Writing the Grief, the last few days.

So I’ve been away from this blog, away from Facebook, and away from my e-mail for a few days, which, if you know me, is an extended period of time. During this time, I’ve delivered my eulogy twice, seen my family members weep over my dead mother’s body multiple times, seen my father cry more in the last few days than I had in the last thirty years, and said goodbye to the woman who birthed and raised me while simultaneously celebrating her life.

It’s not an emotional stew. It’s an emotional avalanche. It’s everything, all at once. There was a Simpsons episode where Mr. Burns finds out that everything is trying to kill him at once, but because the disease can’t “fit through the door” so to speak, he just couldn’t die. That’s kind of how I am right now, but with emotions instead of diseases. I’m not… numb per se. But I’ve got a million things going on right now and I’m not sure what order to feel them in. Overwhelming is an understatement.

My mother is being cremated and interred in a small, idyllic cemetery near my childhood home. Today was the last time I was going to see her body. That feeling is still sinking in. As much as we all like to say that they aren’t in that box, they are, in a way, in that box. The morticians did an amazing job; my mom looked the way she did five years ago, before the disease really ravaged what was left of her body. While a dead person is still a dead person, it was astonishing. That made it both easier and harder. Her gaunt, skeleton-like appearance when she first died was indicative of all of her suffering, and in a way, all of ours. Her restored appearance, post-embalming, erased that almost completely. But it also made it less real – the death, the loss. Today, in the last few minutes we would have with her, it really slammed me.

Both viewings yesterday and today were lively affairs, believe it or not. My family is not one that succumbs to morbidity and despair easily. These last few days we saw friends and neighbors and family members that we hadn’t seen in years, sometimes decades. There was a lot to talk about. There was a lot to catch up on. It was easy to get lost in the joy of that. To get swept up in the love and support. And there was a LOT of it. It was weird for me. I’m used to being the supporter, not the supported. It’s hard for me to accept any of that. But I did my best, and it really did elevate my spirits.

At the end of each day, my father spoke about his life with my mother. He spoke about how they met, what their lives together meant. He broke down throughout the eulogy, but true to his character, he struggled onward, and conquered his tears each time. I was proud of him for the moving and meaningful things he said about my mother, about her character, about their love, without a script, without a safety net, with all that emotion, with everyone watching. Then my Aunt Betty, my mother’s older sister, spoke about their lives together as protesters, as sisters, as family. They told the story of my mother’s sweet sixteen, and how they rehabilitated an old stable behind their house, how they cleaned and repainted it, and how much the boys loved my mom. She also mentioned how my mother held the banners the highest and laughed the loudest. My father always said I had a lot of my mom in me, and I think that’s just more proof.

Then I gave my speech, which I’ll probably post later. I went off script near the end, regarding two things – my last memory of my mother and what this has taught me (This is actually way rougher than I delivered it during the eulogy because I am currently soul-deep tired). My last memory of my mother was the evening of Wednesday, May 29th. She was having trouble breathing because of congestion. She was death rattling, I realized later. My sister and father were pumping her chest, helping her breathe and clear the congestion. I couldn’t do much really besides hold her hand and say, “We’re all here, mom. We love you.” The care that my sister and father gave my mother was astonishing and loving and beautiful. They are my heroes. I am not afraid to say that. They are my heroes.

The other thing is this – I saw all the friends and family around me, and I knew that I still had far more than I lost. Even though I was heart broken, I knew there was so much in my life to look forward to, so many people in my life who still loved me. That is an amazing feeling – that there is still so much and so many people in my life to treasure.

Then we all paid our last respects, and that’s when all the joy and all the life fled the room. Maybe I’m selfish. Maybe I don’t want to face the reality of death (a definite, and likely, possibility). But as soon as we started focusing on the death itself, we all started hurting again – as if all the joy we found (or at least I found, I can’t speak for everyone else) died with all the wonderful talk. Suddenly it was just us, alone, against the enormity of death. And I fucking hate that.

