What I know about my grandma:
One: She loved the earth more than anyone I’d ever known. She’d spend long hours in the garden with my grandpa, planting dragon fruit, orange trees, and onions. They would kneel side-by-side, sunburned with their hands stained dark with soil. My rare visits to Taiwan did not consist of sweet milk tea or beef noodle soup—the things I had imagined on the plane ride over. And though I longed to explore the bustling streets of the city, I found myself working in her garden instead. I remember the soothing rhythm of my hands in the cool soil—digging, pulling, and planting. I learned to share her connection with this ground I barely knew. Yet, somehow, it felt like home.
Two: She had type 1 diabetes. And breast cancer. On the morning of her fifth surgery, she woke up before sunrise and planted orange tree seeds. She did this for us, I think. For Mom and me, just in case something went wrong. Just in case we needed more to eat. Just in case we needed something living, something that would grow, something to remind us of her if she didn’t make it. But her vigorous shoveling ruptured a pipe. Water gushed out, flooding the ground, and the grass drank greedily, as though the land itself had been starving. It was far too early for such a mess. Neighbors complained, and Mom dragged her inside, away from her soil and into the cold, sterile air of the hospital. I stood in the garden, the wet earth clinging to my shoes, watching her love spill across the soil. It was six in the morning. I was tired but strangely happy.
Three: She argued with Mom over the phone. A lot. She would hurl harsh words across the distance between Taiwan and America. “Don’t come,” she would say. “It’s not like I’m dying.” She was stubborn, unyielding. But she cared without saying it. In the way she planted things and looked forward to their budding next spring. In the way she insisted on living as if nothing would ever stop her.
Four: She was an artist. She painted. She wrote calligraphy. Her brush would lightly dance across the paper, her strokes leaving behind trails of intricate Mandarin characters. Two weeks before she passed, she was painting bamboo and lotus flowers. I was only nine when she passed away.
What I remember about her death: People brought envelopes of money, armfuls of flowers, and comfort dishes piled with dumplings, stir-fried vegetables, and sticky rice. They whispered, “My condolences,” “She’s in a better place,” “She would be so proud of you.” I watched Mom cry, not at the funeral, but later, alone in the reception area’s kitchen, her sobs wracking through her body. I sat there, in a borrowed black dress, silent. I wondered why I felt more like the parched earth than a burst pipe—why the grief didn’t easily pour out of me like it did for everyone else. I wanted to mourn, but instead, I felt hollow.
What I remember about Grandma: She knew how to grow things. Even after the pipe broke and her garden flooded, she stayed. And when the garden flooded, she planted again.
I had no tears at the funeral. I stayed silent. I went back to her garden. There, I knelt the way she had taught me: knees pressed directly to the earth to ease my stiff joints. I welcomed the dirt that settled under my fingernails and the sun’s sting on my back. I pulled weeds until my arms ached, planted orange tree seeds row after row, and carefully watered them until the earth drank its fill. I closed my eyes and imagined her beside me—her hair messily pinned back, her sleeves rolled up, her arms freckled with sunlight.
I did not say a proper goodbye at her funeral. So instead, I press a seed into the soil and whisper to it softly, asking it to grow. A tear rolls down my cheek, and I let it fall onto the seed, watering it with my silent farewell.