Remembrance

We must remember that mountains sometimes tumble into the seas, sometimes horses pull too hard on the grass, and sometimes a person you dearly love fades away and perishes.

I was angry when Uyen passed, for there existed no beauty in it. Cancer had ravaged her from end to end, edge to center. The ability to walk gradually drained from her, then the ability to rise from bed. In the end, she could not raise an arm.

If only Thomas was right, that we might rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Instead came silence. Late snow had melted back into the raw earth, and the last honey bees finished their work on the flowering apple trees.

Ah, my sweet girl, I am not angry anymore. The bees and melting snows insist that life persists. We shall abide the rising of the light.

Today we remember Uyen Hegman, lost on this day in May of 2011.

Uyen talking with Dzao Women in Ta Phin Village, Vietnam, April 2009

Uyen and Helen December 1984

—Mitchell Hegman