I lift up my eyes

I lift up my eyes to the mountains—where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth.

This is one of my last moments with my mom.

She’s in pain. Her head is lightly thrashing from side to side. It seems automatic, and when me and my brother try to talk to her, she doesn’t really respond.

A nurse comes to administer some pain medication, but it will take some time before it takes effect.

I decide to jump in. I lean in and speak into my mom’s ear.

“Do you want me to read the Bible?”

She doesn’t really answer, but I know that she loves the Bible, and that it always seems to bring her some comfort. It’s one of the few things she made sure I brought when I took her to the hospital. It’s a cornerstone of her life, and the core of who she is.

So I grab her Bible, in Chinese and English, the cover made from some faux-black-leather that’s been worn down by age, filled with highlighted parts and post-its from years of use, and turn to a passage I know she wants. I know she loves it because she’s asked me to read it to her before. It’s one that she had me memorize as a little boy. It’s still familiar to me, even if I can no longer recite it today.

As I open my lips to speak the words of Psalm 121, I can sense that her shaking becomes still. As I read it, she seems more at peace.

Maybe it’s the pain meds. Maybe it’s hearing the Bible. Maybe it’s hearing my voice.

And as I read it, in this moment, I know that one day, far in the future, I will read this same passage, and I will think of her, and what she has meant to me.

He will not let your foot slip—he who watches over you will not slumber; indeed, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep.

The night sky is little more than a sea of black, punctured by billions of dots we call stars. It’s beautiful, though meaningless, and to create meaning, we connect the dots with lines and call them constellations. There’s no real reason to connect the dots this way. But sometimes, beauty can exist for beauty’s sake. Sometimes, they help us make sense out of the awe, the wonder, the chaos. And occasionally, they do help us find our way.

I think about this because I wonder how we got here. I don’t know if the details matter, and most of them are a mystery and I’m just connecting random dots and hoping they come together to point the way forward.

What we’re left with are decisions—options. For a long while it seemed like my mom would be fine. Things did not look good, but they were by no means hopeless—at least, in an earthly sense.

But suddenly, my brother and I were asked to make decisions—options. We spent hours and uncountable sums of energy thinking and weighing those options, trying to find the right way forward.

Each time we thought we found the way, those options were ripped from us. Each new day brought a new sense of dread, of despair, and every choice we thought we had no longer existed.

Until one day we were left with what seemed like a non-decision, the two of us, standing here, on a Sunday morning, trying to come to terms that there is really only one thing we can do.

Is that a choice? Is it a choice to choose the only good option in front of you?

I choose to believe that it is. I have to believe that. I have to believe that granting somebody peace—even if it’s the only choice—is the best choice.

The Lord watches over you—the Lord is your shade at your right hand.

It’s at this point that I begin to falter. Emotion floods my body. My voice cracks and turns coarse.

My mom has been in the hospital before—many times, and I have always wondered if it was the end. It never was. Never.

Somehow, I now know that it is. Not even somehow. I know that it is because even though I haven’t said it, I know that the decision has been made. The choice has been made.

But still, we haven’t spoken it, and as if speaking gives decision its life, I refuse to speak it. As if I hold myself back, maybe things don’t have to be this way.

But the next line of Psalm 121 stares me back in the face, and slowly, the words escape my mouth.

The sun will not harm you by day,

And then I stop. I can’t do it. I try to muster the words and I can't. The tears fall and I can't stop them and they land on my mom’s shoulder. I wonder if she can feel them through her hospital gown. I bet she can.

Dan, speak, I say to myself in my head. Come on.

I can hear that voice, telling me, encouraging me, yelling at me. But I can’t do it. I can’t.

Open. Your. Mouth.

I can't I'm trying but I can’t do it.

N—

No—

Dan!

I bite my lip. Grit my teeth. Bite my tongue. I try every trick I know to bring my feelings under control but they are just too much for me. I’ve summoned everything that I have right now and it’s just, not, enough. It’s just not enough.

Nor—nor

I try to telepathically tell my brother that I need help. Whether telepathy exists, he comes and I feel his hand on my shoulder.

Nor the moon, by night...

I think over these past two-and-a-half years. They’ve been full of moments; they’ve been very, very full.

But this, this moment is the most painful, and still I know that there is more to come. There will be more grief. There will be more painful moments.

I wonder if this was my fault. This wasn’t how it was supposed to go. I came back to help, support, to care for. And this is where we are. I wonder what might have been different if I had paid more attention, if I hadn’t been gone that day—I wonder if I had failed.

I wonder, what was even the point? Why come back here, if this was the result? My tears aren’t just tears of pain; they’re tears that search the past two-and-a-half years of memories for meaning—for answers to the question of: What did I do wrong?

Why did I come back?

And then it is something small, something quiet, as it usually is, something in me takes control and reshuffles my questions, my questions, my memories, those dots in the night sky, and draws the lines a slightly different way. And it is that voice that speaks, paraphrasing a line in a book I once read.

The point of it, was to come back. It was to experience, coming back. That was the point. Because coming back is how I showed my mother who I was. Who I am. It was how I would show her that her son really, actually loved her.

I suddenly realize that I was being prepared for this all along. I was taught—by who I’ll never know—to count down all the times my mom and I had together, to know that each of them was limited. Somewhere in me, I knew, that one day, she would always leave me for something better. She has wanted that, for so long.

And so I treasured those moments. The good ones. Like those walks around the park. Those dim sum lunches. The times I asked her to come with me to pick up my nephew from school.

Even the hard ones. Like how she wondered why I didn’t go to church, but I still drove her and my dad to church every Sunday. Like how she kept asking when I would get a girlfriend, but I still let my guard down to show her how silly and over-the-top I can be. Like how she occasionally went back to her old ways and made me feel guilty, but I still made her her favorite smoothies.

Through all of those moments, through these past two-and-a-half-years, she got to see me. She knows who I am.

And I think that's all I ever really wanted.

Of course I wish I had more moments. You always think you have many more moments left. But I think the reality is, even if we did, those probably would have simply been different expressions of the little boy she already got to know. And because she got to know him, that boy has few regrets; that boy is content.

The Lord will keep you from all harm‚ he will watch over your life;

Eventually I’m able to piece myself back together, in a different shape, able to read those ending words. I find myself at some sort of peace. Not calm, but at peace. Even as we must go our separate ways, my brother and I have chosen to help give her the peace that I knew was always coming for her, the peace she always longed for. And that, is what gives me peace.

Because just as she believes that the Lord will watch over her coming and going, both now and forevermore, she too will be with me—her belief in her god, her generosity, her selflessness, her humor—they will all be with me, both now, and of course, forevermore.