A Piece of Mind from An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination

Read between December 30, 2022 — January 12, 2023

Before we welcomed Galura to the earth, I thought about Mrs. Anna and her stillborn baby. I remember coming to abacus class every Saturday and seeing Mrs. Anna’s bellies get bigger daily.

I remember her husband always waiting at the end of the class with his all in black outfits. I remember his shy smile. I remember Mrs. Anna laughing, waiting for the baby to come out.

We never really closed, but I can’t help but notice a happy pregnant woman blooming.

The first time I saw Galura’s photo on the phone was when we were trapped in a traffic jam. I’m so thankful for the mother and the baby. Thank you for being alive.

When I think about life my unconscious mind explores the concept of death. I think about death a lot. Sometimes it’s suffocating me, and sometimes it makes me feel better.

Reading an Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination talk about death in a way that I never know I need to hear.

Death it’s sad and indescribable. When it feels too painful, I don’t know how to grieve besides crying. When I lose a precious one, I thought, “maybe it’s better if I don’t know at all,” but it doesn’t help me, and it doesn’t feel right and fair.

After the baby died, I told Edward over and over again that I didn’t want to forget any of it: the happiness was real, as real as the baby himself, and it would be terrible, unforgivable, to forget it. His entire life had turned out to be the forty-one weeks and one day of his gestation, and those days were happy. We couldn’t pretend that they weren’t. It would be like pretending that he himself was a bad thing, something to be regretted, and I didn’t. I would have done the whole thing over again even knowing how it would end.

Having regret is always hurtful in a way it made you wonder how human thought can craft this kind of emotion. Why we can’t control our wandering thought, why the chattering of I should do that never stop? Knowing what you can do yet you don’t it’s the worst feeling.

On a breezy day when I remember Soka a view of my rabbit comes out. I questioned myself and thinking the possibility of what will be different if they were still here.

It makes me feel the longing to the point it’s hurt. I don’t know how to grieve and Elizabeth Mccracken tells me a gentle reminder.

I can’t love and regret him both.

The hard way about missing someone can be different for everyone but regret always has a crucial role.

It’s haunting and makes you restless. You can play a thousand same clips in your head imagining another version of the choice you make.

Once in a while, I jump back to 2006 thinking about a time when I should talk more with Farih. The hardest day usually comes when quietly, in my head I’m counting how old is my little bro right now.

I thought about Pudding all the time, every day, possibly every waking hour. (It’s possible I still do think of him every waking hour, and if I were the kind of new mother who kept track of things — diapers, feedings, naps — I could mark down thoughts of first child as well.)

Sometimes when I sit, drink, stand, and take a breath, I think about times my late grandpa scolded me. We don’t talk that much, but I’m missing the sight of him, lying on his bed, looking peaceful yet stern, I remember a glimpse of him from my childhood like a montage in a film, I don’t remember the narrative but the mood of it.

I think a lot of death. I think about what would be the last thing I saw before I died

I think about my missing cat.

I think about my late brother

I think about my dead cat

I think about my dead rabbit

I think about my late grandma

I think about a death I came across in fiction

It’s not a deep thought. It just stays there, floating in my mind. I’m trying to picture every detailed picture of them but it feels so abstract, sometimes it’s faded, and sometimes it comes out clearly like it’s just happened a second ago.

It’s a strange business, turning those days into sentences, and then paragraphs.

I always feel alone in my thoughts like I can’t let people know this kind of mind exists in the brain of mine. And reading this book feels like an enlightenment for me to know that the thought it’s okay, it’s sad but it’s fine to think about.

It’s important to hold that feeling, the grieving, the regret, the longing. You might still feel stuck or trapped but you’re not alone on this.

Time had bent again. Time had developed a serious kink. Our old life — the one where we planned our existence around the son we were expecting — had ended, but our new life — the one where we tried to figure out how to live without him — couldn’t start yet. We were stuck in a chronological bubble.

Reading this book in the hope of letting go of regret is my purpose but eventually, I realized I need to focus on another thing. A thing. Many things actually, but the first one is, the book shows us how to remember. It forms a new way to shape your cherished memories that makes you able to experience the longing and the joy without hurting yourself. The pain will never go, but it tells you can happy and sad.

all she wanted was permission to remember her child with pleasure instead of grief. To remember that he was dead, but to remember him without pain: he’s dead but of course she still loves him, and that love isn’t morbid or bloodstained or unsightly, it doesn’t need to be shoved away.