Dear Mom

Dear Mom,

When you were dying in hospice and clutching my hand croaking, “Promise me! Promise me!” I lied when I sighed, “Mom, I’ve already broken up with him. Geez, calm down.”

But I hadn’t dumped him. Which you probably knew.

That was the last time you mentioned him, because you died. Everything you said on your deathbed was the last time you talked about that thing.

I did break up with him years later. Not because you told me to, although it didn’t help. I don’t know that it was a good decision. It was not a very conscious decision. But that’s neither here nor there.

The thing I want to tell you is that you don’t know what you’re talking about a lot of the time! You were projecting your fears onto me by saying he was too much like my dad. You hated every guy I ever dated, and you’ll be right about almost all of them until I marry one of them, and even then you might be right. That doesn't mean you know anything more than me!

Not to say that I don’t value your input.

Now that you’re gone, I wish I could talk with you about stuff. I don’t know if I ever wished that when you were alive. Taking you for granted: that’s the gift you gave me in life. And appreciating you and missing you: that’s the gift you gave me through your death.

My boyfriend pointed out that I still talk about you in the present tense, like you’re alive. I wonder what you’d think of him. You would not like his skin color.

You always found reasons to hate all my boyfriends. Even when I dated that generically hot guy who you at first crowed over, “He’s so tall and handsome! Does he actually like you?” and I scoffed, “What?! Thanks, Mom! Of course he does! He is wrapped around my little finger. You should be asking me if I even like him at all! Guys like him are a dime a dozen,” within a few hours you pulled me aside to whisper, “I have something to tell you about this man. He was very evasive when I questioned him about his family. I asked, ‘What does your mother do?’ and he said, ‘She has had many jobs,’ and then smoothly transitioned onto another topic. Nan Yu, you can’t trust such a man.”

“Mom! His mom’s dead. That’s why he’s evasive.”

Without missing a beat, you said, “He doesn’t have a family? Then he’ll always depend on you too much. Find someone else. This man, not for you.”

Well, he’s now a genius Harvard professor, not that that would impress you, Mom. The boyfriend you literally deathbed begged me to dump was a self made MIT millionaire and you still hated him.

I see now that it’s because you didn’t trust yourself with men, so you didn’t trust me with men. You were right, in your own way. I had to learn how to trust myself with men too. Especially after all the baggage I learned from you.

My coach would say that me repeating the patterns with men that I saw in you is one of the ways I honor my love for you. Sure… I don’t know if I’m doing it out of love, but I definitely do it. It’s like how you always introduced me as an “MIT graduate” even after I’d graduated for years and gone on to do other things. You love college status games and I do too.

I’m just like you now, reading self help books and admiring Oprah. I used to think your “Men are from Mars” books were silly or obvious or describing stupid women who I didn’t relate to, and now I’m just like you, eating it up. I’ve definitely learned a lot consciously from these relationship books. I unconsciously learned so much from you, and now these psychologists and coaches are helping me to consciously unravel all of it.

Who knows why I fear loneliness so much (because you left me for years with relatives when I was 1 years old and I had to fly to America by myself, because you left me when I was 15 to live by myself, because you left me for the final time when I was 25 and you died after years of seeming to get better?).

I wish I could tell you about all these stories I have, everything I’m waking up to. I see my pattern of not wanting to face my loneliness, and how that’s driven me into the arms of the wrong men, and also made me cold to people who might’ve been right for me because I was scared they’d leave. Did you know that I am determined to be happy even though I’m ready for people to leave me at any moment, that I’m determined to be happy regardless, either by pushing them away or fantasizing about that (to prepare myself) or by distracting myself with other people and activities.

I see so much of you in me. Do you think we’re both enneagram 7?

I wish I could talk with you about all this stuff and hear what you think and understand you better. There’s so many ways I wish we knew each other. I’ll never know you mother to mother.

All I know is that you loved me a lot. All your warnings and crazy portends and biases were you protecting me from heartbreak, from the dangers of the world. Thank you for trying to do that, even though it's impossible. Before you told me something awful, you'd say, "I know you are going to be angry to hear this... but I'm your mother. Other people won't care or dare. But I must tell you. Only mother will tell you."

I’m so thankful for your love. I always knew this. I took it for granted. Thank you so much for giving me so much love that I took it all for granted. I love you.

-Nan Yu