\n<\/p>\n
Late in the summer of 2024, my mother was moved into hospice after a brief hospitalization. She was given a week or two to live. I promptly returned home to Los Angeles from New York and steeled myself for her passing. The trip lasted five months.<\/p>\n
My days would begin at 5 a.m., when the Slack switchboard lit up. I worked to the sound of birds outside before the house stirred. When the lunch lull arrived on the east coast, I\u2019d head to the kitchen\u2014to make my dad\u2019s breakfast, review whatever errands or housework needed doing, and prepare a Thermos of Hong Kong\u2013style yin yang coffee: loose Ceylon tea, flushed with boiling water, combined with strong black coffee, then topped with evaporated milk until rich and creamy. It was the one thing she would always want.<\/p>\n
By the mid-afternoon, I\u2019d close the laptop and call my dad. \u201cShe\u2019s been sleeping most of the day, didn\u2019t eat much,\u201d he\u2019d say. I would open the fridge, which was always crowded with leftovers\u2014creations of my own, and prepared foods dropped off by church friends\u2014and assemble a sampling in a Pyrex container. We never knew what would entice her limited appetite. In the car on the way to the hospice, I\u2019d look at the same strip malls and store fronts I’d driven past in my youth, many now faded and vacant.<\/p>\n
My dad, brother, and I had begun the process of sifting through her things, knowing she wouldn\u2019t ever see most of it again. We brought her the more precious heirlooms, hoping she might tell us their provenance. Most jewelry was too antiquated and valuable to consider wearing in hospice. One item caught my eye\u2014a floral cloisonn\u00e9 bracelet that her mother once wore. My mom was not particularly sentimental, but she let me clasp it around her wrist. By then, she had become so skinny that whenever she raised her arms, it would slip down to the upper arm.<\/p>\n
The three of us did what we could. My somewhat fussy but always considerate dad would sit with her most of the day in order to receive visitors and to keep abreast of medications and status checks. I was the kitchen task rabbit and the garbage disposal. I cooked, cleaned, kept a mental inventory of foods and containers, and ate anything that would soon need to be tossed. My brother was the handyman, tech support, and logistics shift worker\u2014the one who filled the unexpected gaps. He always had a sweet treat or fast food when my organic, nutritionally dense, and insulin-friendly recommendations were rebuffed. Any moment that perked her up was a day won.<\/p>\n
Just a few times, after the hospice quieted down for the evening, I tried my hand at the oak-finished Baldwin piano in the common area. I\u2019d play something familiar\u2014pieces she had enjoyed. It was my mother\u2019s capable but limited playing that first drew me to the piano. When I was seven, she sensed my interest, scraped together the funds for lessons, and then drove me weekly to the teacher’s house, deep in the winding hills of Palos Verdes Estates. As I advanced, she would leave scores open at the piano\u2014pieces she didn\u2019t have the patience to learn herself, gently steering me. The last pieces she placed before me were a pair of Chopin nocturnes.<\/p>\n
My mother was the second of seven children, and the eldest daughter. She grew up in a three-bedroom flat in 1950s and \u201860s Hong Kong, with her grandmother, and, occasionally, a live chicken waiting its turn. Her parents ran a print shop for a newspaper and Buddhist periodicals. Her father was a photographer, photo editor, and a type setter, while her mother was the proud beautiful face of the operations who could also keep her children behaved with a single glance or word. There was a strong sibling rivalry in the flat, which shaped my mother. She was averse to conflict and kept to herself, dutifully helping with the cooking. She learned to block out distractions as she patiently washed, soaked, marinated, gutted, descaled, deveined, cleaved, and minced away\u2014learning and practicing a craft that had been passed down across generations of woks.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n