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.
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