Mom's measurement notebook, and seven questions for the handwriting she left behind

Bust 88. Waist 70. Sleeve 56. At the bottom, Auntie Nga's name, in blue ballpoint that has faded, the 7 with a bar across its middle the way Mom always wrote it, since I was in school.

The brown plastic-covered notebook lives under the sewing machine shelf, a pale yellow tape measure tucked in to mark the page. I first noticed it after the funeral, on a Saturday night, while hunting for the pin box. I stood holding it for about ten minutes without opening it. Then I put it back exactly where it was, and picked it up again two weeks later.

If your house has something like this, you probably know the feeling. A shopping list stuck on the fridge. "Salt" and "sugar" written by hand on the jars. A row of phone numbers in pencil beside the light switch. Paper and ink, and still you slow down a beat every time you walk past.

This is seven questions for writing about a thing like that, running from just describing it to starting to ask. I did them in this order, including the places where I got it wrong.

None of this is about writing well. It is not about closing anything either: Mom's notebook has no last page, and finishing the writing does not mean the missing stops. I have been at this for three weeks and tonight I still stood looking at that barred 7 for a long while before pulling the shop shutter down.

Why is holding a notebook easier than writing about Mom?

The second Saturday night. The shutter half down, the cutting-table lamp throwing a yellow stripe across a piece of checked fabric still marked with tailor's chalk. I took a sheet of A4 and wrote "Mom". Crossed it out. Wrote "Mom was the kind of person". Crossed it out. Crumpled the sheet, tossed it in the basket of fabric scraps. The third sheet went the same way, and the fourth.

Then I opened the notebook to Auntie Nga's page and wrote on the fifth sheet: "Auntie Nga, waist seventy, Mom wrote seventy. Probably not seventy anymore." That line went straight through, no crossing out. I kept going for half a page about the bar on the 7, and forgot I was crying until a drop landed on the word "waist".

At first I thought it was because the notebook is short and the thing is small, so writing about it weighs less. Thinking it over, that is not quite it. Writing "about Mom" means describing a whole person, and I am not sure I knew all of her. So every sentence came out as a eulogy or an apology, and both rang false. The notebook only asks me to describe the notebook. Mom slips in through the gaps, when I am not guarding the door.

I do not really know why this works. I only know the fifth sheet ran, and the four crumpled ones did not.

So pick something to hold. Anything will do as long as it carries the person's handwriting and is not too big for a table. Set it down without opening it. Take a pencil, because pencil can be erased and the hand worries less. Set ten minutes. The first time, ten minutes can feel strangely long, and plenty of people manage only three lines. Three lines is enough. A few days on, some people find the words come easier and some stay just as stiff. If it stays stiff, change the object, the pen, the seat, and do not change it by forcing yourself.

On a busy day, ninety seconds. One of the seven questions below, three lines, on the back of a receipt if that is what is there.

There was one place I slipped in the very first week. On Tuesday night I opened my laptop and typed the whole notebook into a spreadsheet. It sounded sensible: busy shop, paper falls apart, better to copy it. Eighteen pages in, I noticed my hands were running while my eyes were not reading. I was typing so I would not have to look at Mom's handwriting. Those eighteen pages now sit in the computer and I cannot recall a single one. Backing things up is tempting because it looks useful, and useful work is easier to allow than sitting still. Now I photograph one page each night with my phone, and when the photo is taken I am done. I do not type.

Seven questions, from just describing to starting to ask

"Where's your mom, Thu?"

"She passed in March, Auntie."

"Oh, no. I didn't know. And my ao dai..."

"It's in the notebook, Mom already wrote it down. I'll follow that."

Auntie Nga sat down on the little stool by the cutting table and said nothing for a while, then asked, "Does she still cross her 7s?" I turned the notebook around and showed her. She nodded, and asked nothing more about the ao dai for twenty minutes.

I remember that scene because it told me the order of the seven questions. Auntie Nga did not begin with "how did your mom go", the question everyone asked me for weeks (one of those moments stayed with me, and I wrote about it in the piece on being asked if you are better yet). She began with the 7. People come into a big missing through a small detail, and if I go straight to the deepest question while my hand is not used to the page, the answer will not come. I did that once and I will tell you about it below.

There is another reason I only saw later. The deep questions are hard not because they are deep. They are hard because we are not sure we are allowed to answer "I don't know". The first three questions below teach the hand that first: answer with what can be seen, no need to say what you feel.

