Goodbye Gam Gam

The Lady Who Embraced Total Imperfection:
We Call Them Bad Asses

Orchids were her favorites and so that's what she called me.

It wasn't going to be good, I thought to myself. 

We had been summoned to my parents' house. I had spent the day finishing "Stranger Things" with VV and her mom as one last hoorah to celebrate her mother's recovery from minor surgery. Our commentary, peals of laughter and screams had been paused by a text message I received from my dad that simply said, "What are your plans for the evening? I would like to have [the two of you] come over for a family meeting." 

On the ride over the mister as if on cue asked, "Do you know what this is about?"

Almost simultaneously my younger sister asked the same thing via text. "Hey do you know what dad wants to talk about?"

Nope.

I wracked my brain on all the likely subjects which included: our upcoming vacations, Christmas plans for 2017, discussing how to agree on Buddy's life plans if he turned for the worse...Anything was fair game. Nevertheless, we arrived at my parents' house as requested and quickly found a seat on the couch. Surprisingly, my dad ushered us in quickly and announced he wanted to get started right away. This was not normal which dashed all of my previous suggestions of what we as a family could be possibly speaking about. My mom announced she was going to get my younger sister, a task that could only be relegated to my mom seeing as my sister's loser boyfriend was present. My mom is the unofficial-official family ambassador to whatever guy of the year my sister decides to glue herself to. 

My sister's loser boyfriend has been freeloading at the house (to my chagrin I learned this same night that my sister NEVER asked permission for him to visit...it's been almost two weeks) much like a lump of shit that you know you have to pick up but don't want anything to do with. When my sister and Tumbleweed Tarzan lumbered out of her bedroom like a pair of zombies, she clad inappropriately in a giant T shirt (her pants missing or simply unseen) and deposited themselves into a couple of arm chairs, my dad immediately said, "Um. I said, just the family. [Tarzan] can you give us the living room?"

".....Oh..." Tumbleweed Tarzan remarked stupidly, his reflexes and common sense dulled by the influence of "grass." He stumbled out of the living room, leaving us with a very twitchy and dazed sister of mine. 

I am grateful I was not aware of what was transpiring, thanks to my increasing desire to know what was going on (instead the Mister filled me in later.) 

So this was definitely not going to be good. 

Once we had the living room to ourselves and Buddy had settled in, taking his place right in front of me and sat on my foot, my dad began.

"Thank you all for coming, I am first of all sorry that this has been hush-hush, but I wanted you all to be here in person before I told you what I wanted to talk about tonight. So I have some very sad news-"

Yep. Definitely not going to be good. I knew right away someone had died. My mind was racing like the beating of my heart. Aunt Ann? Uncle Dwaine? Oh god...

"My mother passed away."

Gam Gam.

Can you be shocked and also not surprised at the same time? 

My Chinese grandmother was well into her 90's and her health had been on the decline in the subsequent years though not unlike Buddy, she just kept going through it all. But I knew, my dad knew and everybody knew that one day we were going to get the news. Still, 90 something or not, nobody is prepared for death. 

And we certainly were not prepared to find out through a probate notice.

Salt on the wounds.

---

I don't know when she died. 

It must have been weeks ago, maybe a month or more. There will be no memorial service, no funeral, no family gathering, just the one we had in our living room with the five immediate Chinnies. 

My parents were equally confused. My dad numbed and defeated. Throughout our conversation, it was glaringly obvious that my dad was not going to make any contest and expected no residual outcome from the news except to mourn together privately. 

My dad's only request was that he could just hold a small family get together to reminisce about our collective memories of Gam Gam. He let on more details of his life as a child and her as his mother, edifying facts that neither the Mister or I had ever heard before. From the closeness and the sadness shared in that room, it is hard to believe that things had come to this: we had not seen or heard from her in years. One mistake made by a lawyer's office had ended our relationship with her. Of course, despite everything as far as my dad knew, her rage and animosity towards my father was not something she felt towards me, my sister or even my mom. Despite her English memory fading in and out, her inability to recognize me on our last visit together (sometimes I was my dad, sometimes I was her beloved Yeh Yeh or sometimes I was just someone who she thought could speak Cantonese) she still asked about me, my sister and my mother. 

This was the best we could do to honor our feelings and say goodbye. There would be no memorial service and no funeral, because if there had been one we were not invited. My uncle and my aunt's surviving adult children had virtually nothing to do with us. There was a great darkness that fell over the family long ago and no amount of time could ever heal those wounds. Even our extended family I do not believe can comprehend when I told them, "They don't talk to us" just how much that really meant. Not even the five of us could possibly know to what lengths my uncle would go to not talk to us.

We will probably never know how she died, when she died and any last wishes. 

My dad said that the probate letter formally addressed him, myself and my sister as we may or may not be named in her will and trust, but with everything between us the other side of the Chinny family...we don't have any expectations. It doesn't really matter. Gam Gam is gone.

