Category Archives: Love

Tea ceremony

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Today, the wedding events began with a tea ceremony at Navine’s parents’ home in Paris, and ended with the largest bonfire I’ve ever seen at the chateau about an hour away in the French countryside. As with most Chinese events, the food was endless, and the food offered to the ancestors to bless the marriage was even more endless. We left the bride’s family’s home wondering what would happen with that huge roasted suckling pig, the duck, and all the fruit and sticky rice cake offerings. My family has never hosted a tea ceremony, so I have no idea if all that food really gets eaten or not.

Chris’s cousins’ parents and family were asking me if we would also have a Chinese tea ceremony when we got married. My first response is laughter, not because I think it’s dumb or ludicrous, but more because my parents would barely understand what a tea ceremony is for or what they would do during it. My dad is less Chinese than I am, and my mom doesn’t know anything about tea ceremonies and is Vietnamese. I summed it up nicely by saying, “No, my family isn’t that Chinese.”

I think these traditions are a great thing to have and to continue, and I was happy to be able to be a part of this one. I’m honestly a little sad that my family isn’t that Chinese and won’t be doing it because it ultimately means that any potential future generation of our family will not do it. If I didn’t have a tea ceremony, it’d be like a farce if I ever wanted my future children to have one. None of my cousins had a tea ceremony when they got married, either. It’s like the degradation of cultural identity as the generations continue and the lack of understanding of what the value is to keep these traditions going.

Bridal and bachelorette scrapbook

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I spent almost all of today working on my bridal shower and bachelorette scrapbook. I saved all the cards, written memories shared during the shower, and even some of the wrapping paper and ribbon used to wrap my bridal shower gifts to compile this scrapbook using the memory book my friends got me. I’ve realized a big reason that scrapbooking can be so stressful; it forces me to hoard and save what most people generally will just throw away. So not only do I have to save a lot of “junk” and discardable material, but I have to organize it in such a way that it’s kept neat and in a certain order so I remember the timeline for the events in the order that they happened.

I finished it, though – 22 pages of documented events over the course of three days. I put a lot of work and thought into it, and I’m keeping it for myself as a treasure book of what my loved ones did for me.

The photo frame with a hidden message

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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.

Bridal shower day

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People always say that on days like bridal showers, rehearsal dinners, and weddings, there’s a thick emotional charge that clouds the air, and at any moment, it can be burst with the slightest thing said or alluded to. I guess that happened today when we had a “memory” activity, where all the attendees were asked to write down a fond memory they had with me. One of my cousins’ wives shared the memory of how she asked Ed and me to be candle sponsors at her wedding in July 2007. She said she remembered us walking down the aisle together to light two candles to become one for their future path together, and that she was thankful to have us to take part in this special ceremony on her wedding day. As soon as I saw Ed’s name on the card I was reading, I couldn’t help it and just burst into tears. It’s one of those extremely awkward moments where you know you have 15 other people literally gathered around and watching you, but you can’t do anything to control the tears from flowing. I had to keep taking deep breaths to control myself and prevent myself from needing to run out of the room. It was also a trigger for my mother, clearly, as I heard her sniffling and getting choked up with her own tears. That wedding was over eight years ago now. It’s still hard to believe he’s not here anymore, and these events only magnify that for me.

I’ve written this in my blog quite a number of times, but I feel like I can’t say enough how lucky and blessed a life I live. I had friends and family fly in from Phoenix, Seattle, New York, and even Singapore for my bridal shower and bachelorette weekend, and though I didn’t really need or ask for them, received extremely generous and thoughtful gifts and cards from them all. But as great as it is to have all of their love for me under the same roof at the same time, it’s hard for me to ignore the fact that my brother won’t be at home afterwards, asking me what gifts I got and what food he missed out on for being a guy who couldn’t be invited to a women-only bridal shower. I can even imagine his face and his exclamation if he were to see some of the lingerie our cousins-in-law got me as gifts. I know if he were here, he’d be excited for me, even through his own inner suffering. It’s as though every day that passes is another day of missing him and seeing all these things happening around me that he will never get to experience. I miss him the most on Thanksgiving, Christmas, his birthday, my birthday, our dad’s birthday, and the anniversary of his passing. Any wedding-related day can also now be added to that sad list.

