Saving Fish From Drowning (65 page)

BOOK: Saving Fish From Drowning

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The haircomb and I were the two things remaining that had belonged to my mother.

I rubbed my mother’s haircomb against my cheek and pressed it near my heart. I rocked it as one might a baby. For the first time, I felt the emptiness of her loss replaced with the fullness of her love. I was about to burst with joy. And then my knees grew weak. They wobbled and grew rubbery. I felt a softening wave and I tried to push it away. But then I recognized what this was, me holding back my feelings so I wouldn’t fall. Why should I not feel it? Why have I denied myself the beauty of love? And so I did not stop myself. I let joy and love and sorrow wash over me. And with that haircomb close to my heart, I plummeted off the stool.

When I died, I thought that was the end. But it was not. When my friends were found, I thought that would be the end. But it was not.

And when forty-nine days had passed, I thought I would instantly be gone, as some Buddhists think a person will. But here I am. That is the nature of endings, it seems. They never end. When all the missing pieces of your life are found, put together with the glue of memory and reason, there are more pieces to be found.

But I won’t stay much longer. I now know what’s beyond here. My friends once had a glimpse of it. It was in the breath that lifted a hundred emerald beetles. It was in the echoes that followed each beat of the drum. It was in the absolute stillness when all minds were one. I can’t say more than that, for it should remain a mystery, one that never ends.

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• genuine gratitude •

MY THANKS to many who may not even be aware of their contributions. Like a “dragonfly who skims the waters,” I picked up all sorts of tidbits from Rabih Alameddine, Dave Barry, David Blaine, Lou DeMattei, Sandra Dijkstra, Ian Dunbar, Matthea Falco, Molly Giles, Stephen Jay Gould, Vicky Gray, Mike Hawley, Mike Hearn, Barry Humphries, Lucinda Jacobs, Anna Jardine, Ken Kamler,

Stephen King, Karen Lundegaard, Terry McMillan, Mark Moffett, Ellen Moore, Pamela Nelson, Deborah Newell, Aldis Porietis, Emily Scott Pottruck, Faith Sale, Roxanne Scarangello, Orville Schell, Rhonda Shearer, Lizzie Spender, Frank Sulloway, Bubba Tan, Daisy Tan, John Tan, Lilli Tan, Oscar Tang, Sarina Tang, Aimee Taub, Christian Tice, Robert Tornello, Ken Zaloom, Vivian Zaloom, the members of the Alta 16, the Burma Road Gang, the Friends of

Sarina, the Philosophical Club, and The Rock Bottom Remainders. I have been forever changed by the necessarily anonymous: the water buffalo outside Stone Bell Mountain, the pig near Ruili, the fish in Muse, the tour guides in Yunnan Province and Burma, and those who disappeared.

I owe Bill Wu many Chinese dinners for opening my senses and my mind to nature and nuance, to art and the art of the bargain.

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For

LOU DEMATTEI,

SANDRA DIJKSTRA,

and

MOLLY GILES

for saving me countless times

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