I am very sad that I could never show Gam Gam the pictures of my wedding, that she never met the Mister and she never even could come to the wedding. I did tell her that I was getting married over the phone, but I don't know if she understood. Her mind was very fragile at that time. 

Her memories and her ability to commune in English became very scant towards the end of our contact. The dominant part of her spirit and mind and communication ability not surprisingly was in Cantonese, a world that unfortunately I did not belong to. We were like a fish and a bird trying to hold a conversation in worlds that neither one of us belonged to. A bird can't breathe in water and a fish can't swim in air. I trained myself my entire life to speak in English like I would if I knew her dialect of Chinese. I kept sentences short and removed any flourish or descriptors. Any description was a short sentence, short and the point. 

"I love you."

"Chinese boys don't like me."

"My dad is not sick anymore."

"I am doing very well in school and my grades are good."

In my younger years, my dad and I would take the train, the bus and walk to her two story flat in the Marina district. I have strong memories of that house and I always will. I cannot bear to think of that house leaving the family and some douchey tech bro moving into it or a selfish self indulgent trust fund baby moving into it one day. Who knows what my uncle will do with the place. Maybe he will sell it or maybe he will continue to live in it for the rest of his days, I hope he does. I hope he gives it to my cousins at the very least. I cannot bear to think of my dad's childhood home leaving the family. 

My grandparents may not have ever known how much their presence in the Marina was one of the biggest middle fingers to White America or in San Francisco's history. My dad shared with me that his parents struggled to buy property in San Francisco despite having the means to. The color bar. My dad at twelve became a family foreman and was instructed to watch the workers once they did buy property and had work done, because they were convinced that the workers would cheat them. This became a reoccurring theme through my dad's life much to his embarrassment or inconvenience. 

"She used to order food from restaurants in Chinatown...from the kitchen. She would march in there and watch over them to make sure that they got it right," my dad shook his head laughing as I tried to imagine Gam Gam, a woman who had never been tall or heavy in her entire life barking orders and screaming at flailing hostesses and mortified cooks. "'THIS MEAT! NOT THAT ONE!'" My dad imitated her, pointing at an invisible lump of chicken thigh or marbled pork in some nondescript back alley kitchen in the heart of Chinatown to some brow beaten cook who was counting down the minutes until this crazy woman got the fuck out of his kitchen.

I had been instructed as early as I could remember that I had a Nana, a Grandpa and then there was Gam Gam. Yeh Yeh, I was told, had died when I was very little which was hard to believe because when I was told this I was only six or so. Nevertheless, Gam Gam was a creature that was out of this world. As a child I took her for granted and probably bluntly said something like, "I like Nana's and Grandpa's better." Well, like any child I was incapable of lying when it came to my strong opinions and Gam Gam's house was the stuff of legends. 

---

One of my favorite and recommended books is "The Dim Sum of All Things" by Kim Wong Keltner whose vivid and accurate descriptions of being an American raised/born Chinese granddaughter living in her grandmother's world was unbelievably similar. My dad grew up in the house, the one in the Marina district in the heart of Cow Hollow. I used to joke that we could have featured her house on Hoarders, but it was not so far from the truth. I also envisioned the scene from "Labyrinth" when Sarah is dumped out of Jareth's concocted dream sequence into the land of junk outside of his palace. Her house was just full of organized chaos. You were met with a pungent and penetrating smell of mothballs, tiger ball and miscellaneous unidentified odors neither herbal nor chemical. Everything you touched smelled of the Gam Gam smell including whatever clothes we wore there. On the window by the front door was a stained glass window and on the wooden sill was a simple gold plaque with Yeh Yeh's name. 

Gam Gam was ignorant of the wealth she had amassed throughout her lifetime, probably to the very end. Like all immigrants, she worked her ass off right by her husband's side running multiple businesses and raising children. Like all of our grandmothers, she had been beautiful and as she got older, her body and spirit showed signs of all the experiences within her lifetime. She was a nonsense lady of barely five feet, she shuffled around the house in orthopedic shoes and despite having been an extremely fashionable lady in her day with closets of her clothes (a lady after my own heart) had abandoned them in favor of comfort. Like I said, she was a nonsense lady. She spoke her mind and she defended herself loudly. She took no crap from anyone and she listened to nobody except her own community even to her detriment. But I have to admire the fact she was her own person. She survived without Yeh Yeh for over twenty years and she kept two San Francisco properties and a fortune built upon her hard work, she did not realize it but she was literally living the American dream. 

She knew nothing about the world. She uneducated, illiterate and most likely my dad was the one who taught her how to at least sign her name on appropriate documents when need be. She relied on men her entire life, first Yeh Yeh then my dad and when she "fired" my dad for what she perceived as betrayal, she relied on her second son, my uncle. But only for translation and to give opinions about financial matters after Yeh Yeh died. Gam Gam was like a Queen who came to power after the untimely death of her husband, the OG Khaleesi. 

