to a-mâ, whom i love deeply:

you wouldn’t know this, but the thing that kept me religious the way most people understand religion was you. every night i prayed to my little bedside god that all four of my grandparents would live forever. i did this consistently and with fervent hope that the naive persistence of my pleas would exempt me from the rules of life.

i stopped praying maybe three years ago. or four, give or take. when dad’s mom got hit with covid and we couldn’t see her until all that was left was ash, i feared asking god for anything else and not getting it would morph me into someone evil.

a truly terrible thing: when you fell ill with cancer, it forced the opposite of me. i wasn’t ready to wheel you to the radiation center, or to help the nurses turn you over in your sleep. being gentle was not a choice i made willingly. i’ve said this before, but i’d kill every good part of me if it meant you could have stayed healthy.

i brush your hair away but i can’t quite look at the thinning visage of your face. i worry someday i won’t remember your laughter lines but i don’t want you to see me cry. i know what it’s like to be sick. you don’t get a choice in any part of it. not how long you’ve got to fight and not who gets hurt by it.

grandpa, who never really cared about pictures before, makes me take multiple when you manage to sit up long enough to be hugged. he talks about the day you’ll get better, and how we’ll drive up to the province, to pampanga, where the air is fresher and you breathe easier. mom and i laugh about how sweet he is but it’s getting harder to pretend every click of the shutter doesn’t sound like a whisper goodbye.

there is a stage of grief which they call bargaining where one often begs god, the universe, or some higher power for a loved one not to leave or have left. but i’m not sure what exactly i should beg for tonight. the way i see it, we are always leaving. in the language of our predecessors, the first sentence i ever learned to string together was guâ bêh khi’ lo'— hokkien for i am leaving. i used to say this to every elder relative at the end of every gathering; it may very well have been the last thing i said to either of my paternal grandparents before they passed. but for the most part, my leaving was not the end of things. parting ways led to countless more meetings.

what to ask for, then, when you know that to leave is also to live in a perpetual state of being: warm and palms sweaty as i read at your bedside, laughing as you walk into the pantry because you forgot exactly what you went in for, hair trimmed neat and short after a runaway trip to the stylist that involves fooling me and scaring us all.

what to beg for, when you’ve given me so much? i don’t want to bargain with anyone for anything. i’ve got nothing worth half the life you’re still living with me right now.

(once, when we were alone and watching a rerun of barbie hsu’s meteor garden, you wept while telling me that you hated it here. your sisters had all left, flown abroad to settle in the states; but you knew i was going to be born so you chose to stay.

i remember being eleven maybe, thirteen at most— and so confused. didn’t you love grandpa? what about your daughters? your sons? not just mom but all my uncles and aunts? what about the garden with your precious orchids and the wok you use to make all your fried rice? nevermind me. so much of you is here, why would you ever want to leave?)

all i can do is write this and think of you as you lie asleep on a hospital bed while i feel a million, bajillion miles away. i don’t think mom’s got it in herself to hold up the phone to show me your face; but i swear i’m with you this time. if i could say anything to you i would tell you i get it now, ma. that wasn’t what you meant.

anywhere you want to go, ma, let’s go.

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005: still prayed for the first time in what must be over a thousand days.