My Name is Sam

“Twenty-five, OMG! A quarter century already! A thousand experiences, but only a continuous blur, like two passing trains, when recalled.

One thing my parents learned from when I started to talk until I started school was that I talked … and talked … and held nothing back. I fought, I screamed, I entertained, I conversed, I engaged and I was beguiling. I was different and I knew it. I was a gift from God and a star, and it all came naturally.

My next twenty-five years will build on the bedrock of my formative years. I will be able to look back on them, whether as wife, mother, grandmother — and definitely as one of the twenty ‘must know’ people in Hong Kong — and see how these early events and experiences shape the person I will ultimately become.”

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“If sixty-plus years is not enough to live our dreams and become, how can twenty-five years be? How do you deal with the very tangible yet mystical appearance of death into a young life? What was the sum total of Samantha’s short life packed up into? A vast trove of memories, contrived from various footprints — Facebook posts, photos, and mainly my own memories and those of her myriad friends all over the world.

Samantha constantly reminds me to squeeze every possible minute from the life I have yet to live.

It struck me, when I commenced this work, I knew far too little of my girl, but along the way, with the revelations of others, I have come to know her a little better and to love her even a little more.”