The first three: just describe, don't ask anything yet

1. Where in your home is the thing in their handwriting, and how many times a day do you walk past it?

Write it like giving directions to a stranger: which floor, which drawer, what is next to it. No need yet to say how you feel.

2. If you had to describe the handwriting to someone who has never seen it, what would you say?

What colour of ink, which way it leans, which number is written in its own particular way. I spent a whole evening on the bar across that 7.

3. When in the day did they write it, and where were they sitting?

You may never have seen it happen. A guess is fine, but write the word "guess". Mine is that Mom wrote it right after the customer left, because one page still has a smear of chalk.

The next four: ask about what you don't know

4. Is there a spot you keep reading without understanding what they meant to write?

Next to Auntie Hạnh's name, Mom drew a tiny x in pencil. I asked the regulars, I asked Auntie Tám who sells thread across the street, nobody knew. I wrote "don't know" and left it right there. It is still on page thirty-one.

5. Was there a time you used it in a way they never told you to?

I took Bích's measurements to make a skirt, and the numbers in Mom's hand made me feel safe. On delivery she put it on and could not close the zip. Mom's numbers were right, only taken three years before. Write down the time you slipped, no need to fix it.

6. Besides you, who else remembers them through this thing?

It might be a regular customer, a neighbour, an old friend who once received a handwritten note. Write their name, and one sentence they once said.

7. If you could add exactly one line to that page, what would you write, and with which pen?

Some people write it and cross it out. Some hold the pen for a long time and leave the page empty. Both count as having written.

The first time I got through the first three, I felt I had not done anything. All I had described was a cover and a 7. But by question four my hand was used to it, and writing "don't know" turned out lighter than I expected. A few people I know said the opposite, that question four was the heaviest and they stopped there for a whole week. That is also a way to go.

On a busy day, pick question two, the handwriting. It is the shortest and the least risky.

Where I truly went wrong was question seven. The first week I jumped straight to it, because it was the one I most wanted to write, and I wrote a whole paragraph: "Mom, I promise to look after the shop properly." Reading it back, it sounded like something printed in a card, and nobody in our house ever spoke to each other like that. It sounded beautiful, and because it sounded beautiful I believed it. The next day I crossed out the whole paragraph and wrote: "Mom, I'm using the softer tape measure, the stiff one is hard on shoulders." That sounded more like our house. Question seven suits small things like that more than it suits promises.

If you tried and it didn't work

Wednesday night, I finished question five and stood up, walked out and pulled the shop shutter up, and stood on the threshold. The wind carried the smell of machine oil and of smoke from the grill place across the street. I did not want to go back to the table. Not because I was sadder than any other night. I just did not want to.

If you are standing in that spot too, a few things are worth saying. It may be that the question touched the place that is still raw, and you need to stop. Really stop, not "stop and come back in a minute". Close the notebook, wash your hands, drink some water, go stand outside for a bit. Tomorrow come back with question two, the easiest, or do not come back this week. Nobody is grading you.

It may also be that you sit the full ten minutes and no words come, or what comes is clipped, like filling out a form. Some people were never made for writing. In that case, try saying the same questions out loud into your phone, or walk through the house and point at each thing with handwriting on it and say its name. Any way that gets the thing out of your head is fine, including writing in another form, like in writing a memory in gratitude for someone who has died. I do not know which way suits you.

This morning Auntie Nga came for a fitting. She put the dress on, turned once in front of the long mirror, and said, "The waist is a little loose now, dear." I marked it with chalk, picked up the pencil, and wrote the new number right under Mom's, a 7 with a bar across the middle.

When to seek professional support

This article is a set of questions for writing about something a person left behind. It cannot replace treatment, and I would not dare promise that the missing will get lighter.

But here are a few signs you should bring to a professional, rather than carrying them alone:

• For many weeks in a row you have barely eaten or barely slept because of missing them
• You cannot go to work or manage the most basic things at home for many weeks
• Many months have passed and each day is still as heavy as the first, or heavier
• You think about hurting yourself, even if it is just a passing thought

The last point cannot wait. Speak with someone you trust, today. The Emergency Support page explains what holds true in moments like that.

Seeing a professional does not mean you are grieving the wrong way. Some kinds of missing people should not carry alone, the way a big bolt of fabric takes two people, one at each end.

This article was created with AI assistance.