“For my sister on her birthday”

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Every time I come home to San Francisco, I find myself reorganizing yet another one of my drawers in this house. I guess it goes to show that I’m not as neat and “organized” as I thought I was if I am constantly reorganizing and discarding things.

In my nightstand by my bed, while rummaging through old photos I put on the walls of my old dorm rooms, I found the only card Ed has ever given me. It’s a humorous and silly Hallmark card, and this is what it says:

For my sister on her birthday

(Front):

I’ve done all the things

siblings are

famous for —

I’ve bugged you,

I’ve embarrassed you.

I’ve made your life

a living nightmare…

But now that we’re older

I just want to say…

(Inside)

I was only doing my job!

It is dated January 22, 2007, five days after I turned 21. It’s dated that late because that year, our parents took me on a Hawaiian cruise as a birthday gift, and Ed as per usual refused to go because he hated traveling with them anywhere. That was the day we got back from the cruise.

Waiting for me when we arrived home was this card, a massive bouquet of multicolored flowers that Ed had delivered to the house, and a birthday cake for me. “21 is a big deal,” Ed said when he proudly presented the gifts. “Read the card I got you!” I obediently read it and chuckled a little and thanked him. He was clearly so proud of this card. “Isn’t this card so funny? That’s exactly us! It’s so great!” He was obsessed, and I could tell he obsessed about it at Walgreens or wherever else he picked up this card as he went through many cards.

After I read it today and stared longingly at his hand writing, I looked up at the photo of him on his old dresser in our bedroom, and I felt sick. How the hell is he not here anymore? Look at that innocent smile of his. It’s like all he wanted was a bit of encouragement, and he could barely get it from anyone other than his pastor and me. Every time I am back home, his absence is more painfully apparent because his photos and his bed and his dresser are here, but he is not. That bed just beckons him to come back, as it stares at me and asks, who will sleep in me? Will Ed ever come back? And I have to silently tell it that no, Ed will never be back to sleep in you again. The last night he ever slept in you was July 21, 2013, and that was the final night ever. I bend down to smell the sheets, and it smells just like him. You smell just like Ed, I tell the bed. Maybe he’s just hiding in the bed somewhere? Or maybe with that large framed photo from his funeral, if I wipe it down hard enough to get rid of all the dust, maybe he’ll pop out and hug me again?

These are my silly hopes and delusions, that I will see him again on earth, that he is still out there somewhere. My one wish in life is one that cannot be granted with even the all of the money and power in the world. I just want Ed back and healthy and happy. It’s so lonely to think that one day, you had a sibling, and the next, you don’t. It’s not fair that good, innocent people like him are gone.

A message for a message seven years later

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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.

Humanity

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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.

 

Post traumatic growth

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The other day, I read an article in the Huffington Post about “post traumatic growth.” It’s exactly what it sounds like: in the face of extreme tragedy or trauma, individuals grieve and get through this period, emerging stronger, more resilient, sometimes in very dramatic and visible ways. I thought about myself dealing with Ed’s death and how my perspective on a lot of aspects of life have changed. Sometimes that “change” is not always so visible to outsiders, but it’s visible to those who know us deeply and really listen to the things we have to say.

I was saddened to hear of the passing of a former colleague’s younger brother via Facebook (because this is how we hear about not just engagements, marriages, and births, but also deaths now). She left my company in the beginning of the year, and we always got along and had decent small talk. They had recently taken a trip together and hiked gorgeous areas of Hawaii, and he suddenly passed away late last week. He was just two days shy of turning 24. Because I know how isolating and awful it can be to face this type of tragedy, I knew I wanted to say something to her, if even just a few words. She was aware of the loss I experienced with my own brother, and of course, I didn’t want to make my outreach about myself and my own pain. So I sent her a private message and let her know that I read her obituary post for her brother and was sending my condolences. Losing a sibling, especially one who is not at a “normal” older age to pass, is probably one of the worst and most devastating losses one can experience. Siblings share a bond that is unique, and so the feeling of loss is unique, I told her. She responded right away and said she appreciated my words. She just needed to get through this time and have hope.

