Late Morning, and: At Chuang Yen Monastery

Late Morning

Afterward we stoodin the parking lot and watchedthe smoke rising—thin and white, then gone

in the breeze. Crisp,clear: it was latemorning, early spring. We wantedto stay to see it, to watch

until there wasn’tany more to see.But the technician had told us

it would take several hours—first for her body to burn,then for the ashes to cool.

At Chuang Yen Monastery

Here’s snowmelt dripping from the orange-tiled roof. Here’s the chime Ihear, three-note song the wind plays, and inside someone’s chanting a prayerI can’t understand. Here’s the small room where they keep the ashes: whiteand gray-green urns that look like jade lined up on narrow shelves. Theceremony at the memorial wall only happens once in autumn, once inspring, so ashes wait here in between. Here are the names written in Chinesecharacters and taped on each urn. Here are their photos taped above thenames. Lillian will carry her mother’s ashes up the hill. Here’s how I explainedto Preston: Po is in heaven now. “But Baba, I saw her body.” That was only herbody. These are her ashes. “Where do the ashes go?” Mama will put her ashesnext to Gong-gong’s. Their spirits are together, too, in heaven, and she’s tellinghim about you. I never thought how this would come with being a father, butof course it does. Here’s what I want Preston to remember: how his grandmawould lean close so they could bump foreheads, a kind of kiss. “Ko ko, toh,”they’d say in Mandarin—Knock knock, head—and laugh. And how she’dhide him at bedtime beneath a blanket, where she sat on the couch watchingChinese soap operas. “Le Tian went upstairs already,” she’d tell me and he’dgiggle. Here are the birds we can hear but not see, high in the hilltop trees.They take turns telling this endless story. After the ceremony, Preston takeshis mother’s empty hands. He fills them with his.