would the outcome have been any different, and would she have therefore had the chance to live to the same old age as her parents. That question will remain with us for the rest of our days.

My mother had both lasting and positive influences on all of her children and grand children: whether it's taking our kids to the Library; spending the afternoon reading books instead of watching TV; or reading to our children during bedtime when we're dog-tired from work, it is because we remember growing up she would do the same things for us. We may not have the prettiest clothes, but we *always* have the books we want. Whenever we encounter difficulties in life, whether it be stress from school or work, or going through lay-offs, we did not have to look far for inspirations - all we had to do is to look at our mother, for we only needed one-tenth of her strength and courage to persevere in life.

While raising us, my mother had also make sure to instill in us the values passed down through her parents: her unfailing optimism on the goodness of human nature, that you should always work hard and be honest; and that knowledge, not money, is the most important asset in life. My mother is the very essence of selfless devotion, of duty, and of compassion.

We miss you, Mom. You are in God's hands now, and we know you'll be watching us from above. We love you, and we want to say: "Thank you for everything you did for us"