Carolyn said that these two things aren’t mutually exclusive – that celebrating my mom’s life and mourning her passing are meant to go together. I know she’s right. I just hate seeing the people I love in pain. I hate being in pain. (Who really likes it?)

I had trouble tearing myself away from the casket today. I couldn’t bring myself to touch her (kissing her cold forehead on Friday afternoon was the most awful experience of my life, but I couldn’t stop doing it) so I squeezed the edge of the casket in my hands as hard as I could. And in my head, I promised her I would live every day of my life in her honor. I would take the days of my life and use them well, in the ways that she never could because she was so, so sick.

I’ve been in a rut with my job for a long time. I think it’s time I started looking elsewhere, trying to figure things out. I need to do something, anything more. I have too much to give, too much love in my heart, too much care for the world, to burn a third of my life churning butter for my corporate masters. Life is just too precious.

I have to say that my mother’s sickness and death is the worst thing that has ever happened to me, full stop. But at the same time, I can feel vast vistas of existence, of possibility, opening up before me. Before she died, the horizon only held death and pain, and the possibility of more suffering – hers and ours. Now… who knows? My mom’s been sick since I was 13. I’m 30 now. I have no idea what my life can or could be. But I’m going to find out, one way or another. Before, it seemed like any effort I made would be doomed to failure. Why? Because my mother was going to die. Now? Who knows?

I want to find out. For the first time in my life.

From May 31, 2013

My mother, Lily Chin-Woo passed away at noon today. The last person to speak to her was my sister. She told her, “You are an inspiration to me every day.” She died peacefully, in bed, at home. My father and my sister provided amazing care to her throughout her illness, which lasted over a decade and a half. To say that they are my heroes is a vast understatement. My mother’s pain is over now, and that is a relief to us all. All things end, even those both beautiful and terrible.

I was about to leave to see her when I found out. I was planning on reading her poetry today, but I never got a chance. That was an immense blow.

While I am hurting, and the grief comes in waves, at the moment, I feel strangely at peace. I no longer have to live in fear of my mother’s death. The worst has already come and gone. My mother and I didn’t have the best relationship, but in the final months, I forgave her, told her I loved her many times, that I would be okay, and that it was all right for her to go – that we would be all right, even without her. The anger I once had for her is gone – gone like her body, ephemeral as a ghost. Like it was never real to begin with. I feel like a different person. Weeping into my father’s shoulder, I asked him if my mother was proud of me. He said, “Of course she was! What kind of question is that?! She loved you and she wanted what was best for you!”

I read her poems from Li-Young Lee’s “Rose”, an amazing book of poems by that Chinese American poet. The most potent and relevant of which was “From Blossoms”

From blossoms comes
this brown paper bag of peaches
we bought from the boy
at the bend in the road where we turned toward
signs painted Peaches.

From laden boughs, from hands,
from sweet fellowship in the bins,
comes nectar at the roadside, succulent
peaches we devour, dusty skin and all,
comes the familiar dust of summer, dust we eat.

O, to take what we love inside,
to carry within us an orchard, to eat
not only the skin, but the shade,
not only the sugar, but the days, to hold
the fruit in our hands, adore it, then bite into
the round jubilance of peach.

There are days we live
as if death were nowhere
in the background; from joy
to joy to joy, from wing to wing,
from blossom to blossom to
impossible blossom, to sweet impossible blossom.

On my way home to my apartment in Jersey City today, I saw people dressed up and ready to go out to the city, to bars, to nightclubs. They will dance. They will drink. They will meet and hook up and fuck and dream and love and do all the amazing life-affirming things you should do on the last day of May. And I am deeply comforted by that for some reason. Life goes on, as it should. As it always does.

I am incredibly thankful for Christine Bolesta and Chris Kulawiak, who were there for my family and me today, who are practically family themselves. And without Carolyn, the love of my life, I never would’ve made it through this. And last but not least, thank you to everyone who has offered me care and love and support in person or via Facebook. My mother has been in hospice care since March of 2012. This has been an arduous marathon run. Thank you, everybody, for helping me see this through to the end.

