I visited my grandparents on my trip to China in September. It has been 10 months since I last saw them, though it felt much longer.
It was one of those days where summer wasn’t quite gone and fall has yet to kick in. There was a mellow, sticky sweetness in the air that would be perfect to doze off on a lazy chair. That was how I found them when I walked in.
They live in the same apartment they bought 17 years ago. In their early 70s, fearing they wouldn’t be able to climb the stairs in their late age, they sold their old home on the top floor of a six story building, in exchange for a smaller fourth floor unit in a better neighborhood.
Two fewer flights of stairs certainly had helped for a long time until it no longer matters. Advancing age, coupled with 3 years of crippling pandemic lockdowns, and the eventual Covid infection, took a terrible toll on them.
Grandma, who babysat me often when I was young, would always deep clean our home during her visits. She would dust all corners, mop every inch of the floor, wash each piece of bedding and drape by hand, and scour the kitchen until it shined. By the time she left, everything would be put back in place as if an invisible genie had swept through the house.
All the while, grandpa would help fix things around the house. He could fix anything, from tightening a loose joint on a chair, patching up a leaky bucket, re-soldering the circuit in a broken radio, to taking a crack at the electric motor that was making the fan sound funny. I often brought my broken toys to him in hopes he would magically resurrect them. Sometimes it worked out, other times it didn’t, but he never said no.
Now frail and slow, they are a shell of their former vibrant selves. In addition to intermittent hearing loss, grandma now has trouble walking. Severe back pain forces her to move with a perpetually humped back and protruded neck. When she moves across the room, she doesn’t walk so much as drag herself. Grandpa, while in better shape, continues to suffer from prolonged Covid aftereffects, chronic high blood pressure and minor diabetes.
The four flights of stairs in and out of the house started as a piece of cake, gradually became a challenging but manageable task, then a herculean undertaking today. Acutely aware of that difficulty and the risk of falling, they no longer leave their home much anymore. With their four daughters taking turns delivering groceries and cooking for them, the only occasions they are willing to leave their home are family gatherings or trips to the hospital.
Fortunately, neither suffers any cognitive decline. They remember the birthdays of everyone in the family, right down to their great-grandkids. Beyond family matters, they manage their own finances, actively engage in current political discourse, and discreetly keep their handwritten wills up to date, for it remains a social taboo to openly discuss death in China.
Having lived abroad by myself through the entirety of adulthood, I found it difficult to keep a conversation going at times. We don’t align politically, have differing views on the roles of marriage, kids and how to live.
While grandpa passionately talked about the conflicts in the Middle East and mocked the ‘absurdity’ of American elections, I sat in silence peeling and slicing an apple for him, knowing nothing in my mind was likely to be inducible to a happy conversation. There is no point explaining or arguing, what good does it do to telling him he’s been fed with propaganda all his life, and the world sees China in a drastically different light than he did? I thought as I nodded along, not making any eye contact. Grandma asked about my work, not knowing I had been utterly disaffected and quit my job months ago. It would be a suicide mission to explain not only to them, but to every member of the family, all have been working class people their entire life, why
Not wanting to explain myself to them and other family members present, I chose to make up white lies.
Sensing the awkwardness, grandpa brought out snacks, a classic assortments of peanuts, sunflower seeds, pine nuts and pistachios, to pass time while we waited for lunch. We spent much time in silence shelling nuts and seeds, quietly putting them in each other’s bowl.
They are content. They are content with the life they have had, having lived through the Japanese occupation in their childhood, the great famines and turmoil of cultural revolution through the 60s and 70s in their youth. They came from a place and time with nothing to their backs, be it food, shelter, or any shred of human dignity, to a place where they managed to raise four children, lent a helping hand in the upbringing of all four grandkids, and accumulated a sizable estate by scraping together pennies for decades. It is a hard and deservedly proud life.
At the same time, they worry a lot. They worry about their daughters, who are approaching their own senior years; they worry about the lingering effects of the one-child policy on the prosperity of the family; they worry about their grandchildren who choose to stay single; they worry about a future where it seems the world is inching towards ever greater conflicts. In their earnest desires, they want their family to live in a future enjoying and continuing to build on life they had, but now are powerless in shaping that future.
I kept thinking of sunsets while I was there. Sunsets are the most magical moments in nature. I remember watching them in red rock-dotted Arizonian deserts, on wave-battered Californian shores, and over the snowed-peaked Cascades in Washington. The sky takes on a million different hues, the landscape dances between a kaleidoscope of lights and shadows, while the dying lights leaving a unique warmth on our cheeks. Everything is changing at every second, as if eons pass between moments. For a long time, it feels the show would last forever until, in a breath, it vanishes into the deep.
Grandpa and grandma are watching their own sunsets in motion. They know the end is near. They do not quite know what to make of it, neither do I. Before I said goodbye, they held my hands at the door and looked into my eyes for a long time. Not knowing what to say, I gave each of them a big long hug. Knowing China is not a hug country, I doubt either of them has really hugged anyone their whole life, yet we hugged as if they had been hugging all along.
First drafted on Oct 28th, 2024,
Seattle, WA