Tuesday, March 26, 2024

Every Moment I Love You




Every

Moment

I

Love 

You




A friend shared with me recently why she named her daughter Emily. How delightful! We christened our Emily by this name for a few reasons:


  • It honoured Don’s deceased mother
  • My deeply-loved Opa’s name was Max Emil
  • In Chinese, Ai(爱) is love; Mei (美) is beauty; Li (力) is strength or power - I May Lee is how it would be pronounced and how I often liked to say her name, loving her Chinese heritage, and recognising how each of those words pertained perfectly to who she was and how I felt about her


So now I have another reason to love the name of Emily, the name we gifted our forever-loved daughter.


Thursday, March 21, 2024

A Note To My Emily




Oh, my Emily. I miss you beyond words. The grief that we feel is unimaginable. I just want to grab you and hold you and never let go. This morning I watched a post on my memories from Facebook with you and Charlotte singing The Sun Will Come Out Tomorrow and it just took my breath away. I had to hold my heart and let the tears flow. As soon as I told your Daddy what I was watching, he began to cry too, just having the memory. Such joy. Such absolute, pure joy. You had a lot of that. You threw yourself into everything - and when you were happy, you were on fire.


I love how you and Charlotte loved each other so much. How much you loved her and looked up to her. How she made you laugh and how you came out of yourself when she was such a clown. How you gazed at her with unabashed admiration and how at the same time you were just so uniquely you. 


I also so clearly remember the day you two became friends, not just sisters. You’d been with us a few months already and you were busy gaining weight and eating all the fruit in the house, all the time. You’d wake up and shout, “Xiang jiao, xiang jiao” and we’d ply you with bananas. We had to hide the fruit bowl on the table because you’d eat everything in it, if you had the chance. You were busy finally getting strong after a year in a horrible orphanage just hanging on. Just hanging on. We saved you, dear girl and you knew it. You were so appreciative. You never took that for granted, but that year defined you. That year without us. It nearly took you under several times and then it finally did. I am so sorry for this. Just so sorry.


Back to your friendship with your sister: you were both under the big oak table in your tuktuk Thailand pajama-shorts and suddenly we saw you two just laughing and rolling on the floor. I don’t know what happened, but that was the spark, the connection that brought you two together and bonded you. We have it immortalized in a photo and I am so grateful for that. I think we shall frame that and smile every time we see it. It’s the most joyful moment I can imagine.


The day we met  you, you just mewed like a little shy cat. There was no other sound. But you ate an entire loaf of Chinese brown sweet bread in that roam in the Gloria Plaza hotel in Nanchang, China. Your little fists grabbed that bread like it was manna from the heavens and you mewed for more. Charlotte fed you a bottle of formula and you slurrped it greedily. Your Daddy and I just gazed on you, not believing the miracle of having you in our lives.


What a privilege it has been to be your parents these 17 years, dear girl. I will always be your Mama and Daddy will always be your Daddy. We cannot stop loving you, adoring your, admiring your efforts, and grieving the fact that you are no longer with us. I speak only for myself because your Daddy is maybe not there yet, but I do not blame you for ending your life. You were caught in some kind of pain that we cannot even imagine. Sometimes I think of the expansiveness of the grief I am in now, and I remember that you sat with an intensity of pain like this on a regular basis. And that’s what gives me compassion for you and forgiveness. I am so very sorry that you could not escape from that often enough to breathe with freedom.


It’s clear to me that you had incredible joy very often in your life. We watched you in action: your passion, your curiosity, your friendships, your laughter, your sense of humor, your playfulness, the rich, imaginary life that you had and shared with a precious few who know who they are. What a gift you gave us all through your too-short life, Emily. How blessed we have been to know you and  harbor you physically and emotionally. What a privilege.


We often wonder if you had been able to hold on just a little bit longer, let that cerebral cortex grow just a bit more, find the correct correlation of medication that could calibrate your serotonin consistently, just a bit more experience with the ups and downs and how to ride them - this was our wish for you. Oh, how we wished that and still do.


But if wishes were horses, we all would be kings. 


It feels good to write to you right now. I will probably share this with others because I know you will want me to. You’ve made it clear to me that my mandate is to share my grief journey, and to use your life and your passing as a way to help others heal. I hate that. I would rather have found my voice through any other means, yet somehow the loss of you is what has propelled me to write and talk to others. 


And so I will continue to do this, in honour of you, and also because you seem to be insisting. You are one of my most compelling reasons to go on, even though you are no longer here. How can this even be?


