Eight and one-half months ago, my wife prepared rice for the very last time of her life. As she descended from this life, I had to microwave and then spoon-feed her last of the rice she steamed that last time. She passed about two-weeks following the day she prepared the rice. A couple months following her passing, in a hurry to retrieve something from the kitchen cabinets, I opened the wrong cabinet door—the one nearest the refrigerator—a space I typically never used, and there, on the lower slide-out shelf, I found an open Tupperware container with a china teacup half submerged in the mix of brown and white rice within.
Uyen’s final scoop.
After gazing down on the cup for a while, feeling more than a little saddened, I closed the cabinet door again. In the months since, I have cleaned-out and reorganized all of the cupboards and cabinets in my kitchen save the one in which I found the rice. I have peered inside a few times, but left the rice and the cup undisturbed. That very first time I saw the cup, and every time since, I have wondered: “Is the cup half-floating in the rice or is the cup half sinking?”
Today, I opened the cabinet as a way to begin the New Year.
The cup, as of this day, is floating.
--Mitchell Hegman
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