My Mom Was Dr. Frankenstein

Anyone who’s been to my parents’ house in Irvine knows about my mom’s fruit garden. Over the course of the 34 years she lived in that house, she slowly transformed a tiny stamped concrete-laden OC tract home back yard into a trove of exotic fruit trees — everything from apples and oranges to starfruit, guava,…

Nobody to Everybody Else

I was a mama’s boy. For literally my entire life, my mom and I were super-close, and it started partially from necessity. When I was two years old, my dad left Taiwan to pursue a new opportunity for us in the United States. The only snafu was that it took more than three years before…

Parallels

I love this video from January 2015, when my dad was just starting his recovery from his aneurysm. It was a rare moment of affection and playfulness from my parents. The parallels between my mom and my dad were uncanny. Both suffered mysterious and catastrophic ailments that left them completely incapacitated and in the hospital…

Mom and Dad’s Wedding

After my mom’s passing, Melissa and I went up to Irvine last weekend and dug through some old photo albums. Here’s a set I found from a particularly special day on January 2, 1971. Mom, I wish it had occurred to me to dig these up and post them while you were still around. I…

Farewell, Mom

You hung in there for over a year, which is pretty impressive in itself. But I guess we all knew how this was going to end. I don’t know where you’ve been for the past 14 months, but I hope you’re finally at peace now. I’m touched that you waited until I submitted my last…

Haunted

Yesterday was exactly one year that my mom has been in a persistent vegetative state. I was drained by the end of the day, but that was more due to school than anything with my mom. I did tear up a bit at one point. But here’s the weird thing … I didn’t cry about…

One Year …

Hey, mom. Hi. Hey. Where are you? It’s been a year now. Do you even realize that? It was one year ago today that you decided to take a break from … well, breathing. Fortunately, the doctors were able to get your heart beating again. Unfortunately, doctors still have no idea what happened. And worst…

Meet Elsa the Wax Fruit Tree

One day soon, we’ll have to leave the older sibling in Irvine, to be cared for — and hopefully, not chopped down — by a new family.

But not Elsa. One day soon, I hope we’ll find Elsa the Wax Fruit Tree a permanent home where we can spend many years together.

10 months

Sometimes the days seem to drag along. Other times, the months fly by. It’s hard to process that it’s been 10 months now since my mom went into cardiac arrest. 10 months now that she’s been in a persistent vegetative state. Man, whoever coined the term really wasn’t kidding with the “persistent” part … Anyway,…