bittersweet memories

"Bittersweet memories that is all I'm taking with me.
So, goodbye. Please, don't cry.
We both know I'm not what you need.
And I will always love you. I will always love you."
"i will always love you" by whitney houston

this evening is probably one of the best and worst nights of my life.

afterschool, i come to find my mom in the van, along with my dad and my brother. my mom goes to work at 2 so i figured something was wrong. we stop by the house, grab some food, and head for cerritos. why? my grandma/great aunt is sick and dying.

her condition? well, she's better than yesterday. everyone (except my family--me, my dad, and my mom) thought she was going to pass away. she's at home because our family knows that if she stays in the hospital, they'll just stick a bunch of tubes through her small and bruised-up body which really wont do much except make her suffer more. she cant talk. she can't eat and hasn't eaten for four days now.

know what makes it even sadder? (well, for me at least.) she's turning 93 in a week and a half. october 30th. we're suppose to have a party for her on the 29th, but i dont know if she can wait that long. so here we are, trying to find time in our busy schedules, throwing her a small birthday party every night with a new cake and more family members.

when i saw her today, i froze. she didn't play that big of a role in my life, but she's always been around. it was traumatizing to see her... practically lifeless.. in bed of the home which i've watched her sew, laugh, smile, sing, cook, and do so much more in.

when we left the house afterschool, i thought we were going to be in the hospital. and knowing that there's not much entertainment there, i decided to bring my guitar. my mom said that my grandma/great aunt really likes music. today, they asked me to play "happy birthday" 2-3 times as well as some other songs as a slide show of the last 20-25 years of her life played on the tv. my dad told me to stop playing for a while because maybe she wanted to rest. i tried, but i couldn't.

i felt like if i stopped playing, she'd stop listening. i felt like if i stopped playing, her heart would have stopped beating. i felt like if i stopped playing, i'd be saying good bye to her. i sat by her bed, playing the song "never gone" by backstreet boys, as tears rolled down my face. i looked down, pulled my baseball cap over my eyes, and kept playing.. gradually slowing down until my hands started to tremble. i ran to the bathroom and cried.

yes, it was a good cry, but it was not one i needed.

my cousins arrived from work. one of them asked my brother and i to go up to his room. we played xbox and i was admiring his new 24-inch computer screen and $1000-8 megapixel-digital camera. later on, family friends arrived. i bonded with the kids; one was a junior, the other in 7th grade. a while later, my other cousins arrived; one just moved from philippines a few months ago and the other is married and brought her husband and kids; one a freshman and the other in kindergarten. we laughed and joked around. we sang kareoke and talked about school and college. we bonded.

my mom's side is the rich side. the cousin who bought the 24-inch computer screen is a computer science graduate from UCI and makes like $55,000 a year; his fiance also graduated from UCI (they met while practicing for their PCN like 6 years ago??) and she majored in engineering and makes like $60,000-$62,000 a year. his younger brother majored in economics from UCSD last year. my cousin who's married and has two kids is a nurse and got a new cell phone a few months after she got a new lexus mini-SUV last year. her husband just bought their freshman daughter an ipod nano with engraving. he bought himself a new, $1,200 17-inch laptop AND one for his daughter six months ago. crazee family, eh? they're people who motivate me to want to do well in school and get that damn m3 or m6. ha.

i will always love all of you. especially you, lola lucy.