The Yaya Covenant: My Story On The Eternal Bond of Love
Ten years ago, Mom and I were curled up together on the couch watching the movie all our friends were buzzing about: My Big Fat Greek Wedding. As we followed the hilarious wedding plans of the Portokaloses, whom our tiny three-person family found surprisingly relatable, Mom turned to me with a big smile and sparkling eyes, and said, “I have two proposals for you.” I sat up and returned her gaze with curiosity. “I propose that, someday, we build a big three-generation family, just like in this movie, and I’ll have all your children call me Yaya. None of this ‘Grandma’ nonsense!” Hearing this come from a small, classy French woman was a bit preposterous, and I loved her for it. We shook hands, and knew we’d make good on our promise; however, I never expected our “Yaya Covenant” to happen in the way it did.
October 28, 2011, 11:00 p.m. After one week of her body plummeting into shutdown mode, the fate which we knew would come, but never expected to come so soon, came. I knelt by Mom’s bedside. At this point, she had already lost consciousness. Her last signs of life could only be found in the shallow rise and fall of her cancer-ridden lungs and the faint but still-present beat of her pulse. I held her left hand with both of mine, determined to show her, in whatever capacity she could still detect, that I would not let her make this journey alone. I prayed desperately for God to release her from her pain, but the daughter in me clung to that hand, that pulse, for as long as I could.
Around 11:50 p.m. God carried her home. That steady pulse, representative of her steady loving heart, faded away. I took a few moments alone to study her and found myself caressing her like a young child just beginning to learn about the human body. I studied her face, her hair, her feet, and her beautifully careworn hands; I always loved those hands—the protruding veins that looked like faint blue henna artwork, the soft skin punctuated by callouses from years of quiet service, the forearms that, though slight in build, had guided me with from birth to young adulthood with such strength. I could scarcely fathom that those hands, those arms, this body, would never move of its own accord again.
Three short months after Mom’s ascension into Heaven, I found myself in front of an ultrasound machine watching a tiny but steady light flashing on the screen—a pulse, but not my own. It was one that I hadn’t planned to see for several more years. It was my seven-week-old baby’s pulse, in my womb, becoming stronger and stronger with each beat. In such a short span of time, so much was changing. One precious life had slipped through my fingers, while another had begun to grow inside me. I began to wonder: how could I possibly deal with letting go of my parent, while becoming a parent myself?
In this crazy life, we cling to that which we can readily understand. Many times, the understandable is the corporeal—that which we can see, touch, and know concretely. Our understanding of the family is first cultivated in the corporeal—the sensory information we gather, be it seeing our mother’s smile or changing our child’s diaper, contributes to a cycle we can feel safe to be a part of. So, the question becomes how to maintain that safe, loving three-generation family experience across two different realms of existence? How can we, who yearn for what we can touch, connect ourselves and those we love to those we can’t touch?
For many years, Mom and I proudly prepared an extra place at the dinner table for my Dad, who passed away over twenty years ago. That small gesture of welcoming him to our table made us feel closer to him. Once Mom passed on, though, the tradition lost its warmth, and I let it go. As the weeks passed, a dark loneliness settled in, and I struggled to feel any contact with Mom. Sometimes well-meaning elders would ask me, “Have you had any spiritual experiences with her yet?” and I would feel so judged, wondering if stopping our dinner-table tradition had been a mistake. Eventually I came to a realization. Though I couldn’t feel Mom’s presence, I did have this gut feeling that she wasn’t looking for a relationship filled with empty rituals. She wanted something dynamic and positive, just as when she was here on Earth. This led me to choose to let go of the rituals and traditions that no longer resonated with me.
As my baby grows and prepares for life, my relationship with him grows, too. I feel him testing out his body and exploring the confines of my belly, and I smile as my mind wanders, imagining what sort of person he will be and what sort of person he will ask me to be. Then it hits me; 24 years ago, Mom was going through the same experience with me in her belly. It’s a deep connection, like holding hands with her in a moment of shared understanding. I begin to realize that Mom is constantly trying to reach out to me, and that by letting go of empty rituals and by quieting my heart, she now has space to enter my life.
My dad’s sister once remarked that my writing style is eerily similar to that of my dad. Comments like this are so precious to me, because he passed away before I could ever get to know him; so, in a way, I have gotten to know Dad by getting to know myself. Likewise, though I haven’t even met my son yet, I am certain that he will get to know his Yaya because, just as my Dad lives on in me, somewhere in my son’s character lies a trace of his Yaya, waiting for him to discover it.
I’ve been learning that this process isn’t limited to lineal relationships. Trusting my in-laws has recently become challenging, because I often felt that they didn’t understand the extent of my grief. It was during this painful season that I spent some time with my mother-in-law. We decided to go to a Korean spa, hoping the environment of physical openness would inspire an openness of the heart. After an awkward hour in the tubs, my mother-in-law lay resting, and as I looked over at her, I suddenly saw Mom’s hand and forearm superimposed onto hers. It was one of those moments where I truly could not believe my eyes—but there it was. I later realized that Mom was trying to reach me in a way she knew I’d understand. It was as if she were whispering, “Take this woman’s hand. These may not be the same hands you held as I ascended, but they’re good hands. She may not look or feel or sound the same, but she is a mother like me. Her spirit is strong, and she is someone in whom my spirit can dwell. Take her hand; you’ll find me there.” That moment helped me decide to join my in-laws in Switzerland, and start this new chapter of my life as a united three-generation family.
Bridging the gap between the physical and spiritual worlds has been the biggest challenge of my life, and the conflicting emotions of letting one life go while welcoming another is hard to balance. When I quiet myself, though, and notice the incorporeal within the corporeal, something changes in me; I feel extrasensory. Like getting a backstage pass into God’s heart, I see so much more, and appreciate so much more. My future—one shared with my parents and my children—is now something I welcome with open arms.