Dear Grandfather,

I remember meeting you only once. You could only speak Taiwanese so we sat in Uncle’s apartment in Taipei while you nodded and smiled because I can’t understand Taiwanese. I could see your gold teeth. You were a landscape filled with general trees, general grass, general sky.

I heard that you died when you fell in the bathroom, broke a hip. I imagine you on the ground in the corner of a small apartment, next to a general toilet, in a general bathroom.

I recently found an Affidavits in a box. The top part, an English translation:

This is to certify that, to my best recollection, Mr. Shihtou CHANG was legitimately married to Mrs. Fong-mei LEE-CHANG in Taipei, Taiwan, in winter, 1938, after his first wife died of illness in summer, 1935.

Mr. Shih-tou CHANG’s first wife bore no child but legitimately adopted a girl named Yei-pin in 1932.

I was surprised to read that you had a first wife. I wonder who she was. I wonder what she died of. Now I know I have another aunt, named Yei-pin. I wonder where she was adopted from. I wonder what happened to her parents. Was she from an affair or from another marriage? I wonder how she knew your first wife, whether you raised her, what she looks like, whether she is still alive.

Grandfather, do you remember when your second wife, Father’s mother, came to America when she was ill? I still remember how suddenly she appeared. I don’t know how long she stayed, but she was always in bed and it was always dark. I think it was liver cancer, but does it matter? I’ve never seen Grandmother stand up. I wonder how tall she was.

Recently, I found a photo of us together on a rusted Ferris wheel where I looked happy and she didn’t look sick at all. Perhaps that’s the first time I had met her. Perhaps I have seen her stand up before. Perhaps something never happened if no one remembers it. On the back of the photo are some Chinese characters I can’t read. Perhaps something never happened if no one can read the label. Perhaps there’s no truth. Just memory and words.

One day Grandmother’s picture sat on a bureau, two small bowls of rice on each side, incense sticks upright and burning. I’ve only smelled that scent a few more times—at a temple, in a general Chinatown in a general city. A smoking sweetness not of this land.

I don’t know how long those sticks burned for, but it seemed like a few winters. Now, I realize she may have already been in hospice and may have only lived in our house for a few months, or even a few weeks, like a bird passing through but dying in a foreign land.

Where were you at this time, Grandfather? Why didn’t you come? I wonder whether there was a funeral and, if there was, who was watching me. Maybe she returned to Taiwan and was buried there.

I wonder why any of this matters, why it matters now, why I haven’t wondered more about this before. Because I was supposed to be lucky. Father and Mother were supposed to be lucky.

Lucky people are supposed to live in the future.

The cost of being so lucky is that you never learn how to acknowledge pain. Because you’re always lucky, you should always appreciate being alive, what you have. Nothing should ever be wrong, go wrong. The problem is that the space between how you really feel and luck is always shame.

Recently, I visited your son, Father, in his facility. I walked in on him standing in the bathroom. Sometime in the last few weeks, he had forgotten how to use the toilet.

When I took Father downstairs to the patio, he stood by a plant and put his arms out in front of him, as if willing it to grow. I watched him lean into the plant and then away, back and forth. From afar, he looked like he was doing Tai Chi.

I wonder what kind of craggy twigs still exist in his brain. It’s hard to watch someone who used to have a switchblade as a mind finally kneel down. Yesterday, I showed him a picture of your dead wife. His normally glazed eyes looked, and he said, Ma ma. Then his eyes began to water. Maybe our final memory will be of our mothers.

When Father was stronger, I once handed him a basketball and told him to shoot it into the hole in front of him. After about six tries, one went in and we all cheered. Then another, and we cheered again, jumping up and down. My own voice startled me, its Americanness. Its loudness. Its confidence. The sicker Father gets, the more American I become.

Maybe our desire for the past grows after the decay of our present. When the present is more than we can hold, it turns into history. And the future turns into water. The water between your countries.

There’s a buzzing in my ears now. Where there once was silence, now there is lightheadedness. And no one to answer all the questions I’ve never had before.

When people leave a country, they leave everything. The land, the smells, the people. The objective is simple: to build a better life, without the incisions of the past. A family tree ended. People no longer sleep beside one another. Time stops and a new time begins. The two never cross.

What Srđja Pavlović wrote must be true: Those of us displaced indeed live in a moment that lasts a lifetime.^v

Grandfather, I fear your son will join you soon. I hope there isn’t such a thing as your heaven and our heaven. I hope Father can meet you in the one borderless afterlife. I hope he won’t have to travel to see you. I hope there are no suitcases there. No more packing. No more migrants. No more caravans. One language.

I hope when Father sees you, his words will return. I hope then Father can tell you about the sixty years that you missed, and maybe when I see you both, I can ask you about your first wife and Yei-pin.

• Paternal Grandfather on his ninety-second birthday •