Victoria Chang

Grief—as I knew it, died many times. It
died trying to reunite with other lesser
deaths. Each morning I lay out my
children’s clothing to cover their grief.
The grief remains but is changed by
what it is covered with. A picture of
oblivion is not the same as oblivion.
My grief is not the same as my pain. My
mother was a mathematician so I tried
to calculate my grief. My father was an
engineer so I tried to build a box around
my grief, along with a small wooden
bed that grief could lie down on. The
texts kept interrupting my grief, forcing
me to speak about nothing. If you cut
out a rectangle of a perfectly blue sky,
no clouds, no wind, no birds, frame it
with a blue frame, place it faceup on
the floor of an empty museum with an
open atrium to the sky, that is grief.

Language—died, brilliant and beautiful

on August 1, 2009 at 2:46 p.m. Lover

of raising his hand, language lived

a full life of questioning. His favorite

was twisting what others said. His

favorite was to write the world in black

and white and then watch people try

and read the words in color. Letters

used to skim my father’s brain before

they let go. Now his words are blind.

Are pleated. Are the dispatcher, the

dispatches, and the receiver. When

my mother was dying, I made everyone

stand around the bed for what would

be the last group photo. Some of us

even smiled. Because dying lasts

forever until it stops. Someone said,

Take a few. Someone said, Say

cheese. Someone said, Thank you.

Language fails us. In the way that

breaking an arm means an arm’s bone

can break but the arm itself can’t break

off unless sawed or cut. My mother

couldn’t speak but her eyes were the

only ones that were wide open.

Oxygen—died on March 12, 2012. At

first, it came in heavy green canisters.

Then a large rolling machine that

pushed air day and night. When my

mother changed her clothes, she

had to take the tube out of her nose.

She stopped to catch her breath, as

if breath were constantly in motion,

as if it could be chased. I’m not sure

when I began to notice her panic

without the oxygen, in the way we don’t

notice a leaf turning red or an empire

falling. One day, it just appears, as if

it had been there all along. Like the

hospice staff with their papers, bags

of medicine, their garlands of silence.

Like grief, the way it dangles from

everything like earrings. The way grief

needs oxygen. The way every once in

a while, it catches the light and starts

smoking. The way my grief will die with

me. The way it will cleave and grow

like antlers.