Written in 2026
Freediving is a form of underwater diving that relies on holding one’s breath, instead of using a breathing apparatus like scuba gear. Freedivers dive for recreational and practical purposes, such as to catch food, and can reach depths of hundreds of feet / meters with only one breath.
The standard checklist before a dive: check gear (mask, fins, snorkel, weight belt), confirm conditions (current, visibility, depth), breathe slow and relaxed for 2-3 minutes. A body scan is highly suggested, a relaxation technique where you mentally move attention through each part of your body in sequence, noticing and releasing tension. Once ready, one final breath is taken. At depth, divers describe a dreamlike calm as the body slows and the mind quiets.
10:31pm in Rogers Park, Chicago. I sit in an orange Papasan chair (bowl chair), draped in a purple blanket that my sister probably knitted. It’s spring but still freezing at night to the surprise of no one who knows Chicago even a little bit. I’m looking at Tobimaru, plopped down in one of his beds, he has many, since he’s spoiled, as he drifts in and out of sleep. Tobimaru, Tobi for short, is an elder Shiba Inu now, going on fourteen, with grey in his eyes that shimmer at times and shadow in others. The only light on right now glows on the other side of the room, and in the dim his coat looks less toasted marshmallow and more like the cream of his puppyhood.
I just finished bawling my eyes out because Tobi is old and will die soon and when I say goodbye to go back to Colorado it might be the last time I ever see him. I had just come home from wherever and he got up to say hello to me, all slow and arthritic and slipping every couple of steps, and I lost it. He didn’t even whine as he sometimes does, when he hasn’t seen me for months, but this greeting felt so tender. Maybe it’s because these days, everything about being alive leaves me tender, but this particular hello of his, though in its typical form of head snuggles and tip taps and gentle licks, really seemed like a goodbye. Like he knows, as I do, that we don’t have much longer left together.
The tears cascaded at first, then sat on my face, a formed puddle as I lay down. Tobi licked my face and I let him, wondering whether it was the salt or the sadness that his heightened canine sense tasted more.
We hear the subway in the distance. Tobi has since moved to the couch-bed my sister made for me (us), and I hope against all hope that he stays with me most of the cold night as I love his warmth. He’ll probably leave at some point though, which I don’t hold against him since Shibas prefer their personal space, at least most of the time. I don’t mind because I’ll come to wherever he is anyway and whisper-sing the song my mother made up for him when he was new to us and the world. This song I’ve been singing so much to him lately because I miss him and my sister and my mother and my father and the life we had, could have had, a song that mourns and celebrates and honors and thanks:
My Tobi is a good boy. My Tobi loves mama, and papa, and PJ, and EJ.
(Repeat however many times you like and add whoever you think Tobi loves, or should love.)
Somewhere on the other side of the world, across the Rockies and the Pacific Ocean, floats a group of over 7,000 islands known as the Philippines. The Philippines is known for its people, its beaches, and its waters, a veritable freediving paradise. There, in the verdant and clean of Marikina, at about the time of this writing, my mother is taking her afternoon nap. If the caregivers followed protocol, as I trust that they have, her A1C will be at a normal level, some blood sugar number that I can’t, unfortunately due to my lack of teleportation powers, check myself. The air con should be blustering cool air throughout the room where she sleeps, keeping a comfortable temperature even in the tropical heat, one low enough for her sleep to be deep, sound, unbroken. Sana mahimbing ng tulog niya. (I hope she sleeps soundly.)
I know that people suffering from dementia still dream. Dreams in people with dementia can mirror their emotional and physical world when awake: confusion, anxiety, distress alongside vibrance and calm and the comfort of coming home to long-term memory and early life. It hurt so much to witness my mom kick and scream while trapped in a dream, no nightmare, for what felt like hours, eventually cry-heaving herself into silence. I was reminded of what she told me right as the dementia accelerated.
I don’t want to live like this, J. I’d rather die. Help me die.
Another reason I’ve been singing the Tobi song to Tobi. I hope against all hope my mother hears it. If not while she’s awake, while she dreams. Somehow love or something quantum beams the song, accompanied by my booming and breaking heart, thousands of miles across spacetime and straight into her synapses. A miracle occurs, and suddenly in her mind we’re all together, listening to her sing, however many times she’d like to repeat: My Tobi is a good boy. My Tobi loves mama, and papa, and PJ, and EJ.
Mama, I don’t know if I can help you die. But maybe I can help you dream. I can help you dance, and sing, and smile. I can help you remember when you forget. I can honor you by living like you taught me to. I can love hard and care gentle. I can work, unrelenting, motivated by responsibility. I can love papa and EJ like you do, and our cousins and titas and titos and the rest of our family and friends. I can do good now, love mercy now, like you.
I can tell you what joy is. It is the almost indescribable conflagration of heat, humidity, tropical flora, congestion, and perhaps dried fish, that all come together to greet you upon landing in Manila; somehow this sensory experience is almost universally recognized as home, even to some who did not grow up in the Philippines. In this chaos we came full circle, you, me, and pa coming home many years after we left for the states, both departure and return for reasons centered on love. Joy is us, working together, managing to carve a life for you as lucidity departs, filled with support and care that our people are known for. It is the gift of your daughter, an occupational therapist with extensive experience caring for people with dementia, who serves as a steady source of guidance and strength, both as a healthcare provider and a human.
Joy is me, your son, coming home to the motherland and living there for two years, speaking her languages, eating her foods, coming to learn and know her more and more, even as your body remembers less and less. It is the privilege of abiding by her waters, both fresh and salt, filled with abundance, tears, memory. Waters that reflect, that threaten, that heal, that remember. Joy is diving into her, surrendering, with all of my breath, and all of my love. Until shadow turns to shimmer, until there is no until.