The Astonishing Color of After

by Emily X.R. Pan

If only I could rewind, go back in time and ask my mother every question about every tiny thing. How crucial those little fragments are now; how great their absence. I should have saved them up, gathered them like drops of water in a desert. I’d always counted on having an oasis.

I would’ve carved out my heart and brain and given them to her just so she could feel right again.

She clutches a handful of tea leaves to her nose and inhales deeply, letting the green smells tell her the secrets of the land.

Once upon a time we were the standard colors of a rainbow, cheery and certain of ourselves. At some point, we all began to stumble into the in-betweens, the murky colors made dark and complicated by resentment and quiet anger.

She was a sea creature and the music was her ocean. It had always belonged to her. It was in her every breath, her every movement. She was the color of home.

Depression, I opened my mouth to say, but the word refused to take shape. Why was it so hard to talk about this? Why did my mother’s condition feel like this big secret?

Here is my mother, with wings instead of hands, and feathers instead of hair. Here is my mother, the reddest of brilliant reds, the color of my love and my fear, all of my fiercest feelings trailing after her in the sky like the tail of a comet.

There’s no point in wishing. We can’t change anything about the past. We can only remember. We can only move forward.

‘Once you figure out what matters, you’ll figure out how to be brave.’

Memories that tell a story, if you look hard enough. Because the purpose of memory, I would argue, is to remind us how to live.