My mother used to call me for no reason. Just to hear my voice. I let her calls go to voicemail. Everytime, she would leave messages saying, “Mạ gọi. Không có chi” in her heavy Huê accent. And I rarely returned her calls.

I understand now.
The calls were small doorways into her loneliness, her love, and her yearning to stay connected with her children.

I was busy living my life. Actually, busy going through life thinking I was living my life. There was always something else to do, somewhere else to be. And talking to Mom, catching up with her, is something I told myself I could do later. I thought she would always be there. I didn’t understand that time is not endless, and her time was getting shorter.

I think of the visits I made to San Diego — how I would sleep on the sofa in her bedroom, listening to the steady tick of her mechanical heart valve. It was the soundtrack of her survival, something I barely registered at the time. She was alive because of that sound, and I was close enough to hear it.

When I left after each visit, she cried. Not loudly — just a quiet grief, knowing the uncertainty of our next meeting.
I didn’t know what to do with that then.
I thought there would always be time for another visit, another chance.
I didn’t understand that each goodbye was heavier for her than it was for me.

She’s been gone five years now. Covid took away the simple things — the chance to sit with her again, to hold her hand, to color her hair, to feel the love of a mother, to answer the calls I ignored.

I watch my own children stepping into their lives, moving with the same unintentional distance I once had. They’re living, believing—like I did—that parents wait, that time will stretch. Some truths cannot be taught —only lived, only felt—after the moment has passed.

So I’m writing this as a reminder to myself.
That the past cannot be undone. That regrets cannot be eased or erased.
That love often speaks softly… through calls answered or unanswered, through tears we didn’t know how to hold.

My mother — with her quiet calls, and the love I didn’t fully understand until she was gone.

“Mạ gọi. Không có chi” has become one of the most important memories of my life.