“Bún Riêu,” a comforting Vietnamese tomato-based soup traditionally made with ground pork, crabs, and tofu, is also a dish I nostalgically cook every once in a Sunday to honor my Aunt, my cousin Mai Si’s mother, a “childless lady” who to me was never less of a Mother. 

***Trigger warning: grief and loss, infertility. 

The first time I learned about death was at 4-years-old, when my younger cousin and childhood playmate Mai Si was taken away by dengue fever, a gruesome mosquito borne disease that no 3-year-old should have to die from. 

My Dad was with her all the way until the very end, just as they arrived at the gate of the children’s hospital. She opened her eyes, he recounted, and asked “Are we at grandma’s house?”, to which her mother responded “Yes,” at which point Mai Si exhaled her last breath.

A weekday, a seemingly routine visit to grandma’s house was suddenly disrupted by a heavy and gloomy air. The adults were too distraught with grief to explain why Mai Si was sleeping like a winter bear before me.  

Amidst our parents’ and grandparents’ uncontrollable wailing, Mai Si’s usual twinkling brown marble eyes peacefully shut like we were taking one of our afternoon hammock naps under grandpa’s mango tree. Except now, it seemed the nap was eternal.

All I understood was yesterday she was here, today she is not. Yesterday there were three musketeers, today there are only two. The remaining two musketeers, confused and dejected, went out to the front porch and sat next to each other in silence for the rest of the afternoon, painfully aware of a Mai Si-sized void in-between us. Overhead, summer clouds slowly drifted by, as the mango tree’s rustling branches whispered words of comforting solace.

Mom pointed to the Moon and explained that Mai Si went to live with “Chú Cuội” (the Moon Boy), just like all the other children who left early, just like my 6-month-old sister Trường Chinh did in 1976. Mom did her best.

That night, the familiar ghost train passing by our house bellowed a mourning cry that I never could. Near her tracks, the sobbing waves of rice paddies sent their last goodbye through the wind up to the summer crescent moon, where I believe Mai Si still sits.

But life went on, and Mai Si's mother, who is not my biological aunt but often cared for us like we were her own children, continued her duty as a wife and daughter-in-law.  She is arguably the best cook in our family and would often feed us kids when we were dropped off at grandma’s house on our Sunday play dates.

Mai Si's death took away a piece of her heart that will never return, but to add insult to injury, my aunt soon found out afterwards that due to medical reasons, she would NEVER be able to have a biological child again - a devastating blow to a nurturing woman who only ever wanted to be a mother. Time and the adoption of our new cousin assuaged the deeply-cut wounds, but the heartache remains. Though people around her branded an invisible “childless lady” Scarlett letter on her chest, to me, my aunt was never less of a mother.

“Bún Riêu” was one of my aunt’s signature dishes that holds a special place in my memories. She often cooked them before and even after Mai Si’s death, as we gathered at grandma’s house for Sunday supper under dim fluorescent lights flickering to the rhythm of cicadas serenading the distant summer sunset.

My memories of Mai Si have diluted down to a few photographs, but by cooking “Bún Riêu” every once in a Sunday, I hope to honor my “other mother,” and to make sure the world remembers there used to live a little girl named Mai Si.