Reflections on my mom’s passing five years later.

When my mother told me she was dying, she delivered the news to my brother and me as easily as if she were making shrimp scampi for dinner (our least favorite dish of hers). In a matter-of-fact and rife way, she’d say things like, “Well, it’s healthy for you guys,” or “You might not like it, but you just eat it. I’m teaching you discipline and how to get through hard things.” I don’t remember much about my senior year of high school afterward except that I went about the rest of the school year with my eyelids half closed and an inexplicable shame, cleaning the meat off my ribs in the numbing sort of way only bad things that haven’t happened yet can. 

The first night she spent in the emergency room was in the middle of a California winter, cold and dry. I left the house after having had my dinner alone—eating what, I can’t remember—but without her there. I was seventeen and had just learned to drive, so I went slowly, thinking about my friends and my crush and what I might wear to school the next day. When I arrived, my mom sat on the twin hospital bed with her knees touching mine and rubbed my wrists softly. She’d prayed about it and changed her mind: God wanted her to let me go to college in New York, she told me, with tears brimming in her eyes. No matter what, she wanted me to chase my dreams, and I had her blessing if I chose to leave rather than stay close to home. 

Thank God, I thought, and meant it sincerely for the first time.  

I left for New York happily, and spent a semester and a half before the pandemic hit, getting unreasonably drunk off Four Lokos with my newfound friends, going on as many first dates as I could for a free meal, and generally dodging my mom’s FaceTime calls. When I’d wake up the next morning and call her back, half-asleep before I returned to my hangover, guilt clung to the lingering sweat of my skin. Even through the screen, she looked different every time. Her thick black hair, once a reflective mirror for the sunlight and my favorite thing to comb my fingers through, had become gray and brittle. By the time I came home for Christmas, it was all gone.  

There are a few things you should know about my mom. She loved being Taiwanese, loved it more than almost anything, but certainly not more than she loved other human beings. She converted to Catholicism when I was five, after being introduced to faith through my dad, but really, after finding a community she’d never had in the U.S., through a small Chinese Catholic church in Fremont, California. She’s one of those people who was meant to be a saint, so it was only natural that she turned to God and truly devoted her life to him. She remained a Green Card holder her entire life. If it came down to it, I’d absolutely fight for Taiwan in a war against America, she would scoff, waving her hand around in the air. My mom kept her last name as her married name, kept the way she chattered loudly in Taiwanese with her younger sister in the middle of Costco, and kept the way she innocently complimented her church friends’ weight gains with a beaming smile.  

I’ve heard many wonderful singing voices throughout my years; none of them even come close to the musicality my mom possessed. There was a unique kind of magic you felt beholden to in her piano playing and singing voice. As a child, I’d crawl on my hands and knees across my bedroom floor onto the upstairs rug, stopping just before the stairs. I would hold my breath, watch as she melted into her playing, eyes closed serenely, delicate fingers gliding across octaves. Chopin’s Nocturnes never sounded as magical as they did when she touched them. 

When the most quietly powerful woman you know transforms before your eyes, something inside you irrevocably changes. I wish it had changed me for the better, the way it does for some stronger people, or matured me into a matriarch with all the elegance my mother possessed. Instead, I grew quiet and resentful and angry at God and my father for the times they’d failed her. I pitied myself for the all-encompassing sadness I knew would soon descend upon me, then hated myself for playing the victim. Tightly pressed under the seal of my own sorrow, I failed often at being a good daughter. 

Sometime in early July 2020, amidst stay-at-home orders and the distance I put between us, Mom and I stood in the kitchen and washed dishes together. I didn’t talk much, but my mom always had something warm to say to fill the space. I remember the way the late afternoon light filtered in through the rosebushes and the swing set in our backyard, how tender my feelings towards the cobwebs that hung in our archway were, and how I knew this would always look the same but feel completely different very soon. Mom reminded me in Chinese how to conserve water, use a small bowl to dip the sponge in, and then ensure the grease and soap were completely washed away. She chuckled when she saw me doing the steps she’d taught me before the words came out of her mouth. “Honey, I’m not worried about you. I know you will be alright,” she smiled. I turned to dry my hands so she wouldn’t see me cry.  

