I wish I had never needed to write that post.

I wish I had never needed to write that post.

After I shared that my grandmother has cancer, my page suddenly took off. Nearly 250,000 impressions across my posts in seven days.
So many of you reached out to comfort me. Thank you. Your kindness has made me feel less alone.

But I would rather have no attention at all and a healthy grandmother.

It’s 12:50 a.m. I’m still crying, and I can’t sleep.

Let me tell you about her.

My grandmother was born in 1949, the same year the People’s Republic of China was founded. She is 77.

She married young. My grandfather had a terrible temper, and neither of them would back down. Their arguments often turned violent, sometimes involving kitchen knives. Her life was hard long before I was born.

When my mother had me, my grandmother came to help raise me. She became my primary caregiver.

I was a child who wouldn’t eat. She fed me one mouthful at a time, carrying me on her back up the stairs, one step after another, coaxing me to take another bite. She kept patiently feeding me until I started elementary school.

Later, my grandfather had a stroke. He was bedridden, unable to move anything but his eyes.
She cared for him for years—turning him over in bed, washing his body, doing it all again and again.

After he died, she lived alone. Our family didn’t need her to earn money, but she still went out to work. Then she would press the money she earned into my hands.

This July, her abdominal pain became unbearable. She went to the hospital.
Advanced liver cancer.

The doctors told us they had no treatment that could cure her. The cancer was progressing rapidly, and they couldn’t tell us how much time she had left.

I keep thinking about how hard she has worked all her life. How much of it she spent looking after other people.

I wanted her to have time to rest. To enjoy life without always having someone to feed, someone to wash, or another job to do.
I wanted these years to be her turn to be looked after.

Instead, she is suffering, and we don’t know how much time is left.

That is what I can’t stop crying about tonight. Not just the thought of losing her, but the thought that she has endured so much and still hasn’t had enough time to simply enjoy her life.

Thank you for reading my post. Thank you for caring about someone you have never met.

I just wish you could have met her through a different story.

One where I was telling you how happy she was—not how afraid I am of losing her.