The night my parents went to check out grave plots
Linh S. Nguyễn
The night that my parents went to check out grave plots, my brother and I had
dinner at home. He cooked—he always cooked. I don’t remember what.
We sat at the dining room table, and I told him that I wanted a large funeral.
‘I want a large funeral that feels like a celebration. And for all my journals to
be burned. None of that Virgil shit, I mean it. No one should read the journals.
They’re the worst of me. My money, the little I have, goes to you.’
‘What makes you think you’ll die before me?’ he asked.
‘I’m eight years older?’
‘Yeah, but my health is shit. My liver is fucked. That’s why mom makes me takes
those milk thistle tablets. And you’re a girl. Women live longer.’
‘I have health problems too,’ I said. ‘My spine is curved. My back hurts all the
time.’
On we went, trading factors, playing bone and muscle like cards. The morbidity of
our exchange dusted the evening in snowdrops, the subtle chill of foreign lands. It
was all to say, I don’t know how to live without you.
How do we die in a city far from home?
When the sandcastles I built as a child fell at high tide, my father said we had
to return them to the sea. I considered my ashes spread across the waves where
I had always felt most at home, returned to my roots from the coast where the
word for water is the same as the word for land. Returned yet swilling in constant
movement. It was tiring to picture. I longed to rest.
Where do immigrants rest beyond the surety of a family plot?
My grandmothers know where they will die. They know where they will rest. But
us? What do Oakville or Mississauga mean to us? This land is not our land. Will
the offerings of our children reach us with an ocean in between?
Is this what it means to write ourselves into the future?
I turned twenty-nine last Wednesday. My mother became a mother twenty-nine
years ago, a time so brief yet achingly drawn. I made her tell me the story so many
times I can almost fool myself into remembering the details: a power-cutting
storm raging through Hà Nội, the smell of vomit, and the buzzing of flies and
mosquitoes inside the delivery room. I had to be cut from her womb.
People say our parents’ movements move within us, in the same way we move
within our parents and our parents’ parents before that. I wonder if that is why I
too have chosen to emigrate, guilty of the same longing that drove our family to
another shore. Carrying home, carrying movements. It wasn’t enough, we cry on
the best of days, to know that we were safe.
My partner jokes about how we ended up in this country of no good weather
and no good food. We tire of the fog, but it is not the end. It cannot be the end,
though worlds have ended
and worlds are ending still.
How did we come to be in these foreign lands?
I blame colonialism.
Where do we go next?
In defense of fragments, I keep having languages forced upon me. Now, I am at
four.
How do I justify what has never been enough? Not one single shard of a queer
immigrant’s life. Not the sandcastles or the grave plot viewings or the snowdrops
or the sea. Not even our love. But that, I feel, has to be.
I want a soft life. (and an easy death, but who doesn’t?)
Some three thousand mythic years ago, the ashes of Achilles were mixed with
those of Patroclus inside a golden urn by the Hellespont. A strait between shores.
A waterway. A waystation. Away.
Perhaps it does not matter, I tell myself, which pieces people remember in the
end. If the end is not an end for so many, what significance do I hold beyond you?
Us, together, lost in our worlds, entangled and unravelling in tongues.
I do not know how to reconcile the legacy I seek with the legacy I want. I do not
know if legacy is something we can ever control, but I know that to move is to
release the breath we are holding is to let something go.
I would not give up our pieces for the world.
Leave us, making our worlds.
I want to tell my brother, movement never dies. Energy can only change forms.
Leave us, making worlds.
Tell them to bury us together and let that be enough.
Leave us, making.
dinner at home. He cooked—he always cooked. I don’t remember what.
We sat at the dining room table, and I told him that I wanted a large funeral.
‘I want a large funeral that feels like a celebration. And for all my journals to
be burned. None of that Virgil shit, I mean it. No one should read the journals.
They’re the worst of me. My money, the little I have, goes to you.’
‘What makes you think you’ll die before me?’ he asked.
‘I’m eight years older?’
‘Yeah, but my health is shit. My liver is fucked. That’s why mom makes me takes
those milk thistle tablets. And you’re a girl. Women live longer.’
‘I have health problems too,’ I said. ‘My spine is curved. My back hurts all the
time.’
On we went, trading factors, playing bone and muscle like cards. The morbidity of
our exchange dusted the evening in snowdrops, the subtle chill of foreign lands. It
was all to say, I don’t know how to live without you.
How do we die in a city far from home?
When the sandcastles I built as a child fell at high tide, my father said we had
to return them to the sea. I considered my ashes spread across the waves where
I had always felt most at home, returned to my roots from the coast where the
word for water is the same as the word for land. Returned yet swilling in constant
movement. It was tiring to picture. I longed to rest.
Where do immigrants rest beyond the surety of a family plot?
My grandmothers know where they will die. They know where they will rest. But
us? What do Oakville or Mississauga mean to us? This land is not our land. Will
the offerings of our children reach us with an ocean in between?
Is this what it means to write ourselves into the future?
I turned twenty-nine last Wednesday. My mother became a mother twenty-nine
years ago, a time so brief yet achingly drawn. I made her tell me the story so many
times I can almost fool myself into remembering the details: a power-cutting
storm raging through Hà Nội, the smell of vomit, and the buzzing of flies and
mosquitoes inside the delivery room. I had to be cut from her womb.
People say our parents’ movements move within us, in the same way we move
within our parents and our parents’ parents before that. I wonder if that is why I
too have chosen to emigrate, guilty of the same longing that drove our family to
another shore. Carrying home, carrying movements. It wasn’t enough, we cry on
the best of days, to know that we were safe.
My partner jokes about how we ended up in this country of no good weather
and no good food. We tire of the fog, but it is not the end. It cannot be the end,
though worlds have ended
and worlds are ending still.
How did we come to be in these foreign lands?
I blame colonialism.
Where do we go next?
In defense of fragments, I keep having languages forced upon me. Now, I am at
four.
How do I justify what has never been enough? Not one single shard of a queer
immigrant’s life. Not the sandcastles or the grave plot viewings or the snowdrops
or the sea. Not even our love. But that, I feel, has to be.
I want a soft life. (and an easy death, but who doesn’t?)
Some three thousand mythic years ago, the ashes of Achilles were mixed with
those of Patroclus inside a golden urn by the Hellespont. A strait between shores.
A waterway. A waystation. Away.
Perhaps it does not matter, I tell myself, which pieces people remember in the
end. If the end is not an end for so many, what significance do I hold beyond you?
Us, together, lost in our worlds, entangled and unravelling in tongues.
I do not know how to reconcile the legacy I seek with the legacy I want. I do not
know if legacy is something we can ever control, but I know that to move is to
release the breath we are holding is to let something go.
I would not give up our pieces for the world.
Leave us, making our worlds.
I want to tell my brother, movement never dies. Energy can only change forms.
Leave us, making worlds.
Tell them to bury us together and let that be enough.
Leave us, making.
Linh S. Nguyen is a Vietnamese-Canadian immigrant and author specializing in children’s literature and creative non-fiction. Her debut middle-grade fantasy novel, NO PLACE LIKE HOME (HarperCollins Canada/Inkyard Press 2023), explores a young immigrant’s journey to redefine home. Linh holds an H.B.A. in English from the University of Toronto and an MPhil in Arts, Creativity, and Education from Cambridge, where she is completing her PhD.
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