Sighing often, Mom finds everything sad: sunsets, hummingbirds, the garden at eveningtide. She threw out the flowers that her workplace had sent, as they reminded her that Dad's gone. To her, every event and thing become imbued with his absence. Such feeling is contagious.

BDD, or Before Dad Died, I will say, thinking of how Dad would take me out for banh mi during visits. How he'd send me a card on my birthdays, the biggest and gaudiest one he could find. How he had emailed me at the beginning of August: How everything? The bus not on strike, the train still moving. I know the car don't have a driver. (I don't know how to drive.)

Everything ADD still feels surreal. I watch flowers wilt without his care, notice his drugstore glasses on his unused desk, wait for his gravelly voice to call me by a child's nickname. Soon I will visit his body and read aloud my tribute to him.

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