Category Archives: Love

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.

Mom’s complaints are love

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My mom is always touched when I make her food even though she tends to complain about it. She tells me that she didn’t raise me to cook food and “do manual labor.” To her, it’s like a low class job or activity even though she grew up extremely poor in a rural part of central Vietnam. She says cooking is hard work and that I should just “lie down and relax” when I’m not at work. This is slightly comical to me, though. If I work a 40-hour work week, she’s essentially telling me that she wants me to “lie down” 128 hours. That would get really boring, wouldn’t it?

Before I left home, I humored her and made her beloved and requested boxed brownie mixes. She doesn’t like baking since she really hates measuring anything when making food, so when it comes to even boxed mixes, she’d prefer someone else do it despite how simple it is. She knows how much I can’t stand mixes (I prefer to bake from scratch, which to this day, still befuddles her to no end), so she’s fully aware that I do this only because I love her and nothing else.

I talked to her on the phone today, and she thanks me profusely for making “such delicious brownies – so chewy!” Mom, I said, it was from a box! “I don’t care — it still tastes good, and you know I love it!” She exclaims in response. That’s what moms do. They complain about the things you do even though they absolutely love it at the same time and then go and tell all their friends about it.

 

Pork roll “bomb”

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Asian mothers are an interesting segment of Western society. While everyone is of course unique in her own way, the one thing that seems to unify all first-generation Asian mothers is that they all want to show their love for their children via food… LOTS of food. All the time. In every possible way and every possible minute. I recently learned of Chris’s friend’s mom, who is Cambodian, and how she loves to pack her daughters edible things that she claims they cannot get wherever they are, even if they are in major metropolitan areas with a plethora of very specific Asian groceries. The most ridiculous incident that I could not stop laughing about was when she packed an actual raw chicken on her flight from Melbourne up to Brisbane, claiming that the chicken in Brisbane would never be as good as the chicken in Melbourne. This got posted on Facebook. I saw it through Chris, and I thought, well, my mom’s pretty crazy about packing me food, but it’s never crossed that line.

My mom loves to marvel (and at times exaggerate) over how expensive food and groceries are in New York City vs. San Francisco. She clearly takes a lot of joy in telling me that she has to pack me everything from apricots and papayas to even freaking imported mochi and seaweed because, “It won’t be as good in New York as here.” Sometimes, what she says is true in this regard, but in most cases, it is not. But I love her for her effort anyway.

This time, she made sure to pack me a loaf of cha lua, also known as a Vietnamese pork roll, because she knows how much I love it and how rarely I get to eat it in New York, since the closest Vietnamese bakery I trust to buy it from is about 15 blocks outside of Brooklyn Chinatown, which I only get to at most twice a year. In addition to that, she packed me lots of other edibles. I always feel like I should resist given it’s always a lot of stuff and she probably spent too much time buying it all, but I see how much joy she takes in lining up all these things by my luggage on the day I leave that I feel like I will crush her soul if I say no. So I usually accept about 99 percent of it.

And this time, that beloved cha lua pork roll got scanned in the TSA pre-line security check multiple times and then swabbed because they probably thought it was a bomb or explosive. The TSA inspector kept looking at it, all neatly wrapped up in foil, with a puzzled look on his face, finally relented, and put it back in my backpack and handed me my bag.

I love my mom. I also love how ridiculous these airport security check machines are in scanning excessive food packed by Asian moms and mistaking them for explosives.

Recipe for love

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Yesterday, I was reading one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen, and Deb, the blogger, says in one of her posts that the sour cream coffee cake she makes could be the dish that made her now husband realize she was The One. She said that after she made this cake for him, shortly after, he asked her to marry him. And so began their journey cooking and photographing together in their tiny Manhattan kitchen. The coffee cake became the reason he married her, or so she wants to believe.

I thought about this in the context of me and Chris. Since we have moved in together about three years ago now, I’ve made so many different things that I can’t really keep track of what has been his favorite. I’ve made more use of this teeny tiny kitchen than probably anyone else in the history of this building even existing. This kitchen has seen some crazy three-day process dishes, as well as complex pastries like croissant. I asked him if he could name a dish I’ve made for him that he’d say was the one he’d name as the The Dish, and he said that I rarely make the same thing twice, so it was hard to name. Now that I think about it, the only real repeats this apartment has seen are banh xeo, appam, Kerala chicken stew, banana bread, pumpkin bread, pad thai, and different versions of oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies and fried rice. Nothing else has ever been a repeat.

It’s hard to repeat a dish when there are infinite recipes out there on the internet that I’ve bookmarked, as well as too many cookbooks here in the apartment that I neglect as a result. I guess Chris can’t name a favorite dish because they’re all his favorite dishes since I made them. 🙂

Aftermath

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So the dinner with my parents, Chris’s parents, Chris, and even my aunt happened last night. From what Chris and his parents said, it was a “lovely” and “enjoyable” evening getting to know each other over some great food. Chris said all the predictable things happened in terms of topics of discussion and gift exchange, and I wondered what my mother would have to say about all this after I left work today.

