Tree Soup

 My mother claims premonitions of death always come to her in dreams, or as birds gently tapping at her window. For me, news of death always arrived the same manner it does for everyone else: abrupt, awkward, downright rude. When I heard my phone ring before dawn, I feared my mother had been admitted again; ER visits have become a semi-regular occurrence since her stroke two years ago. Without meaning to, I sighed with more exasperation than I’d like to admit. It feels like I’m at the hospital visiting family at least every other month. But no—it was my mother ringing me. My uncle died. Her baby sister’s husband died in the same manner news of death usually arrives: abrupt, awkward, downright rude. 

 “We’ve been at the house for hours. Everybody is here,” she told me. There was something implied in that. When are you coming? I do not know if it’s a Filipino thing per se, but it’s what our family does when someone dies: flock to the house of the grieving. It’s a Wednesday. I have to work. The company’s bereavement policy doesn’t extend to uncles. 

 “I don’t know when I’ll be able to go.” I don’t wanna see my brother. She intercepts my meaning without engaging in any icky discord. Meddling in the social-emotional affairs of her children is where she draws her maternal line in the sand. Under no circumstances are we to ever disrupt harmony. Even a rattling, moth-eaten sense of harmony is preferable to confrontation. 

A flash of my brother’s gritted teeth and unbearable politeness from across the table—my mind works to push the memory away.

After an awkward beat, my mother chose to stomach my tenuous non-answer, and we exchange polite valedictions before hanging up. 

 Hunched over my company-issued laptop, I burned through my list of action-items and soulless email follow-ups while ignoring a sharp pain in my chest akin to suppressing hiccups, horrified by the details Dad told me over the phone. He called nearly five hours after I had spoken to my mother. He meant to call much sooner but was waiting for an opportunity to be alone. His recollection of the pain he witnessed from my aunt and cousins versus my mother’s recollection are the same scene painted with very different colors and brushstrokes. Dad spoke of their pain with solemnity—set aside platitudes and spoke of it with as much thin-membraned humanity as he could muster. I appreciated that. Too often, death invites pretense. Pretense for closeness, pretense for meaning, pretense for wisdom… 

“Your cousins were the ones who found him,” he said, taking a breath —and the time within that intake of air yanked me back into the previous evening, where three panicked young men ran frantically through the dark woods with flashlights, screaming for their father over and over until their throats stung. “Your auntie is inconsolable…” 

“Of course,” I said. They married when she was seventeen. Thirty-four years. Her grief will be ugly and nothing short of devastating. It took me a while to reach out and text her. I texted my cousin first—the eldest of the brothers. My message said the usual things you’re supposed to say, but then it also said, “Cling to each other fiercely.” What I really meant to say was, “Look after her. Don’t let her feel alone.” But I barely know my cousin anymore, so who’s to say he’s not the one more at risk of feeling alone? 

Cling to each other…

Dad felt no need to expound on what was already a shocking tragedy, so our conversation was brief. The same could not be said for my mother. Before bed, she called to tell me about the owl who delivered its omen to her in a dream just hours before she received the terrible news. Then, she purged an unsolicited play-by-play of everything she witnessed regarding my uncle’s passing, complete with a gratuitous impersonation of his family’s initial shock and behaviors of grief. Her frenzied yet animated voice and heightened energy made my stomach lurch. This happened to her little sister. Was no one safe from my mother’s exploitative romanticism? 

After my mother’s aneurysm and subsequent stroke forced her into early retirement, her lack of hobbies and friends made it easier for me to tolerate her preoccupation with catastrophe. Doesn’t matter how loose the relation, or how much disdain she held for that person, all rancor was suspended—transformed into exasperated concern—once their lives were kissed with tragedy. I thought, maybe this is how she endears herself to others. She grabs them by the ear with a salacious tale of tragedy, hoping it purchases ten more minutes of their attention. 

The next day, when Dad confirmed my brother wouldn’t be at my aunt’s, I took the opportunity to pay my respects. My husband and children stayed home, having no strong connections to that part of the family. 

