On December 4, 2015, I was making fried rice for dinner at the stove when I burst into tears. A wellspring of sorrow filled my chest suddenly and I had to let it out. It came out of the blue, and I had no idea why I was crying. I stopped stirring the rice, and let the sadness flow through me, sobbing for a few minutes. On the next day, my father called and said Ong Noi, my grandfather, was not doing well. He had had a stroke, and likely would not last long. He was 104 years old. He could not speak, and they had given him morphine to make him more comfortable. He was in a nursing home in a suburb north of Boston. I was in Portland, Oregon. I wanted to fly to see him, but something inside me s
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