Last night, as I was contemplating and gathering my thoughts, I was disrupted by my mom telling her sister in the next room about putting money into her retirement fund. “When can I take it out?” She kept asking as if all she cared about was spending the money, not saving it.

“When you’re 60,” my mom said and then showed her a notebook with numbers and figures of the amount saved.

“If you put all the money into the account, how will I go to Japan in March?” My aunt asked.

Sitting in the next room, I felt like if my aunt was given reins of her money, she would had spent it all many moons ago. I know because she used to take my cousins out for expensive meals when they were in China. I know it’s wrong to take advantage but it’s not really fair when my cousins got to spend her money and I didn’t.

A few days ago, she came downstairs at dinner and told my mom she’s ill. I missed the conversation because I was out in the garden. When I returned, my mom asked me about my aunt’s medical insurance.

“Why does she suddenly need it?” I asked because I had been trying to convince my aunt to get an annual checkup all last year. My aunt tilted her neck toward me and instantly, I saw the lump sticking out of the right side of her neck. “Goiter?” I said. My mom just shrugged.

She recently got new health insurance through her work and never received the new insurance card. Suddenly, the responsibility fell to me to make sure she has an insurance card. Just a day before the new year, I had to do something similar for my cousin even though he had no problem communicating.

Meanwhile, my aunt’s mentality of C’est la vie (such is life, you live, you die), which is becoming very annoying because she seems to no longer care about anything except to have fun and her happiness. Normally, I would be all for it, except she’s pushing all the responsible stuff to my mom, who, in turn, is pushing them to me and that’s not okay.

I don’t want to have to keep track of the family’s insurance policies and I certainly don’t want to have to keep track of the information of any of the family members. They are adults and should keep track of their own life.