“You don’t have to go unless you want to,” my husband said. He’s well-acquainted with my family wounds. Being around them feels like getting swaddled and fed fiberglass insulation in small, regular increments. At first, just a minor itch—a rash. Then all of a sudden, I’m engulfed in a blaze of pain, the source of which is imperceptible. An invisible fire. Surrounded by people telling me it’s nothing. We don’t see it. It isn’t there.

Again, I recall my brother’s contemptuous expression last we spoke. His shoulders crowding his ears, arms folded in front him—I shove it away. But his bitter words rake the back of my mind like a ragged fingernail, “Everyone can feel your anger.” 

“Are you sure you wanna go?” My husband asks again, his face pinched in concern. 

“I wanna be there for my aunt and her boys.” The pain in my chest finally dulled into the familiar, calloused clench of anxiety. I was nervous about seeing them. Feelings of guilt polished my trepidation in a thick varnish. Last time I saw my uncle was in their kitchen, nearly a year ago. He tried making conversation, but I was curt, avoiding eye contact. 

They live just twenty minutes away. This isn’t my first time visiting, but it’s been so long, they’ve forgotten I’ve been here before. Each looked exactly as one would expect, like all around them the world was crumbling, but they weren’t quite up to speed yet. Unfocused eyes, a foot in the present, the other tracing paths of breadcrumbs from my uncle’s last days; some with meaning and some without. I was shocked by how easily I embraced them, by the flood of sorrow and love that poured out of me unbidden. It didn’t feel like the stilted hugs I shared with my parents or siblings. It wasn’t one of my usual, weird half-hugs where I’m already pulling back before I’ve even completed the gesture. A real hug. Something I can’t manage with many people. 

We clung to one another, and I said, “Sorry” and “I love you” many times because no other words felt proper. And it occurred to me that I missed them. The smell of their clothes recalled the smell of chlorine from their pool, the hint of beer clinging to my uncle’s breath, the snakelike texture of his healed skin grafts, the sound of billiard balls cracking against each other. Memories of the beach, the barbeques, the sunshine, all surging forth unhalted. That cocktail of grief mixed with nostalgia had a dizzying effect on me. 

Soon the spell was interrupted by the traffic of friends and family weaving back and forth between the living room and kitchen bearing armfuls of good intentions and wobbly smiles plastered to their faces. My mother was also there. 

“We’ve been here all day. And we were here yesterday from very early morning until nighttime. I’m tired. We’ve been cooking. Go eat!” When I admonished her for complaining too loudly, she gave me a wounded look. “You haven’t been here! You don’t know what it’s been like!” 

Guilt. It often clasps hands with death, whispering harsh words in its ear. 

“Did you see her other friend drinking wine?” The eldest sister asked in Tagalog. “They didn’t even bring anything. We’ve been cooking and cleaning up because none of her friends are helping.” 

This sent my pulse into alarm because I hadn’t brought anything with me either. There was already a lot of food, as I expected. Everyone’s contributions to the bereavement were being scrutinized and evaluated. I was so preoccupied with working up the courage to come here I’d forgotten to bring something. I tried not to think about what they’ll say behind my back later. They praised my brother for volunteering to create my uncle’s memorial video. 

“He even made breakfast for everyone!” My mother and someone else exclaimed. Of course. My brother has always known the steps to this dance. He inherited the thing I have only been poorly imitating for them most of my life. It used to be one of the things I loved about him. Now it’s one of the things that hurts. 

Despite the others’ lackluster tributes, my mother and elder aunt easily found an alarmingly saccharine congeniality with them. At one point, I overheard my mother’s repeat performance of the vulgar account she gave me the day before, recounted nearly verbatim. I walked away to keep from sneering, finding the falsehood too painfully gaudy—too repulsive to bear. Is this who I come from? 

 Once they left, it was easier for me to breathe, so I ended up staying for much longer than I’d anticipated. In between sporadic sobs and obligatory small talk, there was the occasional intrusion from a gray lull threatening to drown the room in its deafening melancholy. My uncle’s death and the family’s gaps in harmony intermingling. During these moments, I’d pull from my cache of memories in attempts to clear its strain. 

“Remember that big hole in the tree? We’d fill it with leaves and weeds…” I’d begin. “We pretended to make soup,” One of them would mumble fondly. 

