Category Archives: Hope

He was there smiling at me.

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When people say that your wedding day is one of the most emotionally charged days of your life, they are really saying the truth. On our wedding day, I woke up crying and feeling sick in the stomach because I knew Ed wasn’t going to be there. I texted my friend and bridesmaid, who came to my room immediately to hold and comfort me. “It’s normal to feel this way,” she said, “but Ed wouldn’t want you crying on your wedding day. He’d want you to be smiling and happy.” I sucked it up, put ice on my eyes, and had my hair and makeup done with our design team with the moms and bridesmaids.

When “Jupiter” played during the bridal processional and my parents walked me out to the ocean terrace towards the altar, we stopped at the top of the stairs where Kim, my coordinator, asked me to stop so the photographers could get photos of my parents and me staring out at the water and our guests. We stopped there for a few seconds longer than we were supposed to because when I looked out, the first face I saw… was Ed. He was wearing a suit and a tie, and he was smiling back at me. I caught my breath and blinked my eyes, and then he was gone; what I thought was him was actually Chris’s friend’s husband smiling up at me.

I know I didn’t imagine him, though. He was really there. He was really standing there, smiling at me and happy that his baby sister was getting married. I missed him the entire day, but for him and for Chris, my family and friends, I was so happy. It was truly the happiest and most fun-filled day of my life.

Wedding vows revealed

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We wrote our own wedding vows and tried our best to customize our wedding as much as possible to reflect us and what is most important to us. These are the words and promises I shared on an ocean terrace overlooking the Pacific Ocean in Southern California today:

Eight years ago when we first met, it was certainly not love at first sight. But, it was definitely the beginning of an amazing friendship that over time, somehow evolved into a passion that has reached a depth I never thought possible. The truth is that before I met you and loved you, I always thought that in the ideal life partnership, two people would accept each other as is, and that was it. With you, I’ve realized how wrong I was. The rawest and most genuine love is one that recognizes your potential, is able to challenge you to reach that potential, and is ultimately able to encourage you to be the best possible version of yourself. It takes great strength, courage, and a lot of tough love to get there, but when we love, we face our fears, and we move forward in spite of those fears.

In you, I have found my best friend in every sense of the word. Your empathy, understanding, and optimistic view of the world and our place to contribute to it have inspired me to love more, give more, and slowly lose the cynicism I’ve held onto for so long. In my darkest hours, you’ve cut through all surrounding chaos and made clear your endless devotion to me and making my world a better, happier, and calmer place. You are not only my best and most loyal friend; you are my fiercest defender, my cheerleader, my travel and culture buddy, my food adventure mate, my taste testing guinea pig (even when my dishes don’t always come out well), my laundry boy, and my soul mate and inspiration.

Today, in front of our family and friends, I promise to continue growing with you, to encourage you to be all you are capable of being as you do with me. I vow to laugh, wrestle, and play with you even when life circumstances are challenging and hard. I promise to cook you fried rice and chicken curry stew, to rub your scalp with coconut oil when it gets too dry, to sew up the holes in your shirts and pants.. since you are inept at sewing. 🙂 But, above all, I promise to cherish and love you forever, putting you, my fuzzball, above all else.

I look forward to all of our life adventures together as we grow older, have a family, and contribute to this world we share together. My world is a brighter place with you in it. Thank you for loving and believing in me.

 

Welcome and rehearsal dinner

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Tonight, we welcomed our friends and family to a welcome and rehearsal dinner to kick off our wedding celebration. I was insistent that the food be Vietnamese and found a place within 30-minute driving distance that was a sister restaurant of a well-known restaurant in the Westminster area. It was authentic Vietnamese flavors with a modern take, and lots of fresh flavors and ingredients. I wanted everyone to know why we chose Vietnamese food, why I wore an ao dai, and a little more about our thoughts about my heritage, so I gave this short speech toward the end of dinner to honor my mom and her heritage:
Hi everyone – Are you all enjoying the food? Thanks so much for traveling from all over the world to be here with us this long weekend to celebrate our wedding. It really does mean so much to us, and we’re overwhelmed with gratitude knowing that all of you spent the time, money, and energy to be here these couple of days. Every time an RSVP “yes” came in, we were more and more overwhelmed.
We hope you’re enjoying the food. I’m not sure how much you guys know about the LA and Orange County area, but the OC actually has the largest concentration of Vietnamese people outside of Vietnam, and being half Vietnamese (or a quarter after taking a 23AndMe genetics test and realizing my mom is half Chinese, half Vietnamese), I wanted to honor my heritage and that of my mother’s tonight. My mom has no idea what I’m about to say right now, so she’s probably getting a little worried, but what I want to say is that I’d like to use this dinner celebration to honor her, not just with the food on the table tonight and her here in the room, but also with my traditional Vietnamese dress, which is called an ao dai. My mother left a war-torn country in the early 70s and all her family to marry my dad and start a brand new life here in the U.S. Unlike other immigrants, she had no way to get all her family over here. In fact, she never got to see any of them again until 2008, when we went back to Vietnam to see them. She came here without any other family, was able to get the equivalent of a high school degree, and then an office job that helped to support my brother and me and put me through private college. She dealt with extended family, who frankly, did not feel that happy about accepting a woman of Vietnamese descent into their Chinese family. My mother’s strength and perseverance inspire me, and I’d like to let her know today, in front of all our family and friends, that I love her dearly, respect the culture she has brought into my life, and hope to mirror her hard work, perseverance, and determination in my own life and give that type of hope to our future children. Love you, Mommy… and Daddy, love you, too. 🙂 (Thanks for bringing mom over and marrying her.)
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Needless to say, she was completely embarrassed and caught off guard when she realized that the speech was about her. She turned away from me and started looking down and towards the opposite end of the room. She thanked me later, but I think she was still digesting everything she heard and trying to understand what had happened and why.

