NONGRATANA “NANCY” SANTAT
JUNE 1, 1946- DECEMBER 22, 2025
“I wanted four kids,” my mother once told me, “but because I got sick I could only have you, so you get all of my attention.”
Nongratana Anaman was born June 1, 1946. She was the oldest of six kids. They were a poor family who lived in a house they built with their own two hands on the land of Buddhist monks who rented them some space on their property. Her father left when she was twelve and her mother (my grandmother) had to work as a housekeeper to support the family, which left my mother in the precarious position of having to raise her five siblings. She taught herself how to make their school outfits by unstitching clothes and copying the fabric patterns. She would cook the meals, help her mother with errands, and made sure all her brothers and sisters got to school on time. This made them extremely close as a family and she looked after everyone with an intense responsibility much like the captain of a ship. She would keep the constant waves of flirting boys at a distance because she had no time for relationships and they were, as she would tell me in her own words, “dumb.”
She attended nursing school in Bangkok, Thailand where she wore one inch elevator heeled shoes because there was a five foot height requirement to be a nurse. That is where she met my father who was studying to become doctor. He was so smitten with her that he would wander into the pediatric unit to do rounds where she was working despite the fact that the department was all the way on the other side of the hospital.
He wasn’t even a pediatrician.
The tipping point in their relationship came when they both had to do a night shift in the Emergency room. A man checked into the ER in extreme pain and my father prescribed an extremely high dose of pain medication. Three times stronger than what he was supposed to give. Realizing this dosage error my mom looked at him and asked, “Are you SURE you want to give that much to the patient?”
My father, looking completely flustered and asked, “Uh, do you think that’s too much?”
“Well, YOU’RE the doctor.” my mom replied.
Not wanting to look incompetent, my dad proceeded to give the excessive pain med dosage and the patient didn’t make a sound for the rest of the night.
That allowed them to spend the rest of the evening getting to know one another.
The next morning my father came back to her with a very concerned look in his face and asked my mother, “Uh, just curious, is the patient still alive?”
“He’s fine.” she replied amusingly.
My mother admitted to me that it was at that moment she liked my father because she could read his face like a book and he was completely incapable of lying and that there was just a “dumb innocence” about him.
On their first date, my mother insisted on bringing a friend because she hated the arrogance of doctors and wanted to make him feel like he had to “earn it.” Eventually, she told me that she fell in love with my father because he proved to be a good and honest man who would never leave her like her father did.
My father came to Brooklyn, NY in 1968 to do his medical residency and my mom followed a year later so she could make money to send back to her family to provide financial support. It was with the intent that they would spend a few years in America, move back home, get married, and start a family. She dreamed of a red dress that my grandmother had for her to one day have a nice big wedding back in Thailand, but due to a petty circumstance with the Thai medical board, they would not to return to Thailand and stay in the US for the rest of their lives. She wouldn’t see her family for another twenty years, and the wedding she dreamed about had instead turned into a small civil ceremony at the Brooklyn city hall with one friend as a witness.
Her life was mostly a life of health and medical problems.
Right after I was born she was diagnosed with Lupus, an autoimmune disease where the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissues and organs causing inflammation which causes fatigue, joint pain, fever, and many other symptoms. Despite her constant fatigue she cooked and cleaned the house, took me to school, sewed me Halloween outfits, and chauffeured me to lots of extracurricular events like karate, baseball, and soccer. Her small five foot frame drove a huge brown Ford Aerostar minivan having to sit on a pillow so she could see over the steering wheel. Friends would ask, “Why does someone so tiny have to drive a car so big?”
My mother would grin and charmingly joke, “Because if I ever get into a car accident, I won’t be the one who dies.” and everyone would burst out in laughter.
She was half joking.
She was remarkably kind to everyone. We once dropped our car off at a local auto garage to get an oil change. She and I walked to a grocery store to return with ice cream for an entire garage full of auto mechanics who would be flabbergasted by her generosity. Over the years they would cheer her name whenever she entered the service yard. They even taught her how to Hotwire an ’82 Subaru which she then taught me. She would whisper in my ear, “Always be good to people.”
I definitely got my people skills from her.
Lupus was a hard disease to live with and often times it could sour her mood due to the pain which I felt she was entitled to at times. “I wish I was dead.” she would miserably groan on tough days, which felt far too often for any normal person, but it was also inspiring in a way, to see someone grit their way through life in pain. It made all my problems seem minor in comparison. I’d be sad seeing other moms who were happy and healthy living out their days completely carefree and normal. Meanwhile, my mom would have every inch of her body draped under long sleeve clothing standing alone under a tree on the far side of a field at a AYSO youth soccer match so she could watch me play. Life had dealt her a bad hand. As a result I was a total mama’s boy. I never got into trouble, I always wanted to please her, and I always tried to make her laugh. I helped her cook and clean and cared for her when she wasn’t feeling well. I just didn’t want to complicate her life any more than it already was.
Lupus wasn’t her only health issue. She survived breast cancer, and even a “Widowmaker” heart attack. The Summer I graduated from college she had a massive relapse of her lupus which caused her to go deaf in her left ear for the rest of her life. She was left with a constant ringing due to the dead nerves which drove her mad until many moths later when her brain eventually processed it as white noise. It felt as if death was knocking on her door all throughout her life, and she resisted each time like a Terminator sitting up off the ground and walking through a wall of fire.
