JiuLee Chan

I wanted to be the one to write the obituary notice for Jiu Lee Chan, my mother. It seemed just the facts, she lived, she died, she left a loving family, did not help us know her better. So I wrote this, a story.

If pressed to choose one word for my mother Jiu Lee Chan, I would say she was an “innocent”, childlike and naïve in many ways, simple, pleasant and happy. And yet she was wise in so many ways, and in retrospect she was so right about a lot of things. So strong, but flexible like the willow, a match for my dad, strong but stubborn and unyielding like the oak. She harbored an inscrutable, unknowable side, owing to her discomfort with English, her fourth maybe fifth language. Mom was born and raised in Japan to Shanghainese parents during turbulent times. I finally figured out that her brain worked in Japanese and all along she was translating everything in her mind. When the family moved to a picture-perfect suburban neighborhood in 1960, my parents did everything to assimilate, to the point of using only English with us. My brothers and I have no connection with our Asian ethnicity, neither Chinese nor Japanese. Today I say more’s the pity.

Jiu Lee’s life was dedicated to family, home and work. She and my dad slaved long and hard to build the laundry and dry cleaning business that would give the family solid support and allow the children to pursue their paths. She couldn’t really think about herself. Mom had few close friends, having left behind for the first time her own family and the friends of her youth when she came to America with a handsome US serviceman husband Kai Ham and a baby in arms (me). At first living on an Army base, then in the back of a Chinese laundry, isolated and homesick beyond belief, she had no close neighbors to speak of. My dad stayed in touch with Army buddies. So there was some connection with treasured ones like Uncle Albert and Auntie Barbara, and our families grew and grew up together in friendly acquaintance. There was no leisure time, no pastimes, no one who could speak with her as she thought, in Japanese.

Things got better, I imagine, in the suburbs. By then there were two more kids (my brothers). She had learned to drive. Became a U.S. citizen. We had great neighbors, Lenny and Cathy and their two girls and others. But still her life centered on family, home and work.

After my dad passed away, now 25 years ago, mom retired. In the home she and dad built and shared in Manahawkin for too few years she at last had time, energy and permission to think about herself. At times the Atlantic City casinos beckoned. She loved hanging with the ladies, especially with her pal Minnie, at the Senior Center, eating donuts and dancing the Achy Breaky. Their bus excursions and parties in her eyes were epic, legendary even. She collected bling and trolls and mugs. Mom began to crochet like a crazy person, a craft she learned from her sisters while hiding out in bomb shelters. I sent her bushels of her favorite yarns, which now have become SABLE (stash acquisition beyond life expectancy). How she loved the colors. Her crocheted FO’s (finished objects), particularly the mass amounts she produced during COVID enforced isolation, have filled her home to where you almost cannot walk without bumping into boxes, bags, heaps of multicolored shawls, scarves, hats and whatnot. I tried to get her to reduce the clutter, but she could not bear to part with any of it. Anyone need a hat? Her other pastime was TV, all the time. And when she couldn’t sleep there was Sudoku, but only the easy ones.

Jiu Lee is survived by her three children, Doris, Danny and his wife Kathi, and Dale and wife Joannie. There are three grandsons, my sons Harry and Nick with his wife Mimi, and Dale’s son Douglas with Ivy. Plus there are three great-grand kids, Nick and Mimi’s two daughters Daphne and Phoebe and Douglas and Ivy’s son Derek. Don’t worry, I sometimes have trouble keeping track and we really aren’t that many.

Mom was eager to get where she needed to go. In her belief, an individual and personal one, that would be to my father’s side, taking her place in the pantheon of our ancestors and on to the next cycle. Who knows. If we look and are lucky we may see among us flashes of her bright, beaming smile, or hear snatches of the Japanese nursery songs she sang, mostly tunelessly, to us as babies. Thank you for reading and sharing in Jiu Lee’s story. May your loved ones pass as comfortably and serenely as she did.

To leave fond memories and online condolences for JiuLee's family, please visit www.shinnfuneralhome.com