Ugh, China, Again

I just got an email from my mother telling me that my Chinese grandmother passed away about an hour and a half ago. She was 90 years old and would have been 91 in October. We knew that my grandmother's health had recently taken a turn for the worse, and my mom had just purchased a ticket to go to China next week to see her. I don't really know what's going to happen with that now.

Anyway, the reason for this update is because I have a strong suspicion that my grandmother could have lived on for quite a while with some holistic treatment such as acupuncture or acupressure. Her symptoms were spine pain and difficulty talking, both of which can be successfully addressed with traditional Chinese medicine. Unfortunately, the relatives who live with her are cursed with a typical Chinese fatalistic attitude. Their feeling was that if it's her time to die, it's her time to die. I'm certainly not advocating for keeping someone alive in a reduced and painful state--not at all. My point is that she was uncomfortable and in pain and they didn't even bother to fucking do anything about it. It's not like we wanted them to put her in the hospital and get a tube down her throat and machines everywhere. We just wanted to see if we could get her back to a level of health where she could move around and get out of bed. My grandmother had a health scare a couple of years ago that was similar, back pain and inability to eat/talk and once again my #3 uncle did jack shit about it. My mom had to call her niece who is a nurse and make the niece's boyfriend (who is a doctor in Shenzhen) bring an IV to the house and hook up my grandmother. Luckily my grandmother recovered from that.

I'm pissed because I feel like this was a waste. My grandmother lived through all the shit that China put her through in the last century, period of warlordism in the 20's, the Nationalists and the Japanese invasion in the 30's, the Communists in the 40's and 50's and then all that additional shit like famines, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, etc. She had 7 children. She and her husband (and 1st son) WALKED to Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution because there was no food or work in the village. My grandfather worked as coolie on the docks for a while and then they fucking WALKED back to our village. This village is about 350 kilometers from Hong Kong. She survived all of this against the odds and now she's dead because her stupid fatalistic son wouldn't get off his ass to try to do anything about it.

I was so upset when I got the news from my mom that I went and cried in the ladies room, which was a mini-fatwa in itself because the cleaning lady was mopping the floor and had blocked off the door. There wasn't anywhere else for me to cry on our floor, however, so I just barged in and sat in the 1st stall that has a nice, roomy feel and let it out. The cleaning lady gave me a really dirty look, too. But, come on, lady, it's business hours! Please don't block off the bathroom when there's a time that people will come in! I know she comes in early; I've seen her in there around 7am so she could have done it then. For the first time, though, I was glad that South Africa is obsessed with those European-style toilet rooms, not stalls, You can totally block off from the world in there.