Category Archives: Hope

Queens Out of the Darkness Walk

Posted on by
Reply

This morning, I participated in the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) Out of the Darkness Community Walk in Queens. I won’t be in town for the Manhattan walk, so I decided to fundraise and participate in the Queens walk this year. As expected, there was no comparison regarding the two boroughs in terms of size and turnout; last year, Manhattan had over 500 registered walkers; this year, Queens had only 198. The turnout for the Manhattan one was huge last year. It almost felt like a massive festival, complete with huge amounts of refreshments and even live music. Given the proximity of Battery Park to the Brooklyn Bridge, the Manhattan walk even attracts a lot of tourists to either come and donate or participate in the walk ad hoc. Astoria Park in Queens is certainly less of a tourist destination, but it actually felt more community like there today. A group of family and friends even set up a barbeque and offered free grilled food to walkers and other participants.

Including a corporate match from Chris’s company, I raised $3,630, which was 180% of my original goal for this year, and I was ranked number 1 for fundraising in Queens. The Queens borough goal for the walk this year was $19,000, but unfortunately, it looks like we raised only about $8,000. The director and organizer of the walk asked me when I arrived if I wanted to say a few words, but I was so caught off guard that my name was the only name on the Top Fundraiser banner and that I wasn’t asked to prepare anything beforehand, so I declined. I did take home the banner, though.

This year like last, I had mixed emotions taking part in the walk and the fundraiser. The cynical and negative side of me just thinks that not many people really care and want to make a difference. But I raised even more money this year than I did last. I am grateful for it, but at the end of the day, it’s money. The cynical side of me thinks about Ed and how he isn’t here anymore, and the walk is a reminder to me that his presence is gone. I’ll never see or feel him again, and it really fucking hurts, some days more than others. As each year passes, I will probably reveal more and more about him and my perspective on his life. A number of people have commented how courageous it is to share such detail, but frankly speaking, I probably wouldn’t have gotten as many donations or as much money if I didn’t; one person even told me this when he donated a significant three-digit sum. People don’t relate to generic messages about change or making a difference or helping those in need with their multitude of needs; they relate to real human experiences and feelings. To be human, we need to share our experiences.

It’s still hard for me to share the details especially in spoken word in person, but it’s easier for me to write it down and share it that way because writing comes more naturally to me. I don’t have to see anyone’s face or grimaces or flinches or judgments when I write it down and disseminate my message. Those who care even a bit can read it; those who don’t care at all can ignore it, and they can go burn in hell. And it’s clear to me that other people feel the same; they don’t really want to talk to me openly about it. They’ll give me comments like, “Great job on reaching your goal!” or, “Good cause to support!” but it won’t have any real feeling or emotion in it. I don’t mind that much. I’m trying to accept a little more each day that emotions are hard for people to grapple with. But I want to live in a world where we can be open with each other, even and especially when it hurts, because that’s when we reveal the most about ourselves and are the rawest and most genuine. As Ed said in his wish to me, I want to live a life of meaning, not one that is just going through generic stages of life and passing through as though on a train to nowhere.

I really miss Ed, but I do hope that he is out there somewhere looking at what I am doing today and cracking a small smile that I’m attempting to help others in his name in a tiny way.

I don’t know why, but in the last week, I thought about the only stanza of a poem I’ve managed to memorize and still commit to memory to this day since I was 13 – it is the final stanza of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous poem “Annabel Lee.” It goes like this:

For the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And the stars never rise, but I feel the bright eyes
   Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;
And so, all the night-tide, I lie down by the side
   Of my darling—my darling—my life and my bride,
   In her sepulcher there by the sea—
   In her tomb by the sounding sea.
The first part, “for the moon never beams, without bringing me dreams” kind of reminds me of my brother now when I think of this stanza. I guess it’s because it’s saying through life and through everything that happens, he’s still there with me and I can still feel him, just as the beautiful Annabel Lee is always with Poe despite dying prematurely.

Anonymous donor

Posted on by
Reply

In the last month, I’ve managed to raise $3,170 for my AFSP donor drive. A match donation from Chris’s company is still pending, but that would increase the total amount of money raised to $3,470. That’s way more money than I thought I would raise, especially in the second year I’ve done this community walk. Two strangers have donated to my drive, including my cousin’s friend and Chris’s colleague. And a third person, who will remain unknown, donated $50 to my drive and has not revealed his or her identity to me. I e-mailed this person to say thank you and asked if s/he could let me know who s/he was, and there was no response.

