The Bench

Bailee is a little brown puppy. She lives with Mommy in a big loud city.

This week, for days on end, Mommy took Bailee to the park and sat on a bench.

The bench was tucked away behind trees, just off a winding path. There were only trees where eyes could reach. Rarely did people walk by.

They just sat there. For a long time. Longer than Bailee liked. Many times, she pretended to sniff something interesting, creeping away until the leash tightened. She’d pull gently, hoping Mommy could take the hint and follow. But Mommy only reeled her back in and whispered, “Sit.”

So Bailee settled beside her, reluctantly. She looked up. Mommy wasn’t looking at her. She was staring into the trees, her eyes glassy with thought.

“Why here?” Bailee tilted her head, waiting for an answer. But sleep pulled at her eyes until she dozed off beneath the fading light.

- - -

It had been almost three years since my uncle passed.

When my parents told me his cancer had returned, he was already in a coma. Two days later, he was gone. From the first symptoms to the end, it was a month.

The day he passed, I scrolled back through our family group chat, past pages of silly panthers, until I found the last message he had sent. It was a video he shot of the holiday lights he put up along the walls of his yard for the last Lunar New Year of his life. He loved a good celebration. It was in the dead of winter. The land was frozen, trees bare. But his yard blossomed with colors. Lights and figurines stood where flowers did during the summer months. A different kind of liveliness, with similar order and charm.

He was a descendant of farmers, and he put his talents to good use. He didn’t work in the fields anymore, but it was always in him: pride in his land, the ability to nurture, and the eye for nature's greatest beauty. He was not in the video, but his voice was, rugged, hoarse, narrating as if he were guiding a tour. His words, few, carried a quiet contentment and a rare nonchalance, a new persona he had developed since the cancer diagnosis. Our ancestors were settlers from the south. Only a few generations back, we travelled up to the virgin land of the great white north for a new possibility. The blood still ran hot in my family, led by him, the oldest remaining son, the big brother to six younger siblings. Some called us lousy and aggressive. But it was a force few dared to challenge. Post-cancer, the leader bowed down. His pack followed—quieter, slower, but closer. Around his passing, the family chat went silent. Everyone was there with him, in China, half a world away. Everyone except me.

“He talked about you in the hospital,” my dad told me once. “He was worried about you. Alone in America.”

I was upset that my parents hadn’t told me earlier, and I couldn’t say goodbye. But if I had the chance, what would I say? Ask him how he feels? Tell him everything will be OK?

I only hoped it wasn’t too painful. That he wasn’t too scared.

I hoped the fear and loneliness of dying didn’t blackout the truth.

That he was loved and admired.

That he had lived a full life.

From a logger who couldn't stop working even after witnessing his friend killed by falling trees, to the owner of the biggest brick factory in town. Years later, he planted a small forest outside his yard—of the same kind of trees he once used to lumber, pick two strongest ones, and make a swing in between for a younger me. On top of his industrial brick kiln, we roasted barbecue over the air vents; underneath were 2000 Fahrenheit and bricks enough to build a city. When I was in college, he took a group of his factory workers to visit me in Beijing. The magnitude of the capital overwhelmed him and his fellow men. After a long search for a bathroom, the first thing he did when he found me at my school was to pee behind the gate of one of China’s most prestigious universities. As I showed him around, his workers trailed behind at a respectful distance. Later, he told me that they had stayed back so I wouldn’t be embarrassed being seen with them — “rugget country men”.

But Uncle, I would not have minded. I would never mind.

The city might have been grand, but it also made me invisible. It was with you I felt at home. I walked with a confidence only proud nieces had. I pointed to him sights that supposedly had significance on the campus. I had felt significant, too. Because my uncle thought of me as successful.

‘Who would take a piss behind the gate to one of the best colleges in China? Only him.’ I told my dad, who was silent for a long time before he responded, ‘You are gonna make me cry.’ He became the older sibling and only son of his family after losing both his brothers to the same illness. For him, it was more than grieving.

But that was the only time we would cry. Then life goes on. And time erases everything.

So, before it did, I adopted a bench. I couldn’t afford the one near the flower fields, though I knew he would’ve loved that. But this one, hidden behind the trees in the most beautiful park in the center of the world—that I could manage.

And I would come here when he crossed my mind.

- - -

Bailee woke to a burst of barking—her own. And it surprised not only Mommy. It wasn’t out of fear or alertness as usual. It was an urgency to be loud and feisty, to respond to a call, to make herself heard. Bailee kept barking at the top of her pitch and was about to break into a howl when she felt Mommy’s gentle stroke. Bailee stopped and realized it was still only them at the bench. The sun had dipped behind the trees, and the air had cooled.

Who was that? Another dog? Another pack!

Mommy leaned down and kissed Bailee between the ears.

“If you see him before I do, tell me I love him.”

Bailee returned Mommy’s gaze with a conviction she didn’t quite grasp yet. Mommy started walking, and she followed.

Before they rounded the bend, Bailee looked back at the bench.

Where Mommy had been sitting, a golden plaque caught the last light of day:

My heart hurts

Imagine you alone

Although it means the end of suffering

In my dream

You are sailing to the clouds

Not a worry in your hair

Don’t look back

Leave the past to the living

But before I can forget

Please stay on my mind