Later that month, hundreds of people came to her funeral mass. I’d never seen the lawn of our community church so crowded. I got up in front of the podium and read a poem I had written for her that Mother’s Day, stupidly thinking I wouldn’t cry at all, but ended up blinking down at my paper, my voice quivering the entire time.  

When I transferred to UCSB, I talked about “my parents” in the present tense all the time like she was still there, just 300 miles north, napping at home in her favorite lounge chair. The disconnect between the life I had imagined and what had become real was impossible to swallow. I’d handle my homework and extracurriculars well, all the while feeling a growing emptiness inside. At night, I’d lie awake and silently mouth common phrases in Mandarin, feeling the curves of inflection that had sometimes stopped being second nature. I was terrified of forgetting.  

Grief calcified deep within my heart in ways I wouldn’t recognize until years later. Petrified in the wake of a nightmare taking on a corporeal form, I became very still. It wasn’t that I was ever confused about what she might want me to do. My mom was so strongly opinionated that, even after her passing, I knew exactly what she’d think about every single choice I made. In some attempt to avoid thinking about her, I prioritized all my impulsive desires and let the good in my life wash away and pool around my feet. I  realized I was half-expecting her to leave me an angry voicemail, furious I missed my curfew, or was out with friends when I should be practicing piano. I got up when my dad sat next to me on the couch to watch a show together, spent hours in my room on my phone in the dark, and tried to drink too often—though, ironically, my Asian genes prevented me from being able to drink too much alcohol without getting nauseous and throwing it all up. I was bratty and unlikeable and grossly unable to metabolize the coldness that grew within me. Before me, the world stretched out like a narrow dirt road that I felt was one only I was condemned to walk. 

Life moved forward awkwardly and stubbornly. Caught in some twisted labyrinth, I recoiled at any opportunity for self-confrontation by making the same mistakes of pushing away the people I loved time and time again. Yet slowly, nearly imperceptibly, I began searching for pieces of her in the world around me rather than the roots of my own inward feelings. Through miserable growing pains and years of isolation, I learned that getting out of my own head would be the sole thing to give me comfort in the moments I missed her the most. My mom was alive in the blessings my life bestowed upon me, the poetry I wrote with her in my mind, and the love people showed me in my time of need, whether it was a ride home or a friend to cook with. Her presence became most vivid when I listened to and cared for people around me as selflessly as I could, in the way she was gifted at doing. If there was one thing my mother wanted for me, it was to move forward this way, with intention and unconditional love. 

There are long stretches of loneliness that nearly sink me sometimes. When I feel my mom is far away from me, somewhere I can’t reach, I share stories about her with my best friends who knew her like a second mother, and we cry a lot until we’re cackling about the funny dances she would do in public. It’s easy in those moments to feel her there, because I know she would have been laughing the hardest.  

I hold our shared culture closer to my heart than ever before. The Prince Who Turns Into a Frog, the corny yet heartfelt Taiwanese drama we’d stay up until 4 AM watching together, has become the show I hold most dear to my heart. My mom is especially present in the moments I share with our family, surrounded by the searing heat and incomparable beauty of that perfect island. When I’m brave enough to unflinchingly meditate on it all, I listen to the songs she would sing at karaoke with her cousins, by artists from Charlotte Church to A-Mei Chang, and hear her echo. 

These days, I almost believe I am living the kind of life she would have wanted for me—one not untouched by sorrow but wholly enriched by it. Losing the mother I once swore I would never get along with made me realize just how much I needed her, and how profoundly she left a wonderful mark on me. I spent years citing our differences as the reason for our explosive arguments. Now, I think I’m more like her than I would have admitted before, in the ways we celebrate joy to an extreme and our unfortunate vast capacity for anger. I carry all of that with me, and I’m proud of it. The more I soften to others, and the more I allow myself to experience gratitude for the years I got to have with her, the more I sense my mother’s spirit. Sometimes, I picture her as a young woman long before she had me, someone brought to tears whenever she heard Phantom of the Opera. She’s bright-eyed and a dutiful daughter, a brave girl full of dazzling hope. I can see her in the best of me, in the moments when I summon the strength that she gave me to show compassion to those who need it, honoring her in my actions. 

I can’t wait for the day we meet again. I’ve got so much to tell her.