The podcast What You Don’t Know by Lulu Wang describes a difficult situation in which Lulu’s grandmother is diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and her family decides to lie to the grandmother. The family throws this big fake wedding as a way to say goodbye to their grandmother. It was hard for everyone to keep their mouths shut about the cancer, but they succeeded and many family members believe that the reason why the grandmother didn’t die was because they “rinsed out her misfortune with joy.” I don’t know if I necessarily believe that, but that’s what they think. I can relate to Lulu’s situation because there was a time where I had to tell my best friend a difficult truth that I knew was going to end our friendship.
Did you agree with the family's choice to deceive Wang's grandmother? I’m at a crossroads with the whole situation. When I first started listening to the podcast I thought that Lulu’s family was wrong for lying to their grandmother. If I were in Lulu’s position I would defy my mother and tell my grandmother. I was adamant about their grandmother knowing that she had stage 4 lung cancer. I put myself in Lulu’s grandmother’s shoes and I know if I had stage 4 lung cancer I’d want to know and I’d most definitely want treatment. Then, as the podcast went on, I thought it was even worse that they were staging this fake wedding just to avoid telling her she had cancer. When it came time to actually have the “wedding” I heard Lulu’s grandmother having a good time, she was happy and that’s when my mood started to shift. Yes, Lulu’s grandmother did have the right to know she had cancer, but after the wedding I took into consideration the amount of worry it would cause her. I thought about my grandmother. I wouldn’t want her to be in her 80’s and being worried about dying from cancer and how she’s going to pay for treatment or how long she has left. I wouldn’t want to see my grandmother like that, I’d want to see her enjoying the time she has left. At the end of the podcast Lulu explains that her grandmother lived far long after her cancer diagnosis and her family believes there’s many reasons for her staying alive. Lulu’s grant aunt, Little Nainai believes that she lived longer because they “washed away her misfortune with joy.” At first I thought “no no no that’s weird it doesn’t work that way.” But thinking about it maybe it does work that way. Being American I feel that we’re raised to take things in a logical sense, we don’t really have any old legends of “washing away misfortune with joy” or anything like that. If someone who's close to us has cancer or if we ourselves have cancer we’d automatically find out what we needed to do treat it. The Chinese are different in that way and I think sometimes it’s a good thing to look at things in a spiritual sense instead of a physical being sense. When have you made an important choice to tell someone a difficult truth or you made an important choice to tell a lie that had a major impact on you and/or someone else? A time I had to make a choice to tell someone a difficult truth is when I had to tell my best-friend that we couldn’t be friends anymore due to her toxic personality. I met my best friend in the 8th grade, we connected the second we met each other. We had similar personalities and interests because of this we did everything together. I was constantly at her house or she was constantly at time. I don’t think there’s a time we weren’t together. Now, you should probably know at the time she was my only friend. I wasn't very social when I was younger and I’m not very social now, but she just got me I felt comfortable around her. I told her everything she knew me like the back of her hand. As I started my first year in high school I decided I was going to try my best to meet new people and make new friends. My best friend didn’t like that very much. I was never an athletic kid, I hated gym with everything I had I could never do the activities right because I had no interest. Luckily for me there was another girl exactly like me in my gym class and we failed at doing the physical exercises together. I’d see my gym buddy (as I called her) in the hallways and of course I’d be walking with my best friend. I would wave to my gym buddy and say hello just to be nice I know I’d want her to do the same for me, I thought of it as respectful. My best friend didn’t appreciate me waving to my gym buddy at all. She walked away from me very angrily and she ignored me for a whole week. I was so confused I didn’t understand why she was ignoring me or what I did. I tried asking her but she said “she didn’t want to talk about it” and that “I should know.” She eventually got over it. I decided I didn’t want to lose her so I stopped making new friends and I kept my friendship with my gym buddy secret. For the rest of my freshman and sophomore year things went smooth sailing, we were back to normal. Then in October of my junior year I went to a football game with another one of my friends and I slept over at her house. I had posted pictures of us at the game on my snapchat story and my best friend was again, not happy. She did the same thing she did when I waved to my gym buddy, she ignored me and never talked to me about it. I decided this was enough. She’s a junior in high school and she’s dictating who I get to be friends with and I had enough. I thought “last I checked this is America I can be friends with whoever I want.” I never told her she couldn’t be friends with any of her other friends, but she could do it to me? I don’t think so. I made the big decision to facetime her and say “hey I appreciate you being my friend for the past couple years but, you’re very controlling and I can’t deal with that anymore so I think it’s best we stop being friends.” She wasn’t mad or anything, she just said “ok.” That was it and I have yet to regret that decision.
1 Comment
Sabatino
2/14/2018 11:56:49 am
Thanks for sharing this post. Your argumentative response illustrates how you considered multiple perspectives as part of your own process of deciding whether or not the family made the right decision to lie to the grandmother. I appreciated how you discussed both American and Chinese cultures—and how these cultural influences would impact a person’s decision to tell or not to tell a loved one about a serious health issue.
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Gabrielle Heck
This blog is to express my thoughts and options on specific topics. Archives
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