She advised me in her own way to be strong and to do whatever I wanted. I should marry if I wanted to and if I did, she hoped it would be a Chinese boy (naturally) and I should cut my hair short. She never did like my long hair and she would have been delighted to see that I haven't had my hair long in years. She would have liked the Mister. He may not have been Asian, but she would have probably said something to my dad like, "Well...At least he looks like one. Better than that other guy (The Shrub)." 

I never said she was a perfect lady. Of course nobody is, but Gam Gam was many things. While she loved ice cream, oatmeal and French pastries, Gam Gam was a loyal Chinese woman and deeply entrenched in her values which meant she was at odds with those "damn long hairs" (Hippies) and "honkeys" (White people). Yes, that's what she called white people, I think it had to do with the way she perceived how white people sound. #myimmigrantgrandmother 

And yes, Gam Gam was racist. Maybe I'm abandoning my principles and everything I learned proudly at Mills by not calling out her behavior when she was alive, but with the language barrier and having to rely on my dad to explain everything...it was difficult. Also I just took after her. And my dad. I did whatever the fuck I wanted despite her protests. I ket my hair long. I dated a non East Asian guy with dark skin. I didn't wind up marrying that "Chinese boy" she hoped for. And I may not have any kids let alone sons. The fact I dated was something that Gam Gam also wasn't particularly in favor of. This I find amusing and frankly liberating. For everything that she was or wasn't, Gam Gam was strangely liberating. She would not be swayed or influenced or convinced, she followed her gut instinct and she made her decisions. From the background she came from, I am proud of she managed to conquer a foreign man's world. 

I am grateful to her as she accepted me as her own granddaughter despite me not being her blood born relation and the fact I wasn't a boy. At one point she and my grandfather nearly stopped speaking to my parents after they found out my "white devil rotten rice old" mom couldn't conceive and when talks resumed when my dad said that their grandchild was going to be 100% Chinese but adopted, they quickly abandoned reconciliation (albeit briefly) when they found out the child would be female. Everything was forgotten once I was in their arms. Suddenly, not unlike most immigrant, mixed families, there was silent denial that my mother and I were EVER not a Chinny. 

My dad said that night, "You know, I never saw my dad ever smile until you were two and sitting on his lap." Yeh Yeh at that time was bed ridden and near death. His intestines had exploded and he was forced against his wishes to have a bag attached to his gut in order to save his life. Yeh Yeh had told my dad he was grateful he got a chance to meet me. He died soon after. 

Gam Gam missed him. She had spent most of her life with him. She showed me a picture once of them as a young newly married couple. They looked like movie stars. She was 22 she said when she married him and he was already 30. My grandfather looked like a Chinese Jimmy Carter, but I knew not to be fooled by his seemingly kind, unassuming appearance. He had not been an attentive or nurturing father. He provided the bare essentials for living to his family members, but offered no words of support and he refused to ever close the dry cleaners even for my dad's graduations. My grandparents did not attend my parents' wedding, but this I think was the only grudge my dad held against his parents. He said that he had been closest with Gam Gam. 

So was I. Gam Gam told my dad that she liked me, because I talked to her. And I understood her. She understood me too. She knew that I loved sweets and that I loved animals.

"So do I," she told me. She showed me pictures of her animals. A orange tomcat named Boy which I find amusing, because years later here I am with a Doxie Poo named Guy. She had two dogs named Tasha, the original Tasha was a sable Sheltie that originally belonged to my dad, but my grandparents refused to give her up after my dad returned from his business trip to Labrador. Gam Gam famously would go to Swenson's ice cream for two cones, one for her and one for Tasha. They were indebted to that little dog as she had once saved them from a strange man who had come into the dry cleaners one night. 

She did meet Buddy and even he could warm her usually fussy self. She patted him fondly and despite our objections, defiantly gave Buddy part of her sandwich and insisted on feeding him baguettes (god knows how stale they were), but we drew the line when she tried to give him an almond croissant and madelines. I think on our lives and how similar we were. I am sorry she was not a part of my life towards the end of hers and that she would never know about my marriage, but I would like to think she knows. 

I don't know what will become of her things, all of her beloved things. Her beautiful collection of art, oil paintings, antique furniture, her mountains of clothes, her boxes of jewelry, her porcelain and glass figurines, but most of all, her orchids. She loved orchids. She loved gardening. Her entire backyard was her garden. She loved it. In some ways I am glad I never saw the house as her health declined, because it would have been painful to see that garden waste away like her. I don't think I could bear to see the life wither away from her plants especially the orchids. She had orchids close to her, they were her houseplants. She inspired my third name.

I have had many names since I was born. It was decided because she loved orchids, my Chinese name ought to reflect that. It was decided my name be "Ching Lohlan" (that is the phonetic spelling). I was told that it meant "purple orchid" after Gam Gam's favorite. 

---

Death is finite. There is not do-overs and thinking "what if" is futile. The reality stands that she was my grandmother and she was my dad's mother. Despite all of the family issues, she loved me and while she was a obstinate, difficult woman, she was my Gam Gam. 

And I will miss her.