For almost fifteen years of her life, she did not have a permanent home. We constantly unsettled her, uprooted her, and moved her. She lived in five cities in three countries.

She returned to a city she had lived in previously. When she finally had a home, she slept on a couch in an office full of books, across from a chayote tree Má gifted us. She watched it grow, occasionally pawing it, once leaving bite marks on a leaf.

A week after she passed, the mailman returned her cremated remains and expressed his condolences for our loss. Her once beautiful tortoiseshell markings became grey ashes.

Another week later, her remains still in the unopened USPS box, we moved the chayote tree outside where the sun could nourish it.

Má worried that we had waited too long to finally plant the chayote. It might not yield crops.

I worried where we could bury her, her final resting place.

And so, under the chayote vine, we buried her ashes, outside of her home where she had lived for four months in what would be her first and final permanent home, under the plant she had watched grow from root to vine.