Death of a chapter

@yingers11
2 min readMar 17, 2022
We baked these for our mother’s CNY project.

Our absence from home signifies the death of a chapter to my mother.

When she was lamenting the lack of warm bodies and complaining about my zero progress at getting roommates for her, she wasn’t expecting me to show up with a pair of seemingly perfect mother-and-daughter tenants on the first try.

And she decided to make things difficult (and weird) for them:

  • Squeezing the 17-year-old’s hands for a few minutes (if it were me, I’d shake off this weird Auntie whom I’ve just met)
  • Denying them of their washing machine (my fantastic friend, the property agent who found this pair of tenants, said that it’s preferred for tenants to come with their washing machine but)
  • Talking about how they shouldn’t mistreat our cats (essentially assuming that they will mistreat them)

She also denied them the choice of rooms.

We’ve had two rooms up for lease. My mother insisted they take my brother’s because she’s still grieving the loss of her daughter and still harbouring hope for her return.

That daughter is me.

I’m alive.

I’m just married and have moved out to #adult.

And yet, we managed to close the deal. I wasn’t expecting this to be such a breeze. We’ve met an extremely accommodating pair who didn’t even negotiate the rental and were happy to move in within the next two weeks.

After they left, my mother expressed – at the top of her lungs – that she was sad that her children no longer wanted her.

I sighed and left her to my brother to pamper. I’ve taken too much of these baseless rants and rambles. All we’ve done is to find her company, and now that we did on the first try, she’s miserable.

She’ll never be happy simply because she refuses to.

Her happiness can only be built on her terms, which can only look like her son and daughter staying with her till death do us part. And that her son and daughter remain single until her end.

Even if those circumstances were met, I’m positive that she’ll find something else to be negative about. My dead father is always the giving well that constantly quenches her thirst for melancholy and pity. That’s an easy material for her.

I love my mother. And I hope she’ll change herself.

Perhaps this pair of mother-and-daughter tenants can catalyse that change.

--

--

@yingers11

I materialise into existence only when blots of ink flow and beads of perspiration drip.