I don’t really know how my wai gong (grandfather) died. No one in my family knows for sure either. When my grandmother left their house to run some errands during a California heat wave and returned just under an hour later, she found him face-down in their pool. I was here in Michigan when my mom called me and told me the news, and then I was home for his funeral a week later. Although I was living at home, eating the same familiar food, and constantly surrounded by family during that time, everything just felt so different because suddenly he wasn’t there anymore.
My wai gong made me feel at home–what will happen to my sense of home once he is gone? I look to my dreams of him for answers in this animated short. I imagine entering through a moon gate, a Chinese architectural structure that symbolizes rebirth and traditionally provided entrance into a family home, and I reconcile with the fact that my wai gong now solely lives on in my dreams and memories.
