My Nai Nai dressed my Ye Ye every morning for over sixty years. The last time she dressed him was for his funeral.
The coroner comes and goes. The Taoist shaman comes and goes. But the family stays. There are many things left to be done.
Nai Nai is gathering Ye Ye’s belongings, the clothes that he is to be burned with, his favorite shoes, the paper fan he’d use to cool himself with during sweltering Taiwanese summers. The coroner has told Nai Nai it is best to dress Ye Ye in his funeral clothes now. Before the body gets cold and hard. Their daughter, the shamanic authority of the family, doesn’t like this idea.
“If you touch him immediately after death, he’ll feel intense pain,” she insists. “We must dress Ba Ba without touching him at all.”
Nai Nai looks at Ye Ye, what would have been an exchange of knowing looks. Her husband says nothing.
The women compromise, agreeing to dress him quickly, skin touching skin as little as possible. But while the daughter rushes, Nai Nai takes her time. She straightens the collar of her husband’s shirt and checks that the waistband of his pants hugs his belly comfortably. She runs her fingers through his now sparse, white hair, brushing it tenderly. As if by instinct, she licks her finger and smooths the unruliest strands.
The daughter grows impatient. “Mom, you’re too slow. You’re hurting him. Just let me…”
Nai Nai does not budge. She rubs Ye Ye’s hands between her own, searching for something; feeling the familiar grooves of his palms and the veins of his wrist. She continues with their routine, carefully checking the seams of her husband’s trousers, the pair she steam pressed just last week. She moves on to his socks, stretching them with her fingers so they don’t restrict his circulation during the long journey ahead.
Suddenly, Nai Nai leaves the room, and returns with her husband’s favorite gold-rim glasses, the ones that always made him look so smart and charming, like a senator.
He’ll need these to see, she thinks to herself. She reaches over her daughter’s busy arms to place the glasses gently across Ye Ye’s face.
Later, Nai Nai will tell me over the phone how she leaned back, admiring her work. I savor every detail, wishing I could have been there, too. Instead, I will send him off over video chat. During the funeral, I wonder if my grandfather can hear me calling to him from across the ocean, whether my laptop can transfer my grief; if he knows his granddaughter’s heart is breaking.
~
Long before Nai Nai, Ye Ye was dressed by his mother. The only son of wealthy landowners in a small village in Jiang Su, he rarely had to lift a finger. When Ye Ye entered school, each morning, his mother would place his clean uniform at the foot of the bed, freshly washed of the stains he’d acquired the day before. As he got older, Ye Ye eventually dressed himself—although it wasn’t always a choice. While hiding from Japanese soldiers during the war, he was forced to go for days at a time without washing or changing. In the deafening silence each night, he dreamed he’d wake up the next morning to his mother’s gentle voice, back in his childhood bedroom, his clean clothes folded at his feet.
Ye Ye eventually found his way to Taiwan, where he met his would-be wife, a woman so beautiful a large portrait of her hung in the window of a photography studio in the neighborhood where he walked his beat as a young cop. At 30 and 22, respectively, Ye Ye and Nai Nai married; and of her many household duties and chores, Nai Nai made it a point to help her husband get dressed every morning—not because he asked her to, but because it brought her pride. Both she and her husband agreed: how a man dressed was critical to his career and reputation. So it was important he dressed well.
When they first married, it was the police uniform. Though Ye Ye was only a beat cop, Nai Nai thought it was crucial he looked presentable to his superiors, carefully steaming his uniform every night, gently folding it over the nice wooden hangers she’d purchased on sale. She was young; the only thing she’d ever steamed before had been the gown she’d worn when she snuck out of her mother’s house to compete in a local pageant at 18. Still, she did her best, and so did he. As Ye Ye slowly rose through the ranks, his uniform became adorned with new medals, and Nai Nai’s responsibilities grew. Soon, they had children, and she dressed them, too. But their morning routine stayed the same: The least I could do is make sure my husband looks good.
Three kids later, Ye Ye left the precinct to start his own leather goods business. Nai Nai was supportive; their kids were getting older and household expenses were only growing. Together, they purchased him a good suit, one that cost a little more than they could afford, but that made him look smart and trustworthy. Nai Nai helped her husband into the suit every morning, and Ye Ye would smile and kiss her goodbye before heading off to work. When there were small rips and tears in the seams, Nai Nai would sew them back together after putting the kids to bed at night. She didn’t mind the added work. The silence of the night, interrupted only by the rhythmic hum of her sewing machine, became a familiar lullaby that belonged to her alone.
