When You Were Here

tea with her occasionally at the Tatsuma Teahouse, where she told us such beautiful stories of her family, especially you. She was quite fond of the teahouse and liked to laugh and say that she was just following doctor’s orders by going there. I would also like to let you know that she was always happy when she was here. She was the most joyful person I think I have ever known, perhaps especially in the last few months.
    Best,
    Kana
    Then there’s a phone number and an e-mail address under her name. But I don’t dial and I don’t type because I’m already up the stairs, turning the corner, opening the door to my mom’s room for the first time in two months, a room I’ve avoided purposefully because the emptiness might kill me. I don’t look around; I head straight for her bathroom.
    I yank open the medicine cabinet, hunting for pill bottles. But there are none in here. Just toothpaste, lipstick, nail polish, lotion, and a nail file. Did Kate clean them out? Dump out the unused meds? She’s the only other person who’s been in the house. I close the mirrored door quickly and open the drawers below the sink to find towels, tissues, and a hair dryer that was hardly used in the last few years.
    I leave, putting blinders on as I pass the bed that’s been made for two months, and head back downstairs.
    I read the letter again, keying in on the temple and the teahouse this time. My mom e-mailed me every day when she was there for her treatments and talked to me about how good she felt when she came back, but she never mentioned a temple, and she definitely never said a word about Tatsuma anything, certainly not whether the good doctor had sent her to a teahouse, of all places.
    Each time she returned from a visit, she’d tell me about the treatments, about how the combo of herbs and diet, drugs and medicine, seemed to be working better than anything had before. One time, as we walked the dog to our favorite coffee shop—green tea for her, coffee for me—she said she could tell , really tell, as she tapped her heart, as her eyes sparked with hope, that Takahashi’s approach was doing the trick.
    She was getting well for real, for good.
    But then the cancer came roaring back, and when I’d ask her about her visits, about the miracle cure that didn’t last, she’d turn the conversation to school, or the dog, or my college plans.
    Maybe there was something she wanted to tell me about her time in Tokyo, about her treatments there, about her last great hope, but she couldn’t figure out how to say it?
    I’m not religious, I’m not spiritual, I don’t even know if I believe in anything, yet here is this letter arriving just days after I’ve started thinking about a trip to Tokyo, and it feels like a message from out there .
    Because if there are stories about her life that have yet to be told, pieces of her that I could still get to know, it’s almost as if my mom’s not completely gone. Maybe she even meant for me to know them now , to find these pieces when I need them most? Because, if there’s a little bit of my mom still left in this world, then maybe I won’t feel so unmoored all the time. Maybe I can feel that thing called happiness again.
    Yes.
    This is what I’m supposed to be doing this summer. This is how I’m supposed to be passing my days. Figuring out the secret to how she was the most joyful person when she was dying. Because I’m living, and I sure as hell don’t have a clue how to feel anything but empty.
    I flip open my laptop and plug Tatsuma Teahouse into the browser, but I can’t find a website for it, only a location in Shibuya on a few city guides. There’s a short review on one of the sites, so I copy the Japanese words into an online translator, and read the results.
    Tatsuma Tea is very healing cure.
    The last word tastes like déjà vu.
    My mom never talked about this teahouse, but she sure as hell used words like cure . I want to smack myself for not having gone to Tokyo with her on her last quest for a cure, for not getting to know the final doctor who took care of her. Because I get that green tea is supposed to be good for you and all, but doctor’s orders ? What’s that all about?
    I could call or e-mail Kana, but I don’t want to say the wrong thing to her, to this girl who may hold the key to all the things I don’t know about my mom, all the things that would bring a bit of her alive again. Instead I want to take a crazy leap of faith. To go out on the