Correct Isn't

I remember you on your birthday, Ma. And every day.

I still couldn’t tell stories about you. It is still difficult to have to remember how easily you laughed, and how beautifully you loved.

Loving, you expected nothing, accepted things even when they hurt you, stayed silent to keep the peace, and forgave even when you’re exhausted. Your love was perfect.

But I try not to love like you, Ma. I try to expect a little, to hardline against what hurts me, to speak up when it’s not my fault, to stop when I’m tired. I try.

I try to honor how you loved us, and how we had been suffered for, by loving ‘correctly’, but it is difficult to love less than the only way we know how, isn’t it? You knew that, too, Ma. Correct isn’t perfect.

There is a place in my mind I never go to. Everyday, I keep myself from thinking about how much you had to endure. How you had to learn to cut an onion with your one hand…and other things. 

What time did you have to start to make me the dinner you had ready that night, Ma? That night, when I arrived from work, and you called out from the kitchen that it was almost done. It was 8 PM. That night, eight days after we buried Papa, when after you placed my food on the table, you sat down, called me to you, and I came just in time to see all the light disappear from your eyes.

You left, too. With as little inconvenience for us as you could manage.

And all your love for me in my dinner plate.

April 22, 2018