Hey there, today's episode is hosted by the poet and writer Victoria Chang.

Hang tight and I'll be back on April 8th. I'm Victoria Chang and this is the slowdown.

I'm Victoria Chang and this is the slowdown. to slow down. I used to vividly remember the day my mother died.

Nearly a decade later, my memories have detached from the event,

so much that the remembering has become its own event.

Now I just remember fragments.

I remember how still she was,

how gray her face was, how I was shocked that she couldn't move, couldn't speak to me.

I remember wanting to touch her everywhere, but being afraid to, thinking death was contagious.

I remember bending down and kissing her on the cheek,

something I had never done before,

as if it was only then, after she had died, that I could press my lips onto her face like that.

I remember sitting outside the room with my father who just sat quietly in an arm chair next to me.

Despite his dementia from his stroke, I could tell he understood what had just happened.

I remember the men who rolled a gurney into the room trying hard not to damage the walls.

I remember when they finally came out with my mother head covered with a white sheet.

I remember the shock of seeing her head covered,

proof that she was really dead.

I've written about these memories before in poems, but I'm sure that even the way I've written these memories down is different than what I'm

writing right now. The sadness and grief though remained the same, if a little

yellowed on the edges. But now I know this deep grief. It is inside of me now, or perhaps always was waiting to become alive.

What a strange concept, the idea that grief is born out of someone's dying, that something can be born at all in the midst of death.

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