“Yeah, tree soup,” I’d say. 

I wonder what memories my brother summons for them on his visits here. We’ve silently worked out a system of alternating days to avoid each other. Sometimes I dream of screaming at him with a sluggish mouth, “You’re just like the rest of them! You judged me and told everyone I was crazy!” Upon waking, I feel emptied of all the pride and affection I ever felt for him. 

Everyone can feel your anger. 

On another day, my aunt invited me over to watch home movies with them. My uncle was quite the archivist. Dozens of family photo albums and tiny camcorder tapes—enough material to document the entirety of my aunt’s marriage and my cousins’ lives from birth to present. The first few tapes captured very ordinary things: listening to music together, their morning routine, a lazy Saturday afternoon… 

There was a ten-minute segment of my eldest cousin just dancing. He said, “Lookit me, Daddy!” And that’s what my uncle did. He watched his son for ten whole minutes uninterrupted. 

Another tape documented our first, huge family vacation to Nags Head, North Carolina. I watched old camcorder footage of my cousins playing—laughing with their parents in the pool. I watched my brother and I go through a steady rotation of playmates; getting passed from one uncle to my sister’s boyfriend to my uncle’s friends. Sometimes, I was just in the background, wearing that faraway look of loneliness. Watching myself experience these fond childhood memories on a screen from someone else’s perspective felt humiliating. Dad was hardly around because of work, but my mother always accompanied us on those vacations. She was even featured in these home videos, chatting with her other sister or busying herself in the kitchen. Why wasn’t she looking at us? 

As a child, I was just a voyeur of tenderness. With my face pressed painfully against the glass, I observed the strange, rubbery quality of what my cousins’ happiness looked and sounded like. I’ve scowled at it—despised its grubby, touchy-feely nature because my mother taught me to. In lieu of tenderness, we were given a family system based on a valuation of our contributions. My mother’s bitterness, engendered from sibling jealousy, matured into a palpable disdain for anyone who didn’t operate similarly. We learned to hold everyone at an arm’s length with empty congeniality and posturing. 

The home movies triggered a weepy meltdown that lasted for days. 

“You know what?” I asked my husband on a day that didn’t feel as fragile. 

“What?” 

“I don’t think any of them actually like me. Sure, they ‘love’ me, but we moved here over two years ago, and my cousins have never stepped foot inside my home. Not even the first time we bought a house here. And I always feel so guilty about whether I do enough or care enough. I just—I’m exhausted.” 

“Can I tell you something? It might upset you, but…” 

I nodded. 

 “Sometimes, it feels like you care more about what they think of you than what we think of you. And I’m scared me and the kids aren’t enough.” 

When I last spoke to my brother, he sat across from me, struggling to keep his face calm, but the contempt which twisted and curled beneath his skin was so poorly concealed I had to lean away. We’ve fought before. We’ve yelled at each other with brutality only siblings could know, but that ire was foreign to me. Estrangement burns up your throat like bile and its acrid taste lingers. 

 We no longer recognized each other, nor did we like the other person sitting across the table. Too afraid of appearing mean or wrong, he refused to fight me. He deflected with sarcasm and weaponized pop psychology; cut my words off with feigned concern for my mental health. Like a coward. Like our mother. After I stormed off, he told the rest of the family I was “crazy”. He told my husband, “Don’t you think it’s time she finally got some help?” 

These were the people I’ve been coming to with a begging bowl for attention and approval all my life. And why? When has their love ever fed me? I created my own family with

someone who’s never looked at me the way my brother did that day. Even when I tried being cruel, even when I showed up in pieces, even when I scared him with my destructive self betrayals, even when I disappeared into myself, he loved me through all of it free of charge. 

So, I crushed my body into my husband’s, and I managed to choke out, “I am sorry.” Those words became a promise—a promise to choose what is more vital and nourishing over Tree Soup. 

Because without Tree Soup there’s nothing substantial connecting me to that other family. I have lived an entire life away from them and we no longer know each other. Perhaps they are like those gentle birds tapping at windows, bringing sweet things with barbs, while I am more like an elephant: abrupt, awkward, sometimes downright rude.