Late in the summer of 2024, my mother was moved into hospice after a brief hospitalization. She was given a week or two to live. I promptly returned home to Los Angeles from New York and steeled myself for her passing. The trip lasted five months.

My days would begin at 5 a.m., when the Slack switchboard lit up. I worked to the sound of birds outside before the house stirred. When the lunch lull arrived on the east coast, I’d head to the kitchen—to make my dad’s breakfast, review whatever errands or housework needed doing, and prepare a Thermos of Hong Kong–style yin yang coffee: loose Ceylon tea, flushed with boiling water, combined with strong black coffee, then topped with evaporated milk until rich and creamy. It was the one thing she would always want.

By the mid-afternoon, I’d close the laptop and call my dad. “She’s been sleeping most of the day, didn’t eat much,” he’d say. I would open the fridge, which was always crowded with leftovers—creations of my own, and prepared foods dropped off by church friends—and assemble a sampling in a Pyrex container. We never knew what would entice her limited appetite. In the car on the way to the hospice, I’d look at the same strip malls and store fronts I'd driven past in my youth, many now faded and vacant.

My dad, brother, and I had begun the process of sifting through her things, knowing she wouldn’t ever see most of it again. We brought her the more precious heirlooms, hoping she might tell us their provenance. Most jewelry was too antiquated and valuable to consider wearing in hospice. One item caught my eye—a floral cloisonné bracelet that her mother once wore. My mom was not particularly sentimental, but she let me clasp it around her wrist. By then, she had become so skinny that whenever she raised her arms, it would slip down to the upper arm.

The three of us did what we could. My somewhat fussy but always considerate dad would sit with her most of the day in order to receive visitors and to keep abreast of medications and status checks. I was the kitchen task rabbit and the garbage disposal. I cooked, cleaned, kept a mental inventory of foods and containers, and ate anything that would soon need to be tossed. My brother was the handyman, tech support, and logistics shift worker—the one who filled the unexpected gaps. He always had a sweet treat or fast food when my organic, nutritionally dense, and insulin-friendly recommendations were rebuffed. Any moment that perked her up was a day won.

Just a few times, after the hospice quieted down for the evening, I tried my hand at the oak-finished Baldwin piano in the common area. I’d play something familiar—pieces she had enjoyed. It was my mother’s capable but limited playing that first drew me to the piano. When I was seven, she sensed my interest, scraped together the funds for lessons, and then drove me weekly to the teacher's house, deep in the winding hills of Palos Verdes Estates. As I advanced, she would leave scores open at the piano—pieces she didn’t have the patience to learn herself, gently steering me. The last pieces she placed before me were a pair of Chopin nocturnes.

My mother was the second of seven children, and the eldest daughter. She grew up in a three-bedroom flat in 1950s and ‘60s Hong Kong, with her grandmother, and, occasionally, a live chicken waiting its turn. Her parents ran a print shop for a newspaper and Buddhist periodicals. Her father was a photographer, photo editor, and a type setter, while her mother was the proud beautiful face of the operations who could also keep her children behaved with a single glance or word. There was a strong sibling rivalry in the flat, which shaped my mother. She was averse to conflict and kept to herself, dutifully helping with the cooking. She learned to block out distractions as she patiently washed, soaked, marinated, gutted, descaled, deveined, cleaved, and minced away—learning and practicing a craft that had been passed down across generations of woks.

After immigrating to the U.S., my mother dispensed with some traditional cooking methods, like the use of bamboo steamers, and adopted other habits contrary to her upbringing. She was a compulsive shopper at stores like Daiso for cheap sundry tools, the majority of which she promptly forgot about. She loved plastic, for all the novelty and convenience it provided. It replaced all our fine serving ware, which was banished to the garage due to its “weight.” A favorite dish of hers—steamed ginger scallion whole fish, was prepared in the microwave with a layer of Saran wrap, which inflated like a giant soap bubble before settling over the fish. I tell friends I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth.

Over the years, I had tried to meet her in the kitchen, to learn through her homestyle dishes, to unlock some part of that heritage, even with her American adaptations. But there was never enough time.

During those five months we did get a little more time—one more round of holidays and one more memorable moment, when she passed peacefully on February 22nd at 2:22pm. What my mother left behind was an invitation. Our garage remains an apothecary of TCM, dried herbs, and dried seafood—all stored in repurposed mayonnaise jars and Costco biscotti containers, their labels scribbled over with her Chinese script. Some items had been brought back from Hong Kong when she would go to visit: dried tangerine peels and pu’er tea over a hundred years old and still viable.

With the help of Google Lens and websites like The Woks of Life, I’ve started learning how to use these items. When I’m back in Los Angeles, I scan the contents and their labels, look up what they’re meant for, and try to cook something that might pass my dad’s scrutiny. Then I bring back to New York what I can and continue the exploration.

Hand Me Down is a series, with a new essay appearing each day through Mother’s Day, celebrating the gifts—tangible and intangible—that our mothers give us.