I’ll know more about services soon, and I’ll post about it in the next few days.

I love you all.

How soon is too soon?

“When’s the right time?”

 

This is a question I’ve been asking myself lately. Recently, Ed Koch died. In case you didn’t know, Koch was the mayor of New York from 78-89, during the AIDS epidemic. You can read a bit about his record here. http://gawker.com/5980791/ed-koch-is-dead?popular=true (Yes, I know it’s Gawker, but it’s a pretty good article regardless.)

 

On the day of his death, I was driving around in my car, and heard a lot about how sad it was that Koch died. This irritated me. Many activists, including Larry Kramer, founder of GMHC and ACT UP, accuse Koch of murderous indifference and inaction to the suffering of the gay community in those days. I brought this up on my Facebook the day of (You can see the posts on Feb 1). While I received support, I also received criticism that it was too soon to mention these things.

 

My question is: when is the right time to start discussing the foibles and failures of public officials / celebrities after they die? One day? One week? A month? A year? This is an honest question.

 

Does it have to do with the egregiousness of their offenses? There is obviously a line in the sand somewhere. Nobody was sad when Eichmann was assassinated, and nobody shed any tears when Pol Pot died. At some point, a person can do so much evil that it outweighs any potential good. (Note: I don’t believe that Koch’s mistakes even approach those of Eichmann and Pot.)

 

 

Does your proximity to the wounded parties affect it? I would say it does. There’s a difference between, say, someone posting on Facebook and someone protesting a funeral. I was compared to the WBC, which I thought wasn’t at all accurate – mostly because I was standing up for queer rights, not attempting to destroy them, and my proximity to Koch and his loved ones was fairly distant at best. I didn’t, and wouldn’t, go to Koch’s funeral and hold a sign and shout.

 

But there’s something that really sticks in my craw when people defend Koch’s right to die on clean white sheets, and afterward have his image burnished, while gay men died by the thousands in New York City, shunned by hospitals and ignored by the government, in incredibly painful and humiliating ways, while many Americans called AIDS some kind of holy retribution against queer people. How can we be silent? How can we forget that?

 

On another note, my friend Thomas Fucaloro asked me how discussing Koch’s callous failure to address the AIDS epidemic in the 80s helps today’s victims. After doing some thinking, I decided that we can’t address the present state of an issue without understanding and remembering the history of oppression that helped create this issue. AIDS got as bad as it did for a reason. Koch is not the only person who shrunk away from this issue, nor is he the only one to blame. But his actions should not be forgotten. Remembering helps us struggle, helps us connect to our past, and remember who our enemies are. It’s not the rotating cast of cardboard villains presented in entertainment news – it’s the people in power who would declare us less than human.

 

How long did it take us to truly remember what Christopher Columbus did? Andrew Jackson? These men are absolutely blood-soaked. And there are places in America where children are still not learning the truth about their history. This should worry anyone.

 

Mourning is important, but I believe that remembering the stories of our nations, particularly the stories of oppressed and silenced communities is also important – It may be even *more* important.  When you see history through rose-tinted glasses that glamorize our successes and obscure our failures, you fail to learn from it.

 

If I’ve learned one thing in my life, it’s that fact. “Never forget” is more than a pithy slogan – it’s the only way out of oppression.

 

In closing, I must admit: I am terrified that the death of George W. Bush will lead people to claim that he “helmed the ship during a difficult time in American history” rather than acknowledge that his actions precipitated the massive erosion of civil rights and international war that claimed thousands of American, Afghani, and Iraqi lives unnecessarily. How did we forget the lessons of Vietnam, and the violence, surveillance, and suppression of dissent that took place in the 60s? Grief at the deaths on 9/11.

 

From 9/11 to Bush to Ed Koch, I don’t believe we should never let grief blind us. When do we get to talk about a person’s mistakes, and during what time must we only talk about their successes?