What I remember¹from growing up with you

 

You could peel the skin of a fruit with your knife in just one go. Fuji apples, fuyu persimmons, kent mangos, guavas, the fruits varied depending on what was in season growing in our backyard or whatever you got at Costco. There was always a long ribbon of peel on the table as you diced the fruits into a plastic bowl for me.  You would always cut two kinds of fruit and tell me to eat the least sweet one first, or else it’ll taste bitter. The sweeter fruit was the last thing I eat before I brush my teeth at night.

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I was 8 when I started stringing together all the ways to say g’night: “Good night, nighty night, sleep tight, sweet dreams, I love you” I had to tell you that every night, esp. I love you, just in case something might happen to you in the middle of the night. There was always a fear of losing you, it was felt in my chest, the pang of knowing that I would regret it if I didn’t let you know that I love you.

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When I can hear you coming home through the garage, I would run and dive under the covers and pretend to be asleep. It was some secret game I played with myself. Can I go from racing to pretend sleep in seconds? Can I trick you even though I was out of breath and my heart was pounding? I also just wanted to see how you would treat me when I was asleep. Sometimes you can tell I was pretending, sometimes you can’t.

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We escaped our small little 2 bedroom apartment every weekend by driving down to Westminster, taking surface streets all the way. We would stop by Song Long, pick up spring rolls, a flan, and a croissant, share each of them in the car, then head towards Huntington Beach to catch the sunset. Then we’d drive all the way to Litte Bean in Rowland Heights and grab one shaved ice with lychee, almond jello, mochi and red bean. Then we’d catch the view of the skyline as we drove home down Fullerton Rd. That was our ritual for 6 years from when I was in 8th grade till my first year in college.

 

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What I know²from caring for you

 

We almost forgot that you were sick and had stage 4 lung cancer. The targeted chemo medication, Tagrisso, was this magic pill. It stopped the spread of your cancer and you carried on fine for 2 years after your diagnosis. No one can tell that you were sick. Actually no one knew that you were sick, except for us, your immediate family. It was a well-kep secret.

Then one day, you felt a sciatica-like pain radiating down your right leg. It was a dull pain that only came on at night. It was manageable, you said.

It got worse after you spent a whole dinner at Fogo de Chao, holding your new grandson, while E was on the phone outside arguing with her business partner. You never told her how your pain got worse from that night, because you know she would feel bad. I’m pretty upset with her lack of awareness. How do you make your mom hold your baby for an hour in the restaurant? I don’t want to blame her for your pain. But your sciatica did coincidentally come on after those many months of worrying about E’s postpartum depression ³which I was able to fix within a month, getting her on progesterone (for the depression and anxiety) and trazodone (for the insomnia). You lost sleep and you stopped going on your daily walks. You have a tendency to get worried sick.

Her postpartum depression got better by February, and your leg pain started in April. We were concerned that maybe the pain was coming from your cancer that had already metastasized to your hipbone when you were diagnosed. Maybe it had grown deeper into your bones. Your oncologist had you get 3 MRI’s along your spine. Why spine? we asked, when the pain was coming from your right hip. She said sometimes the pain originates from the spine.

Your first MRI on May 9th showed nothing new. I came home for Mother’s Day (and Dad’s Death anniversary) on May 11th. I massaged cbd oil on to your feet and legs. You felt better. You said, I bet if you were here these past few weeks, my leg pain would’ve been gone by now.

The day I took off on May 14th you had your 2nd MRI. The technician was mean to you and something was off about the whole procedure. She stopped the MRI short. You thought you were done, but instead she injected you with more contrast dye, and the moment she did, you felt a burning sensation all throughout your body. You were close to pressing the ringer in your hand to stop the MRI because you thought you were gonna pass out. But you grit your way through it. And when the MRI was over, you could barely get up from its bed and walk out. You reached out your hand so that the technician can help pull you up, instead she yanked you out and you limped your way to the car. And after that, your leg pain went from manageable to unbearable.

It makes me so mad to know that the MRI technician was being nasty to you and that there was some malpractice going on when she injected you twice with the contrast dye. I wish I was there to take you to get your MRI instead of B. B’s good at chauffeuring but he’s not gonna advocate for you like I would. I would’ve done my thing, chat it up with the staff, let them know about your condition, talk in my warm but semi-serious tone let them know how it’s important to be gentle with you and that I’m here to not only translate for you but make sure that your well taken care of.

You sounded terrible like you lost your voice. The MRI did something to me, you said.

After my class, the Shadow Serie, ended B called me, your mom’s really not doing well, he said, I think you need to come home. I booked a flight home the next day.

