The day Iris died, my world changed forever. The shock struck me. First, I felt the numbness. Then it was pain, endless pain. Not a single day passes that I do not think of her. The pain is constant.

Since her death, a number of memorial services in her honor have taken place. The news media and the Internet have been flooded with the news and the speculation about her death. Letters of condolences have poured in. Her admirers found a way to relieve their pain by telling us in poems, prose and art forms how much they loved her. For me the pain will always be there as long as I live. It won’t heal with time.

One of the condolence letters stated, “I can think of no greater sadness than for a parent to lose a child … ” My heart aches and bleeds whenever I think what Iris had said to me. We were as close as a mother and a daughter could be. She would tell me all — her dreams, her ambitions, her happiness, her sadness, her failure, her success — in the earliest hours of the morning or the latest of the evening, over phone calls or in e-mails.

Her words have been haunting me since she died. She had told me she wanted to continue writing to expose the injustice, to right the wrong and to voice the voiceless. She told me she wished to write at least 10 books in her life. Whenever she heard or read something unjust, she would tell me she wanted to do something about it. Now she is gone, her dream has evaporated.

In the beginning of March this year, one month before her birthday, I tried to think of a way to do something about her unfinished work. I could wait no longer. It has been over a year and three months since she died. I called several good friends of Iris’s and the members of the organization, Global Alliance for the Preserving the History of WWII in Asia. I told them about my wish to establish a memorial fund in the name of Iris. Within two weeks, we wrote down the mission statement and goals according to Iris’s wishes. Iris’s mission is to seek the truth in history, to speak for justice and to defend human rights.

With the blessing of the Global Alliance board members and the help of a number of friends, the Iris Chang Memorial Fund was established on March 28, her 38th birthday. The day before, my husband Shau-Jin and I went to visit her grave. Under the blue sky and the bright sunshine, we told her our determination to carry on her mission. “Iris, please rest in peace!” we told her.

Immediately, we embarked on the first project of the fund, a memorial essay contest, even before we had started our fundraising campaign. Perhaps, I am too anxious; perhaps, I have Iris’s blood in my veins.

The pain will never disappear from me, but at least, I get temporary relief from the pain. The wound is still there. On the surface, the scar is gradually forming, but under the scar the blood is still running. But it’s a powerful force to push me, to look forward and to continue living.

Our Iris Chang is gone, but it’s our belief that many Iris Changs are out there and many more yet to become. It is the mission of the Iris Chang Memorial Fund to educate, to discover the voices of the next generation and to preserve her life legacy.

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Ying-Ying Chang is the mother of the late Iris Chang and a microbiology professor at the University of Illinois. Although Ying-Ying admits that she is “a scientist, not a writer,” she is sponsoring the first Iris Chang Memorial Essay Contest on “How has Iris Chang’s book, The Rape of Nanking: The Forgotten Holocaust of WWII, affected my life and thinking?” Submissions of 2,500 words can be made by July 31 to the Iris Chang Memorial Essay Contest, P.O. Box 641324, San Jose, CA 95164, or to ICMF@irischangmemorialfund.org. More details can be found at www.global-alliance.net.