Quiet Strength

Courage is a really strange trait. It can be fleeting or a permanent fixture. With certain people it can be very loud, such as when a person confronts his fears. In others it's more demure, less obvious - a quiet strength. Both are very much examples of courage. The line between a person who has courage and a person who doesn't is not some black and white affair with courage on one side and cowardice on the other. It's much more complex than that.

My mother doesn't seem like a person with much bravado. She's always very polite and careful, never a taker of too many risks. But she encompasses a sort of quiet strength that I admire greatly. I saw this especially when my grandfather passed away. When I saw her take in the news that afternoon, I thought she contained so much courage. It's very objective, whatever courage is. What might seem courageous to one person is hardly anything to another. In one sense, losing your parents is something every person goes through, and dealing with the pain might not seem all that special. On the other hand, something doesn't have to be rare or surprising to be evidence of courage. Courage is most often found commonplace. 

My parents both moved away from China after college, and after reaching stability, returned every year to see their parents. Both of my father's parents passed away before I had any real idea what death meant. When I was in sixth grade, my mother got a call that my grandfather had passed away. In a calm voice, my mother told me that he had passed away after suffering and being in ill health for a long time, and that she was relieved to finally see him released. She was glad that he had been able to live such a long and prosperous life. Her taking it so well really made an impression. She mourned him, definitely, but was mainly focused then on making sure her mother, my grandmother, was alright. My mother told me she was just glad my grandmother was still in good health, and would be far into the future. I didn't even know how to deal with the news at the time. I still wasn't mature enough to know how hard this must have been for her, but at that time I knew how strong she was and how much courage she must have had to bear the event. Back then and now, she really focuses on taking care of the living instead of being trapped in grief. She continues to call my grandmother every week and visit her every year in China. I hope that in the future I can be even a fraction of how strong she is.