I wavered between sending this article to her or not, as I didn’t want to come across as presumptuous or like I was some know-it-all when it comes to loss, but decided to preface it with a “trigger warning” and say that perhaps this was not the right time to read this, but maybe she could read this article later when she had more time to digest and grieve. At the end of the day, she read it and reached back out to me. She said she was really happy I sent this article, and that this article actually gave her increased hope for the future.

It’s hard to know how to respond to other people’s loss and grieving when it happens. It’s difficult even when I’ve experienced it myself because everyone reacts so differently to death, as well as to how other people respond to them, whether they are very close or very distant. But as I’ve always thought, reaching out to say a little is better than doing absolutely nothing at all.

Two years.

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Dear Ed,

$%&#. It’s been two freaking years. It’s so trite, but I can’t believe it. I really cannot. Somehow, I managed to get by the last two years knowing that you were not breathing in the same world as me. I spent the last few days reading different parts of the Bible. I also spent some time reading articles on grieving, or what they call the “grieving process.” One quote I read summed it up pretty well: Step 1: Grieve. Step 2: Remake yourself. What that quote does not reveal is how much energy and effort it took to get from Step 1 to Step 2. It really should look like this:

Step 1: Grieve.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 2: Remake yourself.

I wouldn’t say I’ve completely done a 180 and “remade” myself, per se, but I do think that I’ve made some hard choices about people, life, and my perspective that now, life feels much different, and not just because of your absence.

I get self-conscious about it, though, and I think that maybe in some way, because of how much I’ve pushed myself in terms of accomplishment and thought process, that along the way it’s almost made me even more judgmental than I was before. It’s like that quote that Steve Jobs loved: “If you aren’t busy being reborn, you are busy dying.” It really stayed with me since I read his book in 2012. If I am not accomplishing anything now and trying to achieve something, then what the hell am I even doing here? What is my purpose? I’m still searching, but maybe I am a little optimistic when I say now that I feel better about life now than I did this time last year.

I guess that’s something you struggled with: purpose. For a good 12 years, you were a devout Christian. You felt your purpose was to serve God, study the Bible, do good work, volunteer to help those less fortunate than you. Then in the 13th year of the 2000s, you broke. You were already breaking in late 2011, but you hid it from me that Christmas. You didn’t tell me you were hallucinating. You hid it so well that I had no idea until you told me in March 2012 when you quit your Macy’s job that anything was really wrong. And even then, you described everything so vividly that I believed what you told me. How could I not believe you? I believed what you said was real and really was happening to you. It took me a full year to realize it was all hallucination. And at that point, it was too late. Your purpose was lost, and your will to live was gone. And then you left us. It escalated way too fast for me to digest it and figure out how to help. But I was too slow and too late. This is what happens when you have a little sister who is slow to process things.

You did a lot of good things with your final years, Ed. I’m sure not many people have said that to you, but I thought you tried really hard, even when I was pushing you to try harder. I only said it because I loved you. I wanted to help you, to make you realize that you were capable of doing more. I hated everyone who tried to make you think otherwise, whether it was explicitly said to you (and we both know it was) or implied. Some of that hate is still in me and will continue to live on in me as long as I breathe.

It’s hard to have faith in life sometimes, though, when I know you are gone, and when insane acts of violence and racism happen like in Charleston and Ferguson and now Hempstead, Texas. I can’t wrap my head around it sometimes, and all the violence and racism and apathy and laziness of the world starts getting to me, and I feel flushed and angry that I am just this one, single, powerless person who can do absolutely nothing to help. I couldn’t even help you. Our mom reminds me indirectly that no one has reached out to ask me how I am doing today in light of your two-year-passing mark. It’s another reminder that I try not to take too personally — that no one really cares — or cares enough. But it’s comforting and brings tears to my eyes to know that Chris’s parents and brother reach out to me to say something. No one else does. But they do. They do because they are my family now. They’re your family, even if you’re not here anymore, and even they think of you. See? There is some hope in the world. I have to take what I can get. I guess having low expectations isn’t so bad after all, is it? Our own blood family — our cousins, our aunts, our uncle — they don’t even reach out to say or ask anything to me. I can’t stand our family. But you already know that, and you gave up on them a long time ago and realized how screwed up they all are.

