"...you realize that grief is perhaps the last and final translation of love. And I think, you know, this is the last act of loving someone. And you realize that it will never end. You get to do this to translate this last act of love for the rest of your life. And so, you know, it's - really, her absence is felt every day. But because I'm becoming an author again in another book, it's doubly felt. And ever since I lost her, I felt that my life has been lived in only two days, if that makes any sense. You know, there's the today, where she is not here, and then the vast and endless yesterday where she was, even though it's been three years since. How many months and days? But I only see it in - with one demarcation. Two days - today without my mother, and yesterday, when she was alive. That's all I see. That's how I see my life now."
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Buddhists from the United StatesEssayists from the United StatesPoets from the United StatesImmigrants to the United StatesVietnamese Americans
Original Language: English
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On grief in “Poet Ocean Vuong sifts through the aftershock of grief in 'Time Is a Mother'” in NPR (2022 Apr 5)
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Ocean_Vuong
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Ocean Vuong
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