Tuesday, March 19, 2024

A Day Without Tears

 

Yesterday was the first day since Emily’s death that neither Don nor I cried, even though she was abundant in our conversation. We spent the afternoon with some of our dearest friends on their patio, huddled beside their fire pit on one of the first warm and sunny days of spring here in Vancouver, eating bratwurst and coleslaw. We were laughing and remembering so much of our extensive friendship history, and I thought how Emily loved each one of us on that patio and how she loved staying at Steph and Aman’s, hanging out on their deck in the summers, sleeping on their sofa, helping Steph prep food, intuiting what needed to be done and when. She was the perfect sous chef and bottle washer. By the time Charlotte roused herself from her torpor, Emily was usually done with whatever task needed doing. She loved keeping busy and being active. It was in her nature to help, to work with her hands, whether it be learning how to prepare beautiful food, make cocktails, fix gadgets, make machines, build stuff whether from sand or wood or nuts and bolts she had lying around, make masterful short films - she had a keen desire to create. 


When Emily was little she invented her own language that she shared sparingly. It had its own world and history. She and Don would go on long hikes in Hong Kong and she would school him on the history, teach him new vocabulary, give him quizzes on all things Card Language. It was ever-evolving and Emily kept notebooks of her thoughts, maps, treasures, the lexicon, as well as shields and representations of this amazing world she developed.


Occasionally she would let me in to this world also, though it was one she mostly shared with her daddy. They bonded deeply on their long treks, picking up bits and bobs along winding trails and beaches, that became part of the treasured world that they shared together. It was almost like Emily was reaching for her version of heaven through this creation.


From early on and until they end, Emily quizzed both of us deeply about our beliefs and different philosophies, probing, and all the while, coming up with her own belief system that accompanied her magical thinking, which could just as well be called faith as imagination.


As I opened my computer to write just now, a picture of Emily on the bed with Moondog and Catboy flashed across my screen. And there were the tears. Don came in to get something and sat on the bed and wept with me. We didn’t even need to talk. We just miss our baby so much. I believe she will always be building something magnificent in her new world and her creations will come out exactly as she imagines them.





Saturday, March 16, 2024

Serendipity

 


We are in New Orleans in the last of our southern states tour, soaking in the hospitality, gobbling up the gumbos and beignets, and I am personally availing myself of a daiquiri or two a day, allowed out on the street, in the car (Don’t worry, I’m not driving!) and anywhere else you might find music floating out from somewhere, which is everywhere. What a vibrant city, full of people ready to tell their stories and to listen to yours. I’ve been called honey, bluebell, sweetie and buttercup. I’ve been hugged by waitresses, kissed on the lips, given amulets of appreciation, and listened to enough music to have developed an ear for blues and jazz that has my toes tapping and hips swaying in ways they’ve not done before. The city of New Orleans (or Nawlins as the locals call it) has restored my faith in humanity, if not in driving.


It was daylight savings last night and I got up early to record our 2 Chit Chat Chicks podcast with my partner in crime, Eydie, but she is either out doing her Sunday morning shop or availing herself of an extra hour of sleeping on daylight savings day, so I am ensconced on the sofa in our Airbnb, taking some yearned-for Leah time that’s been hard to grab on our road trip. How can there still be so many obligations, even when not working and on a vacation? I haven’t quite figured that out, but a big part of me is anxious to settle into our house on Vancouver Island next month and really begin our new life, post-Emily, in a new, permanent and exquisite part of the world. All the grace and love and opportunities we have had since Emily’s passing have been a blessing beyond measure, and, at the same time, have left us in a bit of a limbo, and had us craving routine and stability. These normalities have been vacant from our life since the saddest day I expect I’ll ever experience: November 24, 2024.


At a drag show, of all the places, I met a woman, Steffanie, on Friday night. In between watching the acrobatic and charismatic performances of some truly magnificent queens, we shared our motherhood stories and wept together and bonded and found a kind of sisterhood that maybe only mamas who have lost their children can have. Her story is vastly different from mine - an adoption gone awry, with beloved baby whisked away before a day was up, due to the birth mother changing her mind - but I viscerally felt her heartbreak. It touched a part of the live wire that now lives in me and is ignited by people who live with a certain kind of pain. I have a rapid fire signal for it now. Maybe I’ve always had it but wasn’t tuned into it.


New Orleans is full of magic, some of it conjured and some of it real. There are plenty of haunted and ghost tours and voodoo stores, none of which are of interest to us in the moment. The jazz and the blues are what is speaking to our hearts and unearthing our emotions, and they are to be had 24 hours a day in the city of sorcery and music and history and magic. As it happened, yesterday, we wandered past a teeny little store tucked away in the French Quarter that inexplicably beckoned us in. It was empty, save a lone employee (Donna Lee) and housed bits and bobs of jewellery and music paraphernalia. We got to talking (as you inevitably seem to do in New Orleans, especially when you have a life partner who has suddenly turned gregarious and also looks like an aging member of a band and is constantly asked if he is a musician), and as our life stories began to intertwine and fuse, we realised we shared some common experiences involving our loved ones and their pain. Again, we told our story to a stranger because she had been