I really wanted you to come by and surprise me today, in some way. It’s what I anticipate this time of the year, that you will pop out and say hello. I’d throw my arms around you the way I do in pretty much all the dreams I have when you appear, and I’d squeeze you until you get mad at me for cutting off your circulation. Today, as last year, my senses are heightened because I know you suffered immensely and ended your life so tragically two years ago. I felt my whole body go numb this morning thinking about it. But I forced myself to wake up in time for gym class so that I’d have no choice but to push myself in group fitness or look like a complete idiot. And you know how competitive I can get in these classes. I have to have better stamina than all those others in the class. This is how I deal with losing you — I guess I just push myself even harder. At least my muscles are benefiting from it.

I miss you a lot, Ed. I don’t know if you realize how much. Before you died, I worried about you and thought about you every single day. I even watched as you slept when I was in San Francisco sometimes, especially that last time I saw you for two weeks in March 2013. What am I going to do, Ed? I wondered. What are we going to do to get you better? I failed. I don’t think I will ever get over this failure. I literally lost a life — your life. It makes me feel sick literally to the bone. I can seriously feel it right this second.

I’ll be selfish when I say this. I don’t care if no one else thinks about you, if no one else misses you, if no one else ever visits your niche at the Columbarium. All I want to say is that all that matters is that I care and love you, and I’m never going to forget you or the importance you still have in my life. Everyone else can burn in hell. You’ll always have me even if you left me. I can’t wait to see you again — in my dreams hopefully very soon (tonight maybe? Please?), and when I’m ready to join you wherever you are. You’ll be waiting, right? Right at the door for me?

I love you. Don’t forget to stop by in my dreams. It’s the only place I’ll ever fully be at peace with you. Since you left this world, I’ve never looked forward to sleep more because it means I have a chance at seeing you again. So, consider coming tonight?

Love,

Yvonne

 

The kindness of strangers

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Chris and I are ambitious travelers. When we are going somewhere, we want to do and see as much as possible. We’re not check-box travelers since we do try to allocate ample time to actually learn, enjoy, and relish our experiences, but we certainly do not laze around or dawdle (well, he thinks I do when it comes to food and cute things, but I don’t agree…well, not fully). When we are traveling, time is always limited, so we want to maximize it and enjoy our surroundings as much as possible. So even though Chris’s feet were hurting today and I was having a really bad menstrual cramp, we tried not to let it slow us down too much. Well, that was until my cramp became almost unbearable, especially given the steady and gloomy drizzle of rain and humidity. So we decided to head into a pharmacy to see what the closest thing to Midol was.

We walked in, scanned a bunch of over-the-counter medicine, and chose a Tylenol and another medication that was labeled only in Japanese. I took both of them and walked up to a Japanese female pharmacy worker, and I greeted her in Japanese and motioned to the two bottles, faked a pained look on my face, then pointed at my stomach. She started speaking in rapid-fire Japanese, realized I could not understand anything she was saying, then started making hand gestures. One bottle, her hands said, was for a headache. The Tylenol bottle could work, but was it my stomach that was bothering me (she rubs her stomach in a round motion), or was it my stomach and my… lady parts? (makes a bigger circle with her hand to cover both her stomach and her crotch area). I quickly nodded at her second hand motion. Then she gave me the Tylenol and gestured that this was the right one for me. I thanked her in Japanese and went back to the wall of medication.

I figured she went back to doing her work. Without my awareness of it, she actually went to the back office area to retrieve a Japanese-English-Chinese-Korean translation book of pharmaceutical terms and medical conditions, and she brought it back to me. She spoke in Japanese and pointed at “menstrual cramps” in English, next to the equivalent written in Japanese, and asked if that was what I meant. YES, I nodded, and she said, good, then this is definitely what you should get. She helped ring up my medication and even looked up a translation for the dosage I should take and asked if I understood. I thanked her profusely, and we left and I took my pills.

I don’t think I’ve ever been more impressed in my life by anything that any stranger in a foreign country has done for me. She could have just left it at motioning to her stomach and crotch, and it really would have been fine. I could see how she really wanted to help me just looking at her face and different expressions. It was so touching to witness this happen and to know how women, regardless of culture or language barriers, can still relate to each other and empathize.