how can this be forever?

i remember going to the farmer’s market with you on early saturday mornings. we’d sample all the fresh fruit but always ended up buying the strawberries. afterwards we’d go home and you always made something delicious. i still dream about your cooking: soy sauce tilapia and cucumber sushi, sour and spicy pickled radishes, wintermelon soup with slow cooked beef ribs, barbecue chicken drumsticks roasted with honey and ketchup.

the summer days of my childhood seem impossibly long. you’d water the jasmine and roses and scallions in the backyard, and proudly show us how your blueberries were growing. soon there’d be fruit fresh from the branch to plop into our eager mouths. we’d go swimming together and throw a rock and race to catch it as it sank. you’d swim some laps as my brother and i practiced our best dives. i remember the run back home, shivering under towels in the golden twilight, tiny rocks and dirt in our sandals. after dinner we’d sing karaoke in our living room, clapping for each other and laughing at sad songs that felt too dramatic for such a warm night.

i remember hiking with you, feeling the dirt crumble beneath our feet and the fog blanket our vision, the beginnings of sweat, the stories you recounted to me as we conquered the mountain trail one step at a time. we loved the cloudy days most. we savored the taste of the rain through the leaves and the gentle brush of wind on our faces. we hiked almost every single day during your first couple rounds of chemo. i marveled at your strength, the will to keep moving even as the drug diminished your energy.

when we got to the peak, we’d hug victoriously, even sweaty as we’d gotten. you’d always pull your hat off and say, “i think i’m beautiful even though i’m bald. look how lovely and round my head is!”, and i’d agree and run my hand over your smooth, shiny head, as if rubbing the buddha’s lucky stomach.

sometimes i still feel lost without you, like a house with nobody home. you had a whole life. how could you leave all of your favorite things behind? how could you leave me behind? i can’t convince myself that you’re here but i can’t accept that you’re gone. it’s like you’ve left me temporarily in the books section at target and i’m still waiting for you to come back. how can this be forever? how do i go on without you?

you’d want me to just live. but if a girl laughs in a forest and nobody hears her, is she truly happy?

i carry you with me, mama. all the things you loved. your child’s delight at simple things, the way joy came easy to you, like finding rounded pebbles in a river.

i want to remember all those moments: the car ride home from the gym at high noon, hair sparkling wet, a slow exhale, feeling the sunlight on our skin. your smile so full of life. we’d danced and exercised and showered and the day ahead of us was still free. you said it was one of the best feelings in the whole wide world.