As I was writing this, I tried my best to think of the three most appropriate words I could use to describe my grandmother, and the three that I kept coming back to were: perseverance, selflessness and family. While I don’t think that all the nuances of my grandmother can be reduced down to only three traits, I felt that these three best represented the most prominent aspects of her character.
From speaking to my mom, and from reading about grandma’s history these past few days, it is clear that my grandmother was an extremely perseverant woman. She, along with my grandfather, raised nine children in Hong Kong. However, not content with the opportunities available to them, she moved her family to Toronto to seek a better future. She, along with her family, left everything and everyone they knew behind in order to build for themselves a better life. The amount of courage and perseverance that such a change would require is almost unfathomable to me, as I, in large part thanks to her will and determination, had the benefit of being born and raised in Toronto.
However, such a drastic move could not have been possible were it not for her selflessness. She taught her children and her grandchildren true selflessness, not through empty talk, but rather, through example. And it was through this willingness to put the needs of her family before her own, that her children were able to adapt as well as they did to life in a foreign country. One instance of her selflessness which I experienced first-hand was whenever I would visit her when she was sick, the first thing she would ask was always: “how are you and your brother doing”. That in itself speaks to her selfless character, and perhaps even more so, her love for her family.
And that ties back to the third word that I would use to describe my grandmother, that word being “Family”. My grandmother cared deeply about family, and she was always at her happiest when the family was together. Thinking back, despite her sickness, her spirits always seemed to be lifted around Christmas time, when the whole family would convene together to celebrate the holidays at her house.
On the whole, when we talk about someone’s legacy, we often talk about what someone leaves behind. In the case of my grandmother, her legacy is her family. Her children, her grandchildren and her great grandchildren are what she left behind. Therefore, it will be my goal to carry on her legacy as best I can, trough continuing to strive to live up to the values that she represented.
