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how grief changes

dear mom,


Grief has felt a little different these last couple weeks. I found my old home videos - the ones you religiously documented to capture every detail of my childhood. It is only today as I tell people about my week-long binge of my memories that I fully understand what a gift you've given me. To be able to look into my past and hear your voice again when I thought I had forgotten it. I loved listening to you chatter to me, narrating, conversing. How delighted you sounded, how attentive you were to my development. You were so playful and patient with me - I knew you loved me, but now I can feel how much you loved me.


I can feel how much I loved you, too. As I grew up, finding my own words and agency, you remained constant. From in front of the camera, I only wanted to make you happy. I danced for you, made up songs for you, practiced piano for you. I wanted your attention at every turn, and you gave me your uninterrupted attention. You scolded me periodically, but I wasn't phased because I knew nothing was going to change how you cared for me.


You brought your camera with you everywhere, and so I have footage of our vacations to the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone and time spent in China with your siblings and nephews who I haven't seen since you died and recitals that only a mother could bother to sit through. I couldn't think about anything else for the week it took me to watch through all seventeen DVDs, distraught at the thought of them coming to an end. Tortured by the reality that I was basically watching you march toward your death. Unbeknownst to you and to my younger self.


The last three discs were of Alfred, though of course I was also in them. In the final scenes, you narrate the date - two days before your death day. I started sobbing uncontrollably in the darkness of my bedroom. It felt unbearable to know the end was coming, to know how the story was to end and to know that it was my real life. The video cut out abruptly while Alfred played in his walker. Then it was black, the deafening sound of TV static. I felt like I had lost you all over again, mom. I almost couldn't believe it was happening again. The rest of the disc was some CCTV show or news you had once recorded, as if to remind me of the harsh reality that life goes on. Mom I miss you so so so much.


Today, I'm aware it is Qingming Jie.- Tomb sweeping day. I ordered a bunch of Chinese vegetables to be delivered and then spent half the day cooking for myself. Your tomb is 1138 miles away, and I don't know when I'd even be able to visit it next, but I feel particularly close to you today. You were just as wonderful as I remembered you to be. I still mourn losing you, but now I also mourn you losing.. us. The peaceful life you would've built for me and Alfred. The way you should still be here, following me with a camera because you couldn't bear to miss a second of me growing up.


I always viewed my childhood as dark and bleak. I marked it by the day that it ended and spent so many years buried in hopelessness. But after watching these videos again through a new lens, one where I am almost as old as you were when you died, I can see that my childhood was perfect. You gave me the best childhood. You fulfilled all my needs. And it's because you gave me an idyllic childhood that I never recovered after you died. Through this new lens I also know now that not everyone had the kind of childhood you created for me. I cried for my friend as she told me about her realization that her mother was emotionally abusive to her. I cried for my friend who couldn't bring herself to take on end-of-life care for her mother who was an alcoholic. I cry at our shared loss of a loving mother though it manifested in different ways.

If you were here, Mom, I'd care for you with the same warmth that you cared for me. I'd repay your nurture with my own form of nourishment. A big bowl of soupy mapo tofu, made vegetarian with hearty beans instead of ground pork. A plate of the most coveted green, pea shoots, sauteed with garlic and sesame oil.

miss you and love you so so much,

Amelia

 
 
 

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