Snorkelling

A childhood memory shared with my late mom 1,461 days ago

I was there when she died.

It had been maybe 30 minutes since my partner and I arrived at the hospital.

Despite the circumstances, we were both trying to work full-time hours at the time—neither of us confident and secure enough in each of our positions at work.

I was two months into a new gig at a little Y Combinator funded logistics tech company. The team was kind and humble and I was grateful to have received as much space as I needed, but like many startups, the pace was fast and the expectations were high.

My partner was three weeks into a new role after an eight-month break, at a mid-size, mid-pace company based out of Edmonton. His team was considerate and genuinely cared about each other, but still it was only the first few weeks.

For two weeks, our days followed the same formula: sleep, work, hospital, repeat.

That Sunday evening at the end of August, we arrived at the hospital and sent my dad home to rest. Passing the baton in a relay none of us had signed up for.

It was around 8pm, if I recall. A hot evening, with mango coloured clouds hanging low, laced with slivers of ripe grapefruit and a damp sprinkling of nostalgia.

We said hello.

I stood up. Sat down.

Stood up again. Sat down again.

My body couldn’t make up its mind which way gravity wanted me.

Each time I sat down, I sat to my partner’s left, the side closest to her bed. And each time, he wordlessly and perhaps instinctively took my hand and placed it on his lap.

After the initial restlessness, we settled into stillness. Maybe ten minutes pass.

Then I found myself standing up again. I took a few steps across the tiny hospital room to her bedside, and looked down at her sleeping face.

There’s something surreal about watching someone you love so deeply die in front of your eyes.

I knew that I had to be there, and that there was nowhere else I’d rather be. But it also felt painfully impossible to bear.

I stood there, staring at her eyelids, the closed doors that I desperately asked to open. Or even just crack. Even just by an inch.

My legs were concrete, heavy with a kind of terrifying awe.

I’m not ready.

I tried to memorize every wrinkle and sun spot in her face. I held her hand in mine: cold, limp, waxy. I closed my eyes and took a sharp breath.

The sharp smell of the hospital disinfectant and illness filled my lungs, but I didn’t care. I mustered up everything within me, to stay in the moment, even though my heart felt irreversibly broken and every part of me wanted to run away.

Then, an image surfaced. Out of nowhere, like a slide from memory: the ocean, coral, endless blue water.

I don’t know why that memory came to me, but it did. And I surrendered to it. I felt like a conduit for the universe to offer her one last thing.

I opened my eyes. And I told her a memory.

“Do you remember us going to Hainan Island, mom?” I spoke. A whisper, but with strange clarity.

“It was 4 years after we moved to Canada, I think. You and dad decided it was time we visit family back home for the first time. We visited family on both sides, and we travelled as a family of four. We went to Zhangjiajie, Phoenix City, Guilin, and then spent a week—or was it two?—in Hainan.

We had other family with us. Xiaomomo and Xiaofufu, and Chenchen. The seven of us crammed into that little bachelor condo unit and its tiny balcony. That condo with your name on it.

That was such a fun summer. It was the only vivid memory I have of all four of us travelling together.

Do you remember when the two of us went snorkelling?

Nobody else wanted to go. Maybe money was part of it. Probably, but I don’t know. I just thought they were too chicken to join us.

Us. You and me, mom.

We dived into the sea and the world became coral and endless blue, as if the ocean had borrowed the sky and forgotten to give it back.

I was brave because I was 15, and when you’re 15 you’re young and dumb and fearless.

You were brave too. You hadn’t done anything like that before either. To be brave as an adult is not easy.

You’ve always been brave.

I never asked you, mom… did you actually want to go snorkelling, or did you go so I wouldn’t be alone?”

I took a few more breaths, and watched her lips, parched and flaking. They hadn’t let her drink much water, not with the feeding tubes.

My question hung in the air, unanswered.

I closed my eyes. Counted my own breaths.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Then I opened them, slowly turned around, and went back to my seat.

Again, I sat on my partner’s left. Again, he reached for my hand wordlessly.

The two of us sat in silence, listening to the rhythm of her breathing.

Staring at the foot of her bed, I lost all sense of time. Each time she took a breath, I held my own, waiting for her next. And when I heard her exhale, I released my own. Each breath was a sigh of fragile momentary relief.

The rhythm slowed.

Time stretched on like a thread pulled tight, then stayed still. Full of unreleased tension.

We didn’t speak. There was nothing left to say.

My thoughts looped in fragments:

Please let her feel peace.

Please let her feel my presence.

Please let her feel loved.

Please don’t let her suffer anymore.

And then, she was gone.

I felt it before I understood it.

A stillness. A shift. A soft wave. As though the tide had gone out of the room, leaving only sand and silence.

Not quite relief. Not quite peace, either. But something light. Like the soft glow of morning light through a window. Like her presence had lifted from the room, and the space had changed somehow.

My partner was the one that noticed that she had stopped breathing.

For months I felt oddly upset about that. I would’ve noticed if I was paying attention to her. Something that had crossed my mind growing up countless times a day.

The room felt less full.

But not exactly empty.

It was as if she had finally exhaled all the pain, all the regrets and love and shame and everything in between. All the stories she had carried.

I imagined her free, at last.

And maybe—just maybe—she heard the memory I shared with her in her final moments.

And maybe—just maybe—it gave her some comfort.

I don’t know why that memory came to me.

It came to me unannounced, vivid and whole. And I trusted it enough to speak it out loud.

I hadn’t thought about that memory in years, and still don’t understand its connection to anything else.

Maybe it wasn’t mine to understand.

Maybe it was something she needed to hear.

Or maybe it was something I needed to remember:

That she was brave.

That she chose to be by my side, when I ventured into the deep end.

And that now, I chose to be by her side.

Grief still catches me off guard sometimes. In dreams. In silence. In marketing emails. In rest. In the curve of my own face in the mirror.

But alongside the ache, there’s that moment. That memory. That light.

I hold on to that feeling. I still do. When the grief gets too heavy, I return to it.

It reminds me that I was there. That I stayed. That she wasn’t alone. That I loved her, not just in the easy moments, but in the hardest one. And that she loved me, fully and fiercely, through all my seasons.

In the end, it wasn’t about answers. It was about presence.

And maybe—just maybe—that was enough.