Bachelorette fried chicken dinner

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Seven colleagues treated me to an evening of fried chicken and waffles, endless cocktails, and a light-flashing penis veil tonight in the Lower East side after work. It was low-key, full of laughs and stares from people who were caught off guard by a white veil with flashing penises all over it, and it was so much fun.

I guess in the last year, I haven’t spent much time thinking about any of my female colleagues and how much they actually are a part of my life. I try my best to have a very strict line between work people and friend/family people because I don’t like the idea of favoritism or being too casual in front of my colleagues for professional purposes. But I realized tonight that it isn’t so bad to let my hair down once in a while and just be a woman with a bunch of woman colleagues outside of the office. Even though I may not think they are that close to me, they do know and respect a side of me that perhaps my own friends and family will never get to see, and that in itself is worth something.

10 more days

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I am spending the next few days doing calligraphy for our wedding reception cards. We were able to save money on these little name cards through my generous cousin’s Wedding Paper Divas vouchers since he works for Shutterfly, which owns Wedding Paper Divas, but unfortunately, they do not print names or table names onto the cards. So after having saved about $90 through the voucher, I ended up having to buy my own fancy purple calligraphy pen (I love Michael’s!) and hand writing out each one. The thickness of the pen was not correct, so I probably spent about three to six minutes writing each name card. I will be very sad if people end up either not taking them or throwing them away. Actually, I know people will end up throwing them away, so I asked my wedding coordinator that if anyone left them on the table to please give them back to me. I can then use them for my future wedding scrapbook so that they don’t *all* go to waste.

As the day gets closer

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The last two weeks have been really grueling for me. It’s not even just because of all the work travel, the flight delays and cancellations and the unforeseen hotel stays in cities I didn’t think I’d end up in. It’s because as the day gets closer to the wedding, all I think about is the fact that Ed won’t be there. It sounds really obsessive, unhealthy, and maniacal to a degree, but I can’t really help it. It tends to happen whenever I finish something and feel good about it, or when I am thinking about the food or the decor and in the back of my mind, I wonder what he would have thought about it. Lately, it’s because I’ve been listening to potential wedding music, and every song I choose to listen to seems to remind me of him. And then I tear up and think…. why can’t he be here with us? I’ve told this to so many people, but when you are planning big events in your life, whether it’s your upcoming graduation, your wedding, your child’s birth, you always think that the people you love the most will be there for you. So when they aren’t, it’s absolutely heart wrenching, especially when they aren’t here due to unnatural causes.

I feel the way I do about my wedding the way I do about the anniversary of his death and his birthday. As the day approaches, I feel like I am getting closer and closer to seeing him again. He will make an appearance in some way, or I will feel his presence even though I know he is physically not there. There’s no logic in any of that thinking; it’s just a feeling I have in my gut.  I wish he were here. I need to see him again.

Wedding flower aftermath

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Weddings are wasteful parties. That sounds like a really negative thing for a bride-to-be to say, but it’s really true. When you think of all the paper that is printed for things like ceremony programs, menus, and reception cards; invitations, thank you cards, and random other informational and directional signs at the wedding, you also have to realize that the majority of your guests will never care enough to save any of these potentially expensive keepsakes (even more expensive if you choice pricey options like letterpress, foil print, or even hired a freaking calligrapher). That’s a lot of paper down the drain.

Then, there are things like flowers. We all love flowers, and when I say “we,” I mean most women. Yet all the hundreds of dollars you spent on wedding flowers will be tossed at the end of the wedding night. The arch that you chose to completely cover in flowers will be dismantled, and the flowers will be tossed into the garbage bin, if not the compost bin. The reception table centerpieces will be forgotten and also thrown away. The idea pained me, especially since no one coming to our wedding would be local, so I decided to donate all our wedding flowers to an assisted living facility. This way, many elderly people will be able to enjoy the flowers for at least the next four to five days, and the dollars we spent will not be for just a single night. Someone should be able to benefit from all these flowers for more than just a night, right, especially considering how much time it took for all these babies to blossom?