When the business took off, Ye Ye and Nai Nai bought a new home, and Ye Ye’s first good suit proudly gathered dust in the back of its largest closet. They hired a housekeeper. Because of this, Nai Nai no longer had to wash and tailor her husband’s clothes, but each morning, she would pick out a perfect suit for his scheduled meetings from a wardrobe filled with color.
The life they’d built made her proud, and she held her head high, always moving through the world with grace. Even when the business failed and the debt collectors came knocking, Nai Nai would take a deep breath, puff up her chest, and open the front door with a smile. She would walk to the busiest street corner at 6 AM every morning and sell homemade bento boxes to pay for the children’s school tuition, even more expensive now with her fourth child entering school. When Ye Ye had to go door to door begging relatives and neighbors for help, Nai Nai made sure he looked dignified while doing it.
The tough times passed, and the kids grew older, soon with children of their own. Nai Nai dressed them—dressed me—too, in one-of-a-kind sweaters she knit by hand so we never clashed outfits with anyone on the playground. Ye Ye’s daily uniform became a simple polo shirt and loose khakis, comfortable enough to play on the floor with his grandkids, but presentable enough in case Nai Nai wanted to snap a picture. As a child, and their eldest granddaughter, I loved to play lion, and Ye Ye would join me proudly, the two of us crawling around and roaring at each other like it was our own secret language. Nai Nai, meanwhile, would smile to herself from the living room couch, thankful she had time to mop the floors in the morning.
She would continue to dress him for the rest of his life, and after it. Even after her children had no longer needed her, and the grandchildren had gone to college, Nai Nai had never felt like an empty-nester, precisely because of this: Her husband had continued to need her, and to love her. And she’d been happy to be needed, and to be loved.
~
A week before Ye Ye passed, Nai Nai woke up in the middle of the night to her husband staring gently at her, the corners of his lips curled into a smile. With his dementia, Ye Ye often drifted in and out of consciousness, sometimes alert and sharp, other times blissfully unaware.
“Still so pretty after all these years,” he said softly. “I feel content and at peace, I’ve lived a fulfilling life.”
“Aiya, it’s so late. Go back to sleep.” Nai Nai dismissed him with a wave of her hand as she repositioned her back, sinking deeper into their bed. But she felt a tightness in her chest as his words, too, sank in—something about them felt so final.
After a few moments of silence, Ye Ye tried again, this time with a hint of urgency: “There’s something I need to tell you.”
Afraid of hearing what might be her husband’s last words, Nai Nai shut her eyes even tighter, and let out a light, fake snore.
Ye Ye lingered for a moment before rolling away to face the opposite wall, where an old photo of his wife at 18, in her pageant gown, smiled back at him. He sighed. Unable to control herself, Nai Nai awoke from her fake slumber to smooth out the wrinkles of his pajama shirt with her wrinkled fingertips, memorizing the warmth of his body.
The next morning, Nai Nai would wake up before her husband, wash up quickly, and prepare his clothes, just like she had every morning for the last 60 or so years. And of course, she would dress herself, too, from a wardrobe that had changed just as much as her husband’s over the years. When she’d first met him, she’d dress in her flirty floral dresses and her baby blue skirts with the ruffles; and as she got a little older, in her matching tweed skirt suits—always color coordinated with her husband’s outfit for the day, and embellished with a tasteful brooch or earrings from her collection. Today, she would wear her purple t-shirt and stretchy gray pants—a suitable uniform for a woman in her 80s with a day of cleaning and cooking ahead. She had no time or energy for jewelry now, but still put on the same rose-pink lipstick she’d worn every morning since she was 18, just to feel like herself. Satisfied, she’d turn again to their shared closet and begin her day’s work.
Dressing him for his funeral, Nai Nai knows it is the last time; the last time she will look at her husband’s face so closely, the last time she will smooth out the wrinkles of his shirt with her warm palms in a downward sweeping motion, the last time she will check that all his buttons are buttoned correctly. She wants to make sure she remembers it.
Nai Nai is calm and deliberate. Everything about this routine is familiar to her. Everything about his body is familiar to her. Every scar, every vein; and every thread that adorns it.
