Our Answer

 

We are here to answer one question—what mattered in the end?

 I am no deep philosopher; I am not religious; And I won't hand the question over.

It came down to three things: good food, clean sheet, and the time we shared. 

 

What awes me about the universe is not the vacuum, but 

 that we found one another in our meteoric existence,

that we shared love and memory in this cosmic blip.

 

 We are, each of us, inexplicably alone; we cannot

 suffer for one another; we must walk the nights alone.

 Still, we choose pain—There hasn't been a single love,

 ever excused from heartbreak

 

 The light of stars has spent millennia to reach us

 Don't you think we are sending lights too?

 Don't you think we have answered the universe?

 

I was there. It was beautiful.

Because you loved freedom more than the world

 

Because you loved freedom more than the world

You are once again a free soul, moving between lives —

From sins of the family, and curses for daughters 

— To make forgiveness possible

Yesterday we were four children from the past millennium 

Searching for the Big Dipper in the Southeast Asian sky

I wanted to be an artist, you said, and I a scientist

Tonight in the Bay Area I saw the Dipper again 

And I knew that nothing is lost —

Your dream is safe with me; I am the part of you that survived

And I finally learned peace from the chaos we shared

 

“Then I saw a new heaven and new earth, for the first heaven and first earth had passed away.”

And then I saw New Eden.

Good night, my sister

Farewell and godspeed

(Sylvia Winters to Jing Xue 1991-2025)'

 

 

The night my sister died, I stood in my backyard. In the distance, I heard the traffic on Highway 101, and the droning of planes heading toward San Francisco Airport. There wasn't a moon, but the sky was clear, and I could easily see the stars. I could see six stars out of the seven that made up the Big Dipper. I breathed in the winter air of the Bay Area—of a place filled with enterprising spirit, optimism, joviality and confusion—and I knew that despite all the loneliness, despite all the grief I had, and despite the loss of what could have been—the joys and sorrows we shared in this life are eternal. I have found eternity in every moment of being.