Stories of a Long Goodbye

Waiting to unfold in each seed my mom planted was a lesson.

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Since she died, I often find myself sitting where she once tenderly nurtured our garden. There was a time when spring onions neatly framed its edges. Cherry tomatoes and cucumbers used to burst from its heart. This was her space. She worked tirelessly to transform an uninspiring patch of New Jersey grass into something alive. With soil-smudged fingers and wind-tousled hair, she breathed life into earth.

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The garden's beginnings blur with my earliest memories. Our first family photo, with me still in the womb, was taken in front of our partially built house. As I took my first steps, the garden's roots were just beginning to grow. Each of my milestones paralleled the garden's growth: my first words echoed as new buds blossomed; my first day of school saw the first harvest. My mother tended to the garden with the same devotion she showed me, as if it were my sibling. In its thriving foilage, I saw her love; in its fading blooms, I felt a part of me wither too.

My mom loved the garden—it was her quiet escape from physically demanding and sometimes long hours at work. Whenever I felt her absence from our home, my eyes would move to the window overlooking the garden. Peeking through, I'd find comfort in her silhouette, battling weeds or nursing a weak seedling back to strength. I would watch her through the curtains' gap, taking in the peace that surrounded her. A double tap on the glass would lead to our eyes meeting. When I joined her, playful protests soon gave way to laughter and shared tasks. "Aiya, watch your step!" she'd say, only to beckon, "Come, help me water the cucumbers."

On a sun-drenched afternoon, as she worked methodically through the rows, I asked with the impatience of childhood, "Why do you keep pulling these weeds? They just come back."

She responded with a soft smile, continuing her work without answering immediately. It was only years later, after she was gone, that I understood what she was teaching me in that moment of stubborn persistence.

As her life weakened, her love for the garden, much like her love for life and me, never faded. She tended to each plant with soft, enduring love, nurturing life that would outlast her own. This was her quiet defiance—a gentle stand against her own failing vitality.

Even as her body weakened, she found ways to stay connected to the earth she'd cultivated. Though she could no longer bend and kneel as she once had, she would direct me from the kitchen window, her voice carrying instructions across the glass: which plants needed water, where the weeds were taking hold, when the tomatoes were ready for harvest.

In her last days, a profound stillness filled our home. The summer breeze stilled. Long shadows gently held her fragile figure. In those quiet moments, I sat down for one last conversation, hoping her parting wisdom would guide me in her absence. But in a fleeting moment, she slipped away.

"Don't cry, don't be upset."

Her last words lingered in the quiet air, the opening of a conversation that would never happen.

In the ensuing silence, I wrestled with the deep emptiness of the words left unsaid. The absence of closure echoed throughout each busy day and sleepless night, a constant murmur of 'what ifs.' In our final goodbye, lost were the words of wisdom I longed for, and the reassurances I yearned to offer. 

Sitting where the garden used to be, eyes closed, a reel of memories unfolds, rich with laughter, tears, and cherished moments. Yet, there are empty spaces—the times she should have been there, the memories we never got to make. I picture introducing her to my first love, to which she would have said, "She's so beautiful, but does she have a good heart? Is she forgiving?"; her holding my child, perhaps saying, "You have Grandpa's big ears!"; and during lazy dim sum Sundays at my apartment, "It's too small here. Move back home and I'll cook." These gaps, where her laughter should fill the air and her wisdom should echo, are moments forever lost.

In my apartment, I try to recreate a piece of her space. Pots of herbs sit at my table, lucky bamboo shoots line my windowsills, and leafy greens cover the walls. I hoped that by putting my hands into the cool, crumbly soil, I would feel her presence, finding the understanding I'd sought.

My plants thrive, but they don't mask the emptiness. Small, random moments ambush me—the elderly Chinese lady selling zongzi by the subway, the familiar tang of pickled vegetables in my congee, the distant sound of guoyue drifting into my apartment. Each encounter is a fragment of her, close yet always beyond reach.

Sometimes I catch whispers of her voice in the echoes of her garden that linger in my memory. In the stories she wove between the rows of spring onions and cherry tomatoes, I find seeds of wisdom she left for me. It's in these moments that the lesson from that sun-drenched afternoon finally makes sense.

Her response to my childhood question? A soft smile. Continued work. The answer I needed but wasn't ready to hear. She kept pulling weeds not because she could stop them from returning, but because the alternative was letting them take over everything good. Each weed she pulled was a silent lesson: sorrows of the heart need tending, too, and some things are worth tending even when they'll need tending again tomorrow.

We were never a family of many words. Declarations of love, those simple three words, never quite found their way into our conversations. Yet, many evenings, a woven basket of cucumbers, each one picked earlier that morning, welcomed me home when nobody could. Her love was in the soil-stained gloves left by the kitchen sink, in the carefully watered rows of vegetables, and in the produce she placed in the basket—everyday, consistent acts woven into our daily routine.

On her last trek into the garden, as I watched her frail form among the cucumber stalks, I resisted the urge to call her inside. At the time, I didn't truly understand the finality of that moment, but I like to think that was her goodbye - quiet in nature, fierce in love, and completely like her. 

Now, as I tend to a garden of my own, I realize she never truly left. Every time I work with my hands in the soil, I understand a little more of her quiet language. In every sprout that breaks the soil, I feel her presence as real as the earth beneath my fingernails. A constant guide in the garden of my life.