Mothers

Yesterday was Mothers’ Day here in the UK, and I went to her graveside for conversation. I plucked weeds from the plot; thinned strawberry plant runners; noticed the primrose, narcissus and cyclamen in bloom. My mother’s grave is alive with flowers from her garden and squirrels leave walnuts under the leaves. She is both present and absent; I miss her.

Later the same day, I am close to finishing On Earth We are Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong’s fictionalised letter to a mother who does not speak English. Our circumstances are so different, our lived experienced worlds apart, yet a passage captures my mood exactly:

“Ma, I don’t know if you’ve made it this far in this letter - or if you’ve made it here at all. You always tell me it’s too late for you to read, with your poor liver, your exhausted bones, that after everything you’ve been through, you’d just like to rest now. That reading is a privilege you made possible for me with what you lost. I know you believe in reincarnation. I don’t know if I do but I hope it’s real. Because then maybe you’ll come back here next time around. Maybe you’ll be a girl and maybe your name will be Rose again, and you’ll have a room full of books with parents who will read you bedtime stories in a country not touched by war. Maybe then, in that life and in this future, you’ll find this book and you’ll know what happened to us. And you’ll remember me. Maybe.”