Survived by a Daughter

April Saul

Philadelphia Inquirer

In a cramped, inner-city apartment, a Cambodian girl named Mom Doss tried to coax a smile from her dying mother. The refugee family had been in America only three years when the gastric cancer struck, forcing the vivacious 8-year-old to become--at least for a few months--her own mother’s mother. She changed bandages, washed bedpans, translated for hospice workers, and kept house for herself and her father after school. When her mother died, Mom’s emotional roller coaster intensified. She shrugged, then plunged into feverish activity, and finally sobbed on her half-brother’s shoulder at the funeral home. At the Cambodian service, Mom sat apart from the monks and mourners, hugging an old purse of her mothers and running her fingers through the cremated ashes in anguish. Mom slowly began to recover, but her distant, grieving father did not. Determined to flee sad memories, he packed their belongings and took his daughter to the west coast to start over once more.

April Saul, "Survived by a Daughter," in POYi Archive, Item #13613, http://archive.poy.org/items/show/13613 (accessed April 21, 2025).