What do you say to someone you will never see again? I only had the few minutes it would take for the elevator to come to the tenth floor of the hospital to think. There was part of me that wanted to cry and hug her and never let go, and another part of me that wanted to curse at the injustice of it all. But I swallowed both parts with excruciating effort, because you see, my grandmother didn’t know that she was dying of gall bladder cancer.

A long-time sufferer of gallstones, my grandmother consistently rejected our pleas to undergo surgery. Instead, she spent years trying various traditional Chinese medicine regimens that got her nowhere. Eventually, the pain forced her to give in. When the surgeons opened her body, they found a tumor that had already spread to other organs in her body. The surgeons discussed the situation with my grandfather, and my mother and her siblings. They decided not to tell my grandmother.

She is only sixty-nine. I don’t know who her killer is, whether it is the tumor or the stubborn faith in Traditional Chinese Medicine. The doctors say she has about a month left to live. Every morning and night she receives nutrients through an IV because she is too weak to ingest food. Every day her body is weaker, her hair thinner. She often lays in bed moaning because of the pain, but she refuses to take painkillers — she believes that pain is the body’s way of communicating to her. My parents call her stubborn; I call her strong.

We haven’t told her, and we never will. But she knows. She knows that her time is running out. When we visited her parents’ grave I overheard her praying while kowtowing. She said to herself, “Mother, father, I will be joining you soon”.

So there we were, in front of the elevator, my grandmother, my grandfather, and me; all aware of the fact that it was the last time we would all be together, but suffocated by the necessity to pretend that it wasn’t.

She removed the gold ring from her middle finger and slid it onto my hand.

I said, “Waipo, I will come to see you again and when you are better I will take you to America.”
“Yes, Waipo will get better.” She smiled reassuringly.

The elevator doors opened. I exerted all the energy in my facial muscles to force a smile as I waved goodbye. As soon as the doors closed, the tears fell.

—- To spread support and awareness for cancer, I started a poll fundraiser. Answer the question: how has your life been affected by cancer? either in the comments or on twitter, and I will donate 10 cents for every response received by tomorrow to the American Cancer Association in the name of my grandmother. I will also synthesize the responses and post them for all to read.

Me with my grandmother this summer

My grandmother during Spring Break, well into the disease