“After my grandmother passed, my mom slowly cleaned out her bedroom. I never helped her, as I held a lot of resentment towards myself for pushing my grandmother away for the last few years of her life, so being in her room caused me a lot of pain. Going through my grandmother’s stuff was also difficult for my mom, as she was only starting to understand her mother who she never had a good relationship with.^{{ 1 }}

Around two months after my grandmother’s death, my mom found a jewelry box filled with jade jewelry she had never seen before. She gave one necklace to my cousin, and one to me. At first I refused to wear it. It felt weird that my mom, who barely spoke to my grandmother, was giving me a necklace that my grandmother probably hated to remember her by. However, as months went by, and traces of her presence began to disappear more and more, I put the necklace on, rarely taking it off, to hold onto what I had left of her.”^{{ 2 }} Trudy Hoang
August 2013