~

 

 

Tramadol was doing nothing for the pain, so they got you on Norco.

 

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Don’t pick him up so much, you would tell B. If you hold your baby too often, they will always want to be held. They’ll become needy.

From your hospital bed, you were giving B parenting advice.

You told me, I never held you. You didn’t need anyone to talk to or play with you. You were the easiest baby.

I guess I should be proud of the fact that I was easy, because you definitely were. Now I’m confused, when the time comes, should I hold my baby?  Or should I do my thing and just let her sit in her crib and pass the time by quietly observing the world around her? I think I turned out okay for never being held and I like that I’m fiercely independent.

Weren’t you concerned that I was mute? I asked you.

Yeah we were all concerned, you didn’t make a sound or talk at all until you were almost three. I remember your dad was upset at your uncle for always calling you “câm” (mute). But I think it’s because no one talked to you.

The odd thing is that I remember having this meta thought in my head at the age of 2, something along the lines of, “Even though I’m not talking, I can hear my thoughts as words and sentences in my own head.”

 

 

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What I feel ⁴now that you’ve crossed over

 

What hits first is all the regret. The I wish

 

 

For 10 days, after you passed, I would have this recurrent dream that you were still alive but breathing through the ventilator. But then at some point in the dream I would become lucid and remember that you have you have already passed. That I no longer have to be the one to let the doctors know that it’s time to go into hospice. I no longer had to figure out how much more valium and hydromorphone to give you to make sure your last breaths were easeful.

Is it a recurrent dream or can I call it a nightmare, bringing me back to the most painful time I have ever experienced, having to say goodbye to you. Holding on to you knowing that any moment might be our last. And then when I became lucid, and start to wake up, I remember that you are already gone. I remember exactly how I lost you.

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That at least you’re not in pain anymore.

But god it hurts that you’re not here with us anymore.

In Vietnamese, when you say someone passed away, you say “Người đó đã mất.” It literally translate to “That person has lost.” As in they lost their life. They lost their way forward. But in the end, it’s the lost that everyone who loves you feels. That lost never goes away.

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I became the one you trusted with your life. This whole summer, you kept on saying to me, “I would be dead without you.”

I was present for you until I wasn’t, in that last week before we knew you had pneumonia. I got caught up with work.

I was the one the doctors talked to first. I was your translator.

I was the one who knew first that you weren’t gonna make it. It was just 2 days after calling 911 and being admitted to the hospital. The pneumonia was filling up your lungs and the antibiotics were you making your health decline more rapidly. If it weren’t for your stage 4 lung cancer, they can drain your lungs. But in this case, it would make it collapse.

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I was so naive. When you were diagnosed with pneumonia in the ER, I said, That’s good. We now know what’s been making you 10/10 fatigue and unable to eat for weeks. They’ll give you antibiotics and you’ll be fine. You were hopeful as I was that everything will be okay. I honestly thought that you would get better in a few days and I would be able to fly home the next week and throw the graduation party for my shadow series class as I had planned.

 

 

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I’m drifting on two planes: the past and the present. On the past level, I look back and feel the sorrow of everything that I miss about you, and all the missed opportunities. All the ways I could’ve shown up more. All the experiences and memories we didn’t get to create. When I’m thinking about the past and all the lost moments, I feel sad knowing how you wanted me to visit more, call more, spend more time with you more.

On the present level, I know that you are still here but in spirit form. You are no longer in pain. You are free. You are enlightened. You are making your way towards the pureland. And I can be happy for you.

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I promised mom that once we take the bipap ventilator mask off her face, I will comb her hair. I know how mom is, even in her sick days during this summer, she would still comb her hair and put it up in a bun and do her skincare routine at night.

So when

 

It hurts to write about your death. It hurts to to remember how awful and sad those last few days were. But I want to feel the sadness of your lost. Because moving on as if life goes on, everything is back to normal. That feels even worst.

 

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Day of the Dead holds a different meaning this year. It’s my first time buying marigolds. I also got pink carnations (I rarely get carnations) but they go well with the orange marigolds and yellow chrysanthemums. I spend an hour clipping and placing them into vases, placing them at your altar.

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The big baby pink chrysanthemums at your altar are still beautiful and vibrant. It’s been 3 weeks of them being in full bloom. They say that flowers at the altar magically stay alive longer than they typically should because the spirit of that altar is keeping them alive.

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Why do I keep going back to the heartbreaking moments of you last week here on earth? Is it because i want to feel the pain of your lost because I rather feel that pain than just carry on with life as if I can move on.

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The barista at Highwire asked how I’ve been, he hasn’t seen me in a while. Oh just moving through it all…it’s been intense..a lot of deaths..