She was the toughest person I knew.
It’s why I work as hard as I do.
She took solace in growing plants. There wasn’t a single plant she couldn’t grow or restore back to full health. Our backyard was full of thriving orchids which normally would have no business growing in the dry mild climate. I once brought back a bonsai tree from my college dorm that was at the brink of death and a few months later it was so healthy and green you couldn’t even tell it was the same plant.
Bringing life to the world when all she could do was endure a life of pain seemed poetic to me.
We once had a huge ficus tree which grew in our back yard which I had the miserable experience of pruning from time to time with a tiny hand saw. She would point at a branch with a tiny bamboo pole to indicate which branch she wanted sawed off. The tree grew out of control. It uprooted the ground and would overtake other nearby plants. I would lop off entire limbs thinking the work would be over, only to realize that six months later it had grown even bigger. I cursed the tree for the frustrating “hard work” lesson it gave me but my mother admired it. “I wish I was this tree.” she once told me, “It’s so strong. We keep cutting it down but it just gets stronger.”
We decided to cut the tree down just before I headed off to college because it was just too much work for my parents to handle on their own. I gleefully hacked off all 20 feet if its limbs and just before I was about to cut into the trunk she stopped me, “Leave the trunk,” she said. “It can still be useful.”
As a grandparent she loved spoiling her two grandsons often bringing a Hot Wheel car every week she visited. She handed out money to them every birthday, holiday, and whatever random occasion, which we all referred to as “Yāy-Bucks” (Yāy being the Thai word for Grandma) She would comment about their haircuts and asked if they had girlfriends and encouraged them to constantly eat much like all grandmothers do. Her love was boundless and she took pleasure in seeing what started as a family of three grow into something more.
After my father died it was as if her soul was ripped out of her heart. His dying wish was that we buy a large house for her to move in with us so we could care for her and keep her company. When I approached her with the idea she grumpily answered, “It’s your dad’s money. He can do whatever he wants with it.”
When the awkward moment came to propose that she move in with us he resisted with a defiant, “No one asked me if I wanted to move in with you!”
It was a fair point but there were some concerns. At this moment in life she was 76. Her body was frail and her cardiologist told me she shouldn’t be living by herself. Her fingers and spine were curled and mangled by all the years of Prednisone steroids she had been taking for her Lupus which leeched the calcium from her bones for over 45 years. She had osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, a pacemaker, one dead ear, and congestive heart failure with her heart operating at 45%, and one very stubborn spirit. Her body was in constant pain and life kept trying to kick her down but she refused to budge.
“The doctor said you shouldn’t be living alone”
“They always say that kind of stuff.” she retorted.
“Fine. You’re still my mom, and I’m not gonna argue with you because we’re both adults and you’re entitled to your own choices despite my concerns. Just promise me you wear a Life Alert necklace.”
For two years she struggled to keep her house in order. Every visit I slowly watched the house fall slightly more into disarray. She was getting slower, more frail, crankier. I called every day to make sure she was alert and okay but it was sometimes hard to get a hold of her with her one dead ear. She never touched a computer and had no idea how to use streaming services or apps. I paid her bills because she refused to go online. She did however concede on a few things when I taught her to send me her very first text image at the ripe young age of 76. It was filled with typos because her curled fingers could barely touch the keypad.
I was extremely proud.
In the third year of her living alone in the house I received a text from a family friend while attending the Eisner Awards at San Diego Comic Con.
“Your mother is in the hospital.” the text read.
I immediately left the ceremony and drove three and a half hours straight to the hospital. It was Pneumonia and her congestive heart failure had worsened. Her heart was now operating at 15%.
The cardiologist took me aside, “She has maybe 3 to 4 months left. I would recommend you get her affairs in order.”
I moved her into a wonderful assisted living home 15 minutes away from our family. Despite her rageful defiance being forced against her will to live in a home with other old people was not how she wanted to spend her remaining years. “You want to put me in an old person home so you can just forget me and die?!”
I finally put my foot down and insisted she could no longer life on her own terms.
The minute she moved in she instantly loved the place.
“This place is like a fancy hotel!” she gasped.
“Of course it is. Did you think I was gonna put you in a cage, mom?”
They cooked for her, cleaned her room weekly, and she made lots of new friends. But the best part was that she magically transformed back into the happy loving people person I remembered her to be when I was as a kid. She was joking, and gossiping with her friends in the cafeteria. She ate blueberry pie and watched old black and white movies in her room.
For the first time in 45 years she seemed at peace.
Three months miraculously turned into fifteen and then one day during a weekly visit she could just tell her body was on a decline.
“If I didn’t move here I would have died a long time ago.”
“All I ever wanted was for you to not have to do anything for yourself anymore. Life has been very hard on you and you deserve to rest.”
“Buddha says I would live a life of suffering so that you could have a a good life.”
“Well, you always told me you wanted four kids and you just had me. Out of the four kids you wished for I wanted to make sure you got the best one.”
“I definitely did.” she grinned, ‘I’m so proud of how your life turned out, and Leah, and the kids. I’m famous here! I told everyone about how you met the President!”
“You deserve it, mom.”
“Well… I think my three months might finally be up.”
One month later she was gone.
It was peaceful.
Pain free.
In her sleep.
She left this world the way everyone could hope for.
Life finally dealt her a good hand.