Maybe sometimes, it’s not always a bad thing to be the anonymous charitable person. It keeps the hope alive when there seems to be little to none.

Shorter stays

Posted on by
Reply

I’ve been discussing my mother’s situation with a few different people, and it looks like we all agree that perhaps I should shorten my stays when I visit home and potentially increase the frequency to make up for the fewer days. The last time I came in June, I was there for about five days, and luckily, no real fight happened; everything was as calm as it could have been. This time around, the stay was about 11 days, and we had four arguments varying in intensity and length. It really takes an emotional and psychological toll on me when these things happen; I feel stressed to the point where I can feel a physical change in my body, and then all I think about are all the dumb things she had said to me that made zero logical sense. It would be different if I didn’t care about them at all, but I really do; ultimately, I just want my parents to be happy, but it doesn’t seem that I can really make that happen on my own. What is really preventing them from being happy and leading full, rich lives is their own mindset and all the negativity that surrounds it. It’s their distrust of the world, their disgust of other people like my aunt who actually do lead happy lives despite having many elements of dysfunction and imperfection. They will always be like this, and it’s my life-long struggle to just accept them the way they are and the way they will continue to think.

Series of nightmares

Posted on by
Reply

For my first three nights in San Francisco, I had one nightmare after another. In the first dream, an old friend from college is confessing to me that she committed a murder of someone she hated, but because she thought I was such a pure person, too pure, that she had to frame me for the crime, and that soon, the authorities would find out, and I’d be put in jail. I asked her why she would do something like this, and she responded that she felt that people that were too good needed to be punished for trying to outdo everyone else in the world who tried hard to be good, but couldn’t be.

In the two subsequent nights, I had bad dreams, but I couldn’t remember what happened. I just remembered that the theme that kept appearing was of betrayal, of people who I thought were supposed to be good who were turning against me or blaming me for things I never did.

I have a feeling I know why I had all these bad dreams in my trip back. It’s because I’m always questioning how loyal people really are to me, and what they’d really do for me when life got tough or if they were put in a real position to defend me or do something in honor of me to prove their dedication. It’s hugely an influence my mother has over me — to never fully trust anyone and to constantly be questioning their devotion. I think as the years have gone by, I’ve gotten better at putting a halt to the process of obsessing over it, but it always has its way of creeping into the back of my mind, especially in light of the fact that the bridal shower/bachelorette weekend is one of those main moments in life when your friends or whoever is organizing on your behalf is somewhat intentionally put on the spot to show their love and dedication to you.

We can never escape the influence of our parents, even when we try our best to. It’s like that quite from the book The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom. Ever since I read that book shortly after Ed passed away, this quote has stayed with me and popped itself into my thoughts more times than I can count: “All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.” Ed was shattered beyond repair. I am damaged but trying to repair myself every day. This is my painful reality.

The photo frame with a hidden message

Posted on by
Reply

Today, I met briefly with a friend and her daughter at Spreckles Lake at Golden Gate Park. I cannot remember the last time I walked through that area, but Ed and I used to go all the time on the weekends as kids and feed the ducks by the water there. It made me feel nostalgic to walk along the lake today with them and see the ducks and the remote-controlled boats gliding across the water at rapid pace.

My friend and her daughter came to my bridal shower and gave me a silver photo frame from Gump’s. At the shower when I was opening gifts, she told me that there was a story behind the frame, and today, she shared it with me.

She told me that her husband was at work the week before the shower, and somehow dozed off, and when he did, he dreamt that he saw Ed. Yes, that’s Ed as in my Ed, my brother. He couldn’t quite make out his face clearly and could only see black, but he knew it was him. “Isn’t your wife attending a bridal shower this weekend?” Ed asked her husband.

“Yes, she’s attending a bridal shower,” the husband responds.

Ed reveals that it’s his sister’s bridal shower. “What is your wife getting as a gift for the shower?”

Her husband finds this amusing and said he actually had no idea, as they hadn’t discussed it.

“I think you should get her a photo frame from Gump’s,” Ed suggested. “I think she’d like it.”