I can feel my eyes flooding with tears as I said my mom died.

I started to really cry when he voided my matcha latte on the register, and said this one’s on us as the other barista behind the espresso machine gave me a heart hands gesture and sad face.

I didn’t think I was gonna cry. I think I was touched by their gesture.

It’s so subtle at times, the sadness, that I thought I was over the uncontrollable crying. I guess I’m not.

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I always call you on the day daylight savings ended. We would both lament how sad it feels when the day is cut short. It’s so dark right now and it’s just 5pm.

 

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It’s going to take a while to adjust to this change, W says, you guys just lost the matriarch of your family. Your mom was like Cleopatra.

It didn’t dawn on me until he said “matriarch” that I realize how perfectly that word described you and the role you took on not only in our nuclear family but in your extended family as well. You were the lifeline to all your brothers and sisters back in Vietnam. You supported them, like you promised you would when you left on that boat for America.

 

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I straddle these two plane. The plane of material reality. Which brings me back to the past, of all our memories when you were hear on this earth. Which somehow leads me to regret all the moments that we didn’t get to have. Past = Pain

Then there’s the plane of spiritual reality, which brings me to the present, and I know that you are still here but in a different dimension. That you’re truly at home. You have returned from this strange trip on planet earth. Present = Peace

If I see this lifetime as a small blip, if I see it all from the wider perspective of our multiple lifetimes and eternity, then I’m okay.

If I fixate on this one life, that I didn’t do perfectly right by you and to your desire, I’ll beat myself up.

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If I go back, I can connect all the dots that led you to your end point in life. All the possible things that did it. Yes there’s the physical things, like you sleep late at night (3am was your typical bedtime) and don’t get enough of it. You don’t eat vegetables. You sit on your favorite spot in the sectional sofa all the time and scroll on your ipad.

It was holding your grandson fro too long at the one dinner that exacerbated your pain.

It was the 2nd MRI and the 2nd contrast dye injection that made you sick in your body made your pain even worse. It’s the gadolinium of that contrast dye.

It was all the painkillers.

 

But’s it’s the emotional things that can lead to the dis-ease of your lungs.

 

When you were in pain, you spent most of your days listening to Si Phu, Duy Hoang, and that one song you listened to on repeat at night before bed, Ngay Ve by Trong Tan. I’m so glad that I was there to note all your favorite songs. Now it’s my way of connecting to your spirit. I can feel you listening to these songs with me. I translate the lyrics of your songs into English and I unlock another layer of your soul’s desire when you were on earth.

Your favorite songs are “Nhạc vàng,” yellow music. Music that was made in South Vietnam when our flag was yellow, before we lost our country to the communist party in 1975 and our flag turned red.

Nhạc vàng has this wistful tone to it. The songs are often about parting and longing for lost days, unrequited love, having to say goodbye. I think you resonated with them during the war, when all the

 

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4 of your friends who have come to the temple every week to pray for you in your 49 days have seen you in their dreams. They’ve even seen your ghostly apparition.

H was the first, she saw you walk the grounds of the temple where your urn now sits.

M and P both saw you when they woke up their naps. She said you look like you were in your 20’s. Hauntingly beautiful.

M asked you to not appear again to her because she was scared of ghosts, then you disappeared.

Then A saw you walking around the temple. Your right shoe was dirty. You grabbed a brush to clean your shoe. I wonder if it meant that the pain from your right leg is no longer there.

How come none of us in your family have been visited by your apparition, we wonder.

 

I had a dream the other night that I had one day to complete a book assignment. I had to write a book in one day. It had to be a physical book. I saw the pages I was working on. It was vellum. I thought, how can I finish a whole book in a day? Then I thought, I can write a book about losing you, it’s called the book of sadness. I was going to ask the teacher to see if she would let me write 2 books and give me more time. The first book I can write in a day was the book of sadness. The other book is my memoir.

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It’s late November and the leaves are finally turning orange and red in the Bay Area. Driving down the streets of Berkeley, I’m reminded of every Fall that I had here in my 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. The passing of time. I wish I can go back to every decade and buy back that time and spent it more with my mom. I think I went home once every season. What I wish now is that I went home home every month.

It’s a strange thing to look back on your life and see it through the lens of regret. You really don’t know what’s truly valuable to you until it’s gone. Time well spent with loved ones. Love freely given. That’s priceless.

You hear from others how much they regret not spending enough time with their  their parents until they pass away. It really doesn’t mean anything to you until it happens to you. Until it’s too late. That’s when you “get it.”

No I understand why death contemplation is such a key component to Buddhism. You really start to live when you think about death. But to think about death goes against our instinct. We’re wired to think about living, not dying.