One day in May, I played Buddhist instrumental songs on YouTube for my mom to listen after her doctor advised to cut back on her television watch. Mom at her 70s tended to watch TV hours sitting in a close distance as I usually saw through the camera.
That was the first time she listened to that kind of music.
The morning that followed when I returned to her home, I asked if she loved that meditation music and if she wanted to listen to it again.
She said yes and that she enjoyed listening to it but she couldn’t control her tears while listening to that music the day earlier.
Out of the sudden, she bursted into tears and cried as a baby.
“I saw you were flying to Heaven. I asked ‘Why you left me for Heaven?”
“I flew to Heaven because you loved me less than you loved my younger brother.”
I tried to calm her down but she cried even more, which made me nervous.
I told her when I first heard the powerful chants sung by monks during a meditation course a few years ago, I also bursted into tears uncontrollably.
I shared that experience with one of the senior monks at the center. He said that was a natural response as my ancestors existed in my blood and they may have got emotional after hearing the Buddhism chants for the first time or they hadn’t heard the chants for a long time.
Mom was still crying and kept saying “Why you left me for Heaven?” over and over.
I started getting terrified when she said in her tears that when she was young, she saw two relatives die in her dreams, that became true a few months later.
What she just said rang true to me.
Some two weeks prior, I dreamed seeing my sole uncle’s wife passed away. I shared that dream with Mom without mentioning the aunt-in-law, just “someone on your side.”
I remembered that was Friday afternoon. Two days later, my uncle told me the wife of my mom’s cousin, whom I also called uncle, kicked her bucket on Saturday. He asked if I would like to join him to visit the funeral.
When I met that uncle in his wife’s last wake, I asked if his wife had got any serious disease. He said she passed out during dinner and was brought into hospital but it was too late.
Back to the talk with my mom – when she was sitting on a white plastic chair next to the TV set and I was kneeling trying to calm her down by saying I was still there and I always put my well-being first.
As an effort to understand what Mum said, I scheduled a call with her doctor. After listening the whole story, he said Mom had shown signs of cognitive decline, and what I shared was another sign. He also said if my Mum talked about seeing my flying to Heaven again, I could say “I fly to Heaven to prepare for your coming.”
This bit of advice did worry me, especially from someone who had a good command of Buddhism.
Since I have tried to find the meaning of what Mom said. I keep wondering if that means something to me.
Since I have seen myself crawling back to the recurring depression.
(*Note: This is the second post of my 1,999 posts I targeted. I have 1,998 entries to be completed before the deadline of December 20, 2030).
“Acceptance, tolerance, bravery, compassion. These are the things my mom taught me.”
– Lady Gaga
Lavender Papaya 