The dream ended. Her husband woke up from his nap and asked his assistant to go to Gump’s and pick out a photo frame. He then took the photo frame back home to my friend, and said that she had to give this gift to me. “You can’t ignore a message like this,” her husband told her.

Ed’s still out there watching over me. My friend says this was his way of being part of the shower, of speaking to her husband and knowing that the message would get back to me. I’m not sure what I felt more when I heard this — happiness that his presence is still here, or sadness that he physically is no longer here.

I miss my Ed. I love you wherever you are.

4.5 hour chat with a stranger

Posted on by
Reply

About a minute before boarding my connecting flight from Chicago to San Francisco yesterday morning, I got notified about my upgrade to first class, so I hurriedly went to the counter, grabbed my updated ticket, and headed onto the plane. What I have found in getting upgraded to business or first is that the guy sitting next to you will inevitably never want to talk to you; not only does he not want to talk to you, he will barely want to make eye contact with you, let alone give any acknowledgment that there is another living thing he is sitting next to in his plush seat or large cubby station. And yes, in my experience, about 90% of the people sitting up there tend to be men in suits.

So I was surprised when the guy sitting next to me this time made eye contact with me as soon as I got settled into my seat and said hello and smiled. I smiled and said hi back. But then what started as a quick friendly exchange of greetings became a chat that lasted the entire duration of our flight – four and a half hours. This has never happened to me before.

He is a 63-year-old man who just lost his wife to cervical cancer last December, has five children, came from a strict Catholic family of seven children, and has spent his entire life in the Chicago area. He’s a conservative Libertarian, can’t stand Obama and his Hawaiian vacations and “excessive use” of Air Force One, is pro-life, and is the president of a staffing company based in a suburb of Chicago. Well, who would have thought I would be interested in speaking with someone who fits all those conservative ticks? But I did, and I actually found myself agreeing with a lot of the things he said, particularly when it came to Trump and his no-BS attitude when it came to calling out politicians on the left and the right.

I think I liked him because he seemed so human and honest, and he was very thoughtful when telling me about his late wife, who it’s clear he loved very much. Superficial and shallow is what this man is not. He spoke about her as though she were still alive, and I’m sure in his heart, she really was very much still alive. He told me about their discovery of her cervical cancer at stage 4, how the doctor kept gently saying that this could have been caught earlier had it not been for their resistance to seeing doctors. “When you say ‘I do,’ on your wedding day, you should also take it a step further in your mind and promise each other you will agree to annual health exams,” he said to me, pensive. “If only I could turn back the clock, I would.” He told me about her struggle, her pains, even to the extent of her emergency room visits, particularly the one where one of her intestines burst, and they didn’t think she was going to make it, but she did.

I shared with him quite a bit about my life — where I’ve lived, studied, worked, what my family is like, where they’ve come from, how I was raised, my attitudes on life and living in general. And then of course, it got to the siblings, and when he asked about my brother, I said he passed away two years ago. His eyes grew sad, and he asked gently if I’d be willing to share how he died. I hesitated and gave him a hard look.

“Do you really want to know?” I asked him.

“If you are comfortable sharing it with me, yes,” he said.

“Suicide,” I responded simply with a straight face.

He buried his face in his hands. “I’m so sorry,” he said, looking completely anguished. “But I will tell you that I think suicide is just one of the most selfish things… I mean, it’s like they don’t even think how it will affect the people they love around them.”

I could feel my face grow hot as soon as he said the word “selfish.” I thought for a few seconds about what I wanted to say and said, “Do you really think it’s selfish? Really? Do you have any idea what it’s like to struggle with a real mental illness all your life and to also have to be constantly criticized and told you are worthless? It’s not selfish if that’s the life you lived. You cannot make a statement like that unless you know what that person went through, to feel completely powerless and like every day someone’s trying to crush every little effort you are trying to make.”

He looked at me and clearly regretted what he said. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like that and I had no idea that your brother went through that. For those who have mental illness, of course it’s not selfish. I’m just saying that for those who do not, it is.” He then shared the story of his best friend who hanged himself after he found out his wife was cheating on him with a mutual friend for the last six years. His three-year-old son found him in their basement.

It’s something people still think, that suicide is selfish, that a lot of people who commit suicide did not suffer any mental illness or depression and that they were just thinking about themselves and their own lives. “Selfish” and “suicide” should never be in the same sentence. I will make sure anyone who ever tries to tell me otherwise is swat down.