So I called her, and one of the first things she says to me is, “Have you talked to Chris’s parents?” I told her that they texted me to say it was a fun evening. “Did they say anything? What did they say? Did they say anything about me or your father? Anything about how nice we are?” And so it goes. My mother is interrogating me because she was expecting Chris’s parents to write a full detailed report on the evening, how it played out, and most importantly, what they thought of my parents as people and as future parents-in-law to their precious first born. I felt tired hearing all the questions coming out of her mouth. No, they didn’t tell me lots of details. All they did was text me a simple line to let me know dinner was great! Why is this so hard to believe? I’m not withholding any information!

As Chris and I know, all of these questions and comments are coming out of my mom’s insecurity and lack of confidence. She is just so eager to be praised and to be told that she is, in fact, worthy.

So at the end of the conversation, my mom says that she thanks God that I am able to marry a boy who comes from such a good family. “It’s Jehovah’s blessing,” she said calmly.

She’s right. Well, sort of. It is a blessing from God. It’s a blessing from God that I am not marrying into a family anywhere in the universe of dysfunction as my own. It’s also a blessing that I am marrying a boy who is even willing to arrange a “meet the parents” dinner without my presence. As my friend told me the other day, “You’re really lucky with Chris because if that were me, I’d be outta there.” This boy of mine clearly has balls.

Walk

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We had a long day with Chris’s parents today, which began with breakfast at the apartment. I prepared artichoke gratin toasts with some of our Korean leftovers, and Chris made bellinis. We walked through Central Park, to the northernmost areas, and walked west to the Upper West Side, taking the train down to Chinatown, where we had a late lunch of dim sum. We continued walking around the Lower East Side, Alphabet City, East Village, stopped by a wine bar near Union Square for some South African wine, and then walked along the High Line to Midtown West, where we had a quick Japanese meal at our theater night staple Tabata before going to our Agatha Christie show.

Every time I am around his parents, I’m always a bit amazed at exactly how willing they are to do pretty much anything we want them to do, within reason. It doesn’t seem to matter how much walking or wandering or uncertainty there is in our plans. In the way they move with us, they really define the idea of “go with the flow.” As we are wandering around East Village and Central Park and the Lower East Side today, not once did they complain about being tired, or wanting to stop or go home or just sit down. I was reminded of the walks we did in Vancouver with my parents, where my mom was constantly asking where we were heading to, saying she was tired and didn’t want to walk anymore even when we were in the middle of Stanley Park, and there would literally have been no other way to get out other than to walk. When we took them to a major lookout point in Queen Elizabeth Park where you can see the entire Vancouver skyline, five minutes hadn’t even passed until my dad said, “Okay, where are we going next?” I snapped at him and said we took them up there for the view of the skyline, so go look at it. And dad said sheepishly, “Oh,” and then moved towards the view. My parents can’t seem to appreciate a walk for what it is — a walk just to have an experience, to take in one’s surroundings and the beauty that exists. Who goes up to a lookout point and within minutes wants to leave?
Chris’s parents aren’t like that, though. They appreciate a flower just for what it is, or a walk as a walk. It doesn’t have to have a destination in mind. They enjoy the walk for what it is as an experience. They enjoy a flower just for its beauty and little else. They don’t make comments about how that bud probably would cost $5 if you bought it, or how much one market might rip you off for it versus another. They appreciate the bits of life for what it is.

Twitter pre and post life

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I am marrying a marketing and data geek. My baby is a data geek. He loves looking at data and numbers, and he hates it when people make anecdotal conclusions (well, unless they are his own, of course) unless they are backed up by numbers. Today, he pulled the entire history of my Twitter account and did a comparison of my Tweets before we began our relationship versus after. To be fair, I actually started Tweeting more after we got together because he loves Twitter and convinced me on how useful and fun it was. The comparison he did pulled out the most reoccurring themes/words that were used across posts.

Before Chris, some reoccurring words in my Tweets were “work,” “Thanksgiving,” “yum,” and “free.” After Chris, some of the most common words in my Tweets have been “love,” “surprise,” “homemade,” “happy,”and “Christmas.” So now, I indicate that I’m happy and that I love things more. Of course, the surprises are all his, since Chris loves to surprise me (but he doesn’t like them for himself… ever). I talk about Christmas more than Thanksgiving now because in a life with him, Christmas is always celebrated and loved in his family, whereas in my own, it was neglected unless Ed was there. Life has certainly changed since he’s been in the picture. My life has more surprises, unexpected fun, travel, and simply love.

Oh, and another word that has come up a bit in a world with Chris — “Bart.” That’s not necessarily a good thing because it’s indicative of the absence of Ed from my life now, but it shows a new phase of my life without him… and I guess the glimmer of hope that I still have the capacity to have a happy life despite losing my big brother the way I did.