My mother died yesterday morning at the age of 64.

At her request, there will be no services, but contributions to the American Cancer Society or the Formosan Association for Public Affairs are encouraged.

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When I phoned her older sister earlier tonight, I found out that my grandmother passed away last year. I desperately wish Mom hadn't kept that news from me, but I'm guessing she didn't want to acknowledge it herself.

This was true about her own impending death as well; even though she'd been referred to hospice six weeks ago, she was in complete denial about her condition until late Thursday night, and she kept from all her friends and the rest of the family how sick she really was (which is why I haven't openly mentioned her illness here until now, and which is making the task of notifying people utterly wrenching, since they'd had no idea the end was so near).

I am so grateful to the hospice and hospital staffs for helping me see to her needs these last two weeks, to the friends and neighbors who tried to help her throughout her illness (the cancer was diagnosed last summer), and to my own circles of support (whether I confided in you or not about this specific matter, you being my friend and/or reader helped, truly: writing to you here and elsewhere has been both a pleasure and a solace, and never more so than now).

Please take good care of yourselves -- and please don't hesitate to continue sharing your joys with me as they appear. There is plenty of room in my life for laughter and tears to co-exist -- and even if I wanted to keep them separate, the fates are in constant collusion with my sense of humor. There was defrosting a chicken to make broth for Mom...and belatedly realizing that it was a Buddhist-butchered chicken with its head still attached, which was disconcerting. There was coming back from the hospital to discover bridal shower bingo pages all over my mom's front yard (some dogs having gotten frisky with a neighbor's trash). There was the sheer extended Abbott-and-Costellian difficulty of conveying my contact information to a non-English-speaking aunt now determined to visit me. There was the night nurse noting that my mother's feet were still ticklish even though they were already gray (from her body shutting down). There have been the neighbors' descriptions of my mom's floppy straw gardening hat. There was helping an aide tape a too-bulky bed-pad over the obnoxiously-loud-but-unadjustable intercom speaker, both of us quietly but helplessly cracking up over how stupid it looked. Even finding out about grandma -- I mean, that's something I would do to a character in a story, except that something that twisted wouldn't be believable, which makes me feel a bit like someone who's sleepwalked into a Faulkner novel by mistake.

And so on, and on we go.