 

A message for a message seven years later

Posted on by
Reply

Facebook has its pluses and minuses. However you’d like to categorize it, being able to message people in your Facebook “network” can be a plus or a minus. Yesterday, it felt like a big plus. Seven years ago, a former high school classmate experienced the death of her father. She was clearly stricken with grief by it, and posted the eulogy she wrote for him as a note on Facebook. I saw it in my feed that day in 2008, which was the year we both graduated from college, and I felt so awful when I read it. I could feel myself tearing up, my face getting hot while reading through it, wondering how terrible and alone she must have felt while delivering that speech at her father’s funeral. I knew I had to say something to her, even if we were never officially friends in real life. So I sent her a Facebook message, expressing my condolences, and I told her that I really believed her father was watching over her life now in another form, and that in another form, he’d always be with her.

Yesterday, after I uploaded my Facebook/Instagram post about Bart representing Ed on Ed’s birthday, this same person reached out to me to say how moved she was by my post. She said that because Facebook stores all old messages, my message to her all those years ago immediately came up when she started typing in my name to message me, and she remembered how happy and grateful she felt that I’d reached out to her all those years ago. Honestly, if she had never messaged me today, I never would have remembered ever reaching out to her and writing this message. This was part of her message to me yesterday:

“I saw the photo you posted for your brother’s birthday and I wanted to tell you I’m very sorry for your loss and that you’ve been so strong. I think it’s wonderful that you bring Bart with you wherever you go. It’s really beautiful and I’m sitting here with a couple tears in my eyes looking at your Instagram photos with Bart everywhere with you around the world. Ed is so lucky to have you as a sister, because he can still see the world through you. I think you already know without me saying this that it’s totally fine to cry, even after years have passed – because I still cried this year on my dad’s birthday, too! No one will forget. Thanks for sharing with us all.”

Facebook forces us to remember the thoughtful messages that others have written us, which I guess is sort of a nice thing. It also allows us to reach out and be supportive to others who may not be close to us, but sort of still know us, because sometimes when you least expect it, you can get support from those you never really thought cared at all. That’s pretty amazing sometimes.

36

Posted on by
Reply

Dear Ed,

Happy birthday – today you turn 36. The reason I am not that excited about this is a) you aren’t here anymore, so what does this really mean, and b) I’m in a moment where I kind of hate the world. I had some successful client meetings the last few days here in Atlanta, yet I still feel dissatisfied. I woke up on your birthday morning crying, thinking how upset I am that you are dead. I wrote an Instagram post telling my Facebook and Instagram world the meaning of Bart and how he represents you and how I want you to travel the globe with me. It feels so empty. All of that feels empty. People are commenting and saying what a great sister I am. Was I really that great, Ed? You know what I would prefer? If no one complimented me and told me I was a great sister while you were dead, and if you were actually alive and healthy and well and happy. I guess that is too much to ask for. Sometimes life really sucks. But you already knew that, right, and that’s why you decided to peace out. God, that makes me mad.

I don’t know why, but this year has been much harder for me to deal with than last year in terms of not having you. When the anniversary of your passing came and your birthday last year, I actually kind of had it together, and I wasn’t crying or anything. I felt like it, but I didn’t. This year, it’s really different. I feel like everything is triggering me to think of you and tear up, wishing you could have had a tiny piece of the privilege and happiness I’ve been able to have, and wishing that you could be on this earth with me again. There’s too much you didn’t get to experience, Ed. It makes me so upset when I think about it. I never got a chance to fully express myself to you, and I don’t know if I will ever really get over it. Sometimes, I just feel so lonely, like no one understands or cares enough. This donor drive is driving me crazy. I don’t want to take it personally when people don’t respond or donate, but I can’t help it. I almost feel like it’s an affront to you and what you mean to me. I just want you to be back, and it’s so hard some days. Everyone who can’t empathize in the slightest, I want them all to fuck off and go to hell and perhaps get hit by a truck. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it? You’d get so mad at me if I said that in your living presence.

I miss you. It goes without saying, but sometimes, it just needs to be said. As human beings, we don’t say how we feel enough, which isn’t right because of how short life is. I wish I could have told you more, but now, all I have left is my occasional prayer to God, this blog, and my Instagram/Facebook posts speaking to you. I miss you. I love you. I have nothing else left to say now, but I hope you are well where you are and think of me occasionally, lovingly. I really wish my brother were here with me today.

Love,

Yvonne

 

Humanity

Posted on by
Reply

Tonight, I hosted a client dinner for a party of 15 here in Atlanta, with two of my colleagues who traveled down from New York for the meetings we will be having these two days. And for the first time ever, I almost burst into tears in the presence of my clients while hearing one of their stories. Thank God I was able to maintain my composure.

One of the new employees hired on the analytics team at my client’s company sat next to me at dinner, and we were getting to know each other and each others’ life stories. He is quite an eclectic man: he came out to his parents at age 15, got kicked out of his Christianity cultish parents’ house, finished high school while living with extended relatives in a better neighborhood in Fort Worth, then joined the army for six years. He’s always had an affinity for numbers and for analytics and visual representations of everything, which is ultimately what brought him to my client. But the story he shared with me, which if I remember correctly, was from his experience after he left the army and was working for the government, touched me to a degree I have never felt before in my life.

He told me about how he was doing forensics work, and a body of a John Doe was brought in who was killed in combat. For days, they waited for family members, friends, anyone to claim him, yet no one did. What are they going to do? He thought. Because he had served in the army, the government ultimately paid for this man’s funeral, but when the funeral was scheduled, no one came… except my client and his then colleagues. The few of them came to the service, and were amazed that no one had showed up — not a single person. And this man still had no identity. He just couldn’t believe it, my client said. How could not a single person in the entire world not recognize or claim to know this man.. or not even show up to his funeral? He felt so hurt, to think that a human being could die and not have a single soul care or show up to his funeral on this earth.

He went back to the office and started looking over John Doe’s charts, and he thought, I want to memorialize this guy, this John Doe. How can I do this? How can I do something small in my own life to remember this man that no one else wants to remember? I want him to know that someone did remember him, and that someone will be me. He thought for a while, and remembered he’d always wanted to get a tattoo on his body, something that was large and all over his arm and maybe even spreading out to his back, something that was meaningful. And so he decided to take this man’s DNA sequence and have the entire thing tattooed on him, from his left forearm all the way up his shoulder, and down the middle of his back. He already had part of his arm revealed with his short-sleeved shirt, and so he showed me part of the DNA sequence and the detailing.

I could feel my eyes watering when he shared this story with me. “I don’t think it’s a big deal,” he said to me, smiling and laughing. “This is the sort of thing that people in my circles do all the time! But as I meet more and more people, I’m realizing that maybe it’s not really ‘normal’ after all. But I figured – if no one else will remember him, I can, right?”

This man’s humanity really touched me. I had to try really hard to fight back tears as he told me this. Who in the world would do something like this — remember a guy he had absolutely no connection with in life, feel sorry for him because no one came to his funeral to “claim” him, and then decide to “remember” him by tattooing his entire DNA sequence on his physical body? He didn’t want this stranger to be forgotten, so he’s literally stamped him on his body, which it will be on forever. I told him that I found his actions incredibly endearing and admirable to a level I’ve probably never heard of before.

It’s almost always a common nightmare people cite — who will come to my funeral when I die? How will I be remembered, if at all? This John Doe will be remembered by my client forever.

 

Reading to soothe

Posted on by
Reply

I had a lot of trouble falling asleep last night. I kept tossing and turning, flipping my pillow, looking at the clock as each hour would pass by. When I eventually fell asleep, I dreamt that I was back in my bedroom in San Francisco, sitting cross-legged on my bed while facing Ed, who had a large hardcover book open in his lap. I felt miserable, and I had asked him to read me passages from a book that would provide me hope and inspiration. He read passage after passage of who knows what large book it was, and with each passage he finished reading to me, I asked him for another one, and another one, and another one. I didn’t want him to stop. He didn’t seem impatient, though, and continued to read each time I asked him to continue and find another one that would be inspiring. In the back of my mind, I was scared that if I told him I was okay and that he didn’t need to find me another passage to read that he would close his book and leave the room, and ultimately leave me forever. I couldn’t risk that. I needed to keep holding onto him. If I could still hear his voice, I knew I would be okay.