Saying Goodbye to You: Me, My Grandmother, and The Farewell

别告诉她—that’s the Mandarin name of director Lulu Wang’s 2019 film The Farewell. Literally translating to “don’t tell her”, the sentiment composes a key aspect of the movie. In her largely autobiographical feature film, Wang describes how protagonist Billi struggles with her family’s decision not to tell her grandmother about her terminal cancer diagnosis. 

“You want to tell Nai Nai the truth, because you’re afraid to take the responsibility for her,” her uncle explains. “We’re not telling Nai Nai because it's our duty to carry this emotional burden for her.”

This movie broke me when I watched it, porcelain-hitting-tile-floor shattered me. Frankly, I didn’t think I was capable of crying that much. Swearing to forget it and never rewatch, I was determined to never revisit this movie. 

That is, until my own Chinese grandmother was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer two years later. Little did I know that The Farewell would become some kind of awful teaser trailer for the upcoming few years.

Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit. My family didn’t lie to my grandmother about her cancer or stage a huge fake wedding to force a family reunion, as per Wang’s experience (though I really wouldn’t put the latter past us). Regardless, this duty of “carrying an emotional burden” quickly became a part of our daily lives in a way that I wasn’t prepared for. 

Growing up in a Filipino-Chinese family, I was no stranger to the idea of duty and obligation. There is a word for this idea in both languages: “孝顺”, or filial piety, describes one’s duty to their family whilst “utang ng loob” describes a debt of gratitude or obligation to another. Both phrases are hard to translate concisely—there are certain cultural complexities associated with them that are difficult for me to describe, or even fully understand. The idea of obligation is so deeply ingrained in each culture that it warrants its own untranslatable word. 

When my grandmother got sick, everyone was suddenly obliged to deal with their emotions privately. There is no compass to navigate the hazy world of preemptive grief. Her children didn’t want to worry her with the heaviness of their concern, throwing themselves into researching treatments and risk factors and diets. For them, carrying the weight of their own emotional burdens meant pushing down the conflicting feelings that bubble up with a caregiving role reversed. 

Even Guama herself didn’t want to feel like an imposition on anyone when she was sick. Never mind that she spent her entire adult life building businesses to provide for her family, or that she paid for her children’s education: she still insisted on paying for her own food and treatments once she moved in with us. Waving away our protests, she would press ang paos into my mom’s palms, never wanting us to bear her financial burdens. She hated feeling indebted to anyone—even her own family.

She hated feeling like an emotional burden, too. Regardless of how much we tried to hide it, she must have felt the weight of her illness on our family. 

There was one sleepless night where I lay awake for hours, worrying about her worsening condition. Though I made sure to greet her with a cheery smile when I visited her the next morning, I suppose my concern was plainly written on my face. Placing a hand over mine, skin chapped from months of chemo, her gaze softened as she looked up at me. 

“Don’t worry so much.” Her voice was low, the English words thick with her familiar Hokkien accent. “I am going to be okay.” 

I think that moment was when I finally understood The Farewell. As soon as the words left her mouth, shame instantly burned in my ribs. My grandmother lied to my face about her own condition, in a language not her own because I couldn’t understand our mother tongue. How could I be so selfish? How could I even call myself a good granddaughter? Wasn’t it my duty to carry this emotional burden for her? 

For a time in my life where our family was constantly together, the whole experience was oddly isolating. I know that’s selfish of me to say. There’s some kind of irony in how a deeply collectivist culture managed to exacerbate individual burden and obligation. How do we balance our individual obligations with our need for others’ support?

Wang doesn’t have a clear-cut answer to this question. Billi never does tell her grandmother about her diagnosis, though it’s something she clearly grapples with until the film’s bittersweet end. Ultimately, Wang concludes the movie ambiguously, never clarifying if Nai Nai passes on or whether the family made the right decision in keeping this life-changing secret. 

As for my answer, it’s similarly indecisive. I don’t think I’ll ever find a good answer on where the line is between one’s own needs and their obligation to their family. Regardless, I think that our burdens are usually better shared than carried alone.

That only became clearer to me after my grandmother had passed on. It was odd, at first: nobody wanted to talk to each other about their own loss. Our sadness felt like just another emotional burden to carry on our own. If everyone was grieving, how could we possibly bother others with our own problems? My family wasn’t even all seated together at her funeral—we were quite literally physically isolated from one another at the height of our grief.

It wasn’t until months later that I saw the value in sharing in that sadness. It started small: looking through old photos together, watching a home video or two. Saying that we missed her. Pointing out the things that reminded us of her, or—God forbid—crying a little. 

Unnatural as it was at first, relying on one another made it all a little easier. Grief became less isolating when there were other people to experience it with. I always was prone to thinking of things as black and white: sharing my sadness with others felt like I was forcing them to bear my emotional burdens for me. I think I can see now that that wasn’t necessarily the case. 

Looking back, maybe my grandmother’s comment shouldn’t have made me feel so ashamed. The eldest daughter in a big family, she understood just how much the concept of duty and burden could impact somebody’s life. At twenty, she gave up her dreams of a master’s degree in order to financially support her younger siblings. In her forties, she hustled hard to provide for her family, thanklessly picking up the slack at my grandfather’s hardware store. Her whole life was marked by this sense of obligation to others, and her family’s burdens were ones she had to carry on her own. 

She knew more than anyone that our burdens—emotional or otherwise—are better shared than shouldered alone. I don’t think she would have wished the same isolation she faced upon her own family. When she told me not to worry, I was so absorbed in my own guilt that I didn’t recognize her words for what they really were: her way of helping me to carry the kind of emotional burden she so distinctly understood.