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Previously on Family Ghosts.

On July 4th, a date that had no meaning to me, except that it was exactly a month, short

of my eighth birthday.

My mother and I landed in JFK airport.

Our six suitcases bulging with rolls of hand-zone bedding, bags of 20s, chile peppers, a cast

iron walk, and her stethoscope.

My mother now found herself at the age of 40 living in a tiny studio apartment in New

Haven, Connecticut, with a husband, who she soon discovered, was carrying on an affair.

Within a year and a half, he had left us, and she was faced with eviction.

She had less than $200 to her name, and spoke little English.

Now the two of us became the embodiment of the Chinese phrase, Xiangyi Wei Ming, Mutual

Reliance for Life.

As ALS gradually paralyzed her while leaving her intellect intact, our years were filled

with ICU visits, emergency surgeries, stays in nursing homes, and wrenching conversations

with strangers about the logistics of death.

Then in 2014, after my mother could no longer breathe without a ventilator, she was moved

to the Henry J. Carter Specialty Hospital in Harlem, which I was told was the only long-term

acute care facility in Manhattan that could take her.

My mother currently has two aids, Zhou and Ying, and needs them to survive in the way she

needs the ventilator for her next breath.

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