Ocean Vuong
👤 SpeakerAppearances Over Time
Podcast Appearances
And that's no small thing.
To me, it's a huge, significant part of one's life, especially after watching my mother die.
When we knew it was terminal, she spent months bedridden.
Breast cancer, most likely from all the chemicals she breathed.
It has eaten into her spine, stage four, metastatic, into her brain.
From diagnosis to death was seven months.
And when I asked her, what do you want?
What do you need?
What was your life?
She just told me the smallest moments.
I remember when we used to
To go get chicken nuggets after work and we sit in the parking lot.
That was nice.
I didn't even remember that.
That's completely her memory.
And then when she said it, I said, oh yeah.
Gosh, I haven't thought about it all this time.
And I couldn't believe she held that.
It was such an edifying moment, 2019.
I started this book in 2020, seven weeks after she died.