Let me follow the smoke, look for its shadow, though not that which comes from cigarettes, burning into sickly sweet scents that will hurt, later. That is not the right one. I wish to follow the scent of burning incense, of red candles lit for the dead, of paper money and whatnot all turned to white ash, and follow the messenger, to follow the push and pull if the wind, the curl and fade of the smoke, and follow the fading gray throughout it all, for if I follow it far enough, perhaps it will take me to the land if the dead.
Let me pretend it is not another round of the trials and tribulations of life, not more pain and grief and strife just barely relieved by brief stolen moments of something masquerading as joy, not all of this all over again, but something better. A place in the sky, made from clouds of ash and swirling smoke tinted red by the setting sun, where our messages, our love, reach you to form beautiful characters or sounds in the soft feeling of gray, where everything is shrouded in that imperial golden shade of yellow, for I wish to imagine it is a place where you can live like a king. Perhaps there is a place like the one you called home where you will find her waiting the past seven years (almost exactly) for your arrival, meeting old friends and making new ones, reuniting with family, and watching the rest of us mourn and grieve and grow.
(There is only me and my sister left of my mother’s direct bloodline, and I mourn the loss. There were stories and memories and a life lived that I will never know, a recipe for the most delicious tofu and red braised pork I ever tasted. I asked you once if you could make the fat of beef edible and you told me no one could. There is a path to the place where we fed the ducks that I never remembered, and now I never will.)
If it truly is just life, let me hope it is better, that the worst thing that will happen is you trip and get your clothes dirty, that it is life without pain and that you have found your way to an inn where you can watch the sunset, where you can take the many many bills we gave then pay to call and let her know you’ve arrived, that you will be there after 49 days. Do you like it more, there, where misfortune befalls upon no one and everyone will come someday? I hope you do, because we will all join you, because that is where you must stay and I can only hope it was better than this terrible tedious life, even if only slightly.
Or maybe, I hope, a heaven. You turned to Christianity a mere 7 years ago, and let me hope that both of you are up there with angels that have harps and halos and wings, and that can maybe, if you ask nicely enough, take you for a fly. However, you were Chinese before that, and heaven is not quite the same there. If the angels are not there, perhaps you can go there, though in my ignorance I know not what I hope for.
Perhaps you live where you were buried, and in that case, I must apologize for being born here, in the grand United States which killed you, possibly. You had taken an afternoon nap that day, had dinner stored in the fridge, then you went to the hospital, not to return. I apologize for being born here, or now that I think about it, at all, for without me, you would have had one less reason to stay in a land that leaves you stranded, in a grave that can now only fit two more people, though you did mention that there is nothing left for you in China, friends turned to ash and bone, the apartment sold long ago. If the coffins are like houses, a place for spirits to rest, do you want one that is as similar as we can get to hers? If the land has become your sky, would you rather live under the same one as your kin, those on the other side of the world, now? There are two more spaces and I wonder who will take them.
Did you come back? Reincarnation is a common belief, and while I cannot imagine it, I also wish not for that, for my family to be broken apart, eternally missing each other, for my mother to see you one day on the street and for either of you to bear no recognition in your eyes. Is that better, to experience life a second, third time? When you do something too much then you get tired of it, and if that is the case I wonder how many lives I’ve lived, how many you’ve lived, and I wonder if it is a blessing or a curse, that we might come onto this earth again.
Truthfully, it is probably the dreary- no, I cannot call it dreary- the nothingness of nothing, forever, an eternal sleep in which you are all alone, except it is not eternal, because we are not eternal, so then, is it a gift, is it better that you were aware as you left? It is nothing that you feel, most likely, as you fade into nothing, and I know in my heart that someday not too far—never too far, not compared to the eternity of death—your graves will be left abandoned, the carefully etched characters, the crosses and roses, names and dates, all eroded away to dust, dirt visible in the crevices, mold growing up the side and painting the stark gray the green of life on a marker of death, the sharp corners and smooth surface made into a mere nub, with no one left to remember and care, but that hurts so much I laugh and sadly I am living, existing, not nothing, and I feel that hurt and I wish not to, so just let me pretend that you are up there, happy, with everyone you love, waiting for a smoke that carries our words, waiting for us to come to a place where we can stay.