Always on

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During my work trips to see clients, I always take them out for a team dinner or bonding event, and the events seem to have gotten bigger and bigger every subsequent time I have come down. The events are rarely fewer than 12 people, and with the usual long tables that American restaurants love, it’s hard to interact with everyone. I try to get my internal team to spread out, stop talking to each other, and talk to our clients, which is obviously the reason we are all visiting. These events are made to get to know each other outside of the office, get a sense of everyone’s personalities, and subconsciously find ways to get them to like and trust us more and thus work better together.

I oftentimes realize that although I appear as an extrovert to a lot of people, these events make me more cognizant that I’m really just a closeted introvert. Sure, I love talking to new people, I have no problem talking to strangers, and I’m pretty good at small talk with random people on the street (and my loud volume and laugh also makes people think I’m very extroverted), but sometimes, making the effort to talk to people I don’t know that well personally can be so taxing. I can feel myself straining when I am sharing stories to engage with people I don’t know. I don’t know if they can tell I am straining or if they are just eating up what I am saying. But they seem to be enjoying themselves, and I guess that’s all that matters.

When I got back to my hotel tonight, I plopped all my stuff down, washed up, and crawled into bed with my computer. I felt so relieved to have alone time and be by myself.

My mom asked why our company doesn’t make us share rooms when we travel in order to save money. “You’re costing your company a lot of money every time you take these work trips,” she said to me the other day. “$200-350/night for a hotel room is ridiculous. Why don’t you just offer to share a room with one of your woman coworkers?”

Um… no. I need that alone time. I need my privacy. I’m a 30-freakin’-year-old career woman. I am not ever offering to share a room when I travel, not that I have ever, even once, been asked. If I didn’t have that alone time to myself and had to think about whether I had to put clothes on when leaving the bathroom to go to the hotel bedroom, I would not be a happy little worker. The older I get, the more I savor time to myself. It’s my time to recharge, think, and just be me. I don’t always want to be “always on,” always thinking about what other people think or how they will react to the things I say and do. Sometimes, I just want to be off and relaxed.

Dream recap

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I was walking up to Grand Central tonight and talking to my mom on the phone when I decided to tell her that I dreamt that Ed never died. I guess I thought to tell her because she brought him up. Well, what I left out was that I also dreamt that although he was alive, she had died. But hey, she doesn’t have to know every detail, right?

“He said he never died,” I told her. “He said he is still here with us. He said he has always been here with us.”

“He never died?” My mom repeated pensively. “He never died… Yes, you know that when Armageddon comes, Ed will be resurrected, and he will live on paradise on earth with us forever.”

My mom loves her convenient truths. If paradise on earth really existed according to Jehovah’s Witnesses’ beliefs, then Ed and I wouldn’t “qualify” because we were never Jehovah’s Witnesses to begin with. We would go to hell. And neither would our dad qualify, and heck, my mom hasn’t converted a single person yet, so she probably wouldn’t have made the 144,000 person cut off, either! But at least our mom thinks Ed is a good enough person so that he could be resurrected, so that thought was kind of comforting.

She said to me that since Ed has passed, she has seen him in dreams only twice. I told her he comes to visit me at least a couple times a month since he passed. She expressed half surprise, half envy.

“He comes to visit you… in New York?” my mom said to me, confused. “But how doe he know the way to get there? He could get lost.”

Even in dream life, in the after life, in heaven — wherever my sweet, innocent brother continues to live another form of life, our mother continues to worry about him. After death, he still lives somewhere out there, and because she knows this, she continues not just to pray for him, but to worry if he is safe, happy, and at peace… and if he won’t get lost on the way to New York to visit me.

What our mother doesn’t realize is that now wherever her son is, Ed can’t get lost. He cannot be in danger. He can’t feel pain, and all he can do is feel peace and be happy. That’s why every time I see him now, he’s always the happy one, and I am the one crying and sobbing when I see him. I really should be happier when I see him in dreams, but I can’t because I am selfish. I miss him in this life where I am, where I live. In his new world, he has found peace and happiness. It is a daily struggle to accept and for me to be at peace with his peace.

 

 

Health and life

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It’s been about two months since I’ve gone to the gym. It’s kind of a weird feeling to not be working out for so long. In December, it made sense since we were away in Australia and then in Hong Kong, but ever since then, I’ve been slowly but surely recovering from whooping cough. It’s not good to be doing breathing exercises and getting over bruised ribs when trying to go to the gym. So Chris banned me from going until my ribs fully healed. And this morning, I woke up for the first time in nearly two months and didn’t feel any pain in my ribs after inhaling deeply. It’s like a revival (and this means I’m going back to the gym!).

The last week or so when I have been able to speak properly has made me so happy. I can speak loudly and clearly without my voice breaking up or sounding like I am choking up, and I don’t sound like a sick person. My voice actually sounds like my voice now. And I have moments through the day when I am speaking to people, and I just start smiling a lot, thinking, “I’m so grateful to be healthy and able to speak and breathe normally again.” Health is the most important thing in the world. Healthy people rarely think about it because they just have it, so they don’t need to. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve woken up in the morning, and as soon as I start speaking to Chris or whoever it is that I first see in the morning, I’ve been really thankful for my health and my life.