#i have her bracelets and pictures and every sample of her handwriting i could find and save but none of it will ever come close to

[mesquitehoney]

i never planned on getting married nor do i want to now but i wish my grandma could have spoken to my boyfriend again. they met twice and it was brief and she asked me a lot about him when id see her but i never got to take him to california with us nor did she interrogate him. she saw me graduate and finish my first year of university and was with me from my birth at least every week until i moved out. she was like another parent or i guess she and my grandpa were like a unit of parent. she took me to school and we were late every time because we ate a slow egg breakfast together in the mornings and we’d watch movies super late into the night. she only ate butter and no salt on her popcorn and after we ate it in the bed we’d strip the bed and shake it off so all the kernels and bits of popcorn wouldn’t poke us when we slept. she taught me how to fold laundry (making the corners kiss). even as i write this i cant fully think of her because it is too much. i’ve had to just push everything down because when i really think about her and really feel in my body how i felt about her it paralyzes me. my mom and her parents raised me but i remember the times with my grandma so much more vividly because it was always a treat to see her even though it was often. she made the best scrambled eggs cooked in butter and folded into a square. i remember washing lettuce in her white basket spinner and hand tearing every piece for salads. we had weekend dinners at her house where she made cantonese food her dad would make and my grandpa made what he ate in arkansas. we had pork beans, baked potatoes (i always had sour cream and a lot of salt), steak (i gave it to my cousins), and my grandma would make dry ramen noodle salad, shumai, and char siu bao. that was her favorite food ever. i only ate pork with her and we would split giant char siu bao. she and my grandpa would drive an hour away to the best dim sum to get it and it was so sweet and fluffy. we watched movies i definitely shouldn’t have been watching at 7 but now they’re my favorite and most nostalgic ones. night of the hunter, american graffiti, flower drum song, phantom of the opera, time bandits, the neverending story. movies like snow white and the land before time as well. i distinctly remember watching shrek for the first time in her back bedroom on the big tube tv and being shocked when donkey said “damn” and i whipped my head over to look at her bc i felt guilty for his cussing but she was asleep. she never slept through the night and went to bed in the ams. when i was sick she used an acupressure stick on my foot and followed a youtube video for clearing sinuses using pressure points in the feet. she cooked incessantly until her second heart attack. she traveled with my mom and i when i was a baby. we went to goodwill to find knick knacks and plushes. she always had me sleepover and would drive me home in the middle of the night if i got homesick or scared. i had jaundice as a baby and instead of putting me under the lamps she took me home and held me outside in the sun every single day when my mom was too tired. she breastfed her nephews and nieces when her sisters couldn’t. she probably nursed for years after my youngest uncle was born. she had a mean streak like me. as she got older and her hand scrunched up from parkinson’s i saw it in her that she was giving up a bit. she stopped cooking and walking. i dyed her hair and put curlers in it under her careful instruction. i cut it about a year ago into her famous angled bob. she had long long fingernails and would scratch my arm and back with them and it felt so nice, and then she’d ask me to scratch her arm though mine were short. we drank a thousand cups of tea together. when i think of her i feel a painful ache in my forehead and sinuses and back of my throat and my chest. i wanted to evaporate into nothing after her funeral. i know she is at peace now that she can’t feel pain. she’s asleep and unconscious and not suffering because she is dead. i have more to say but i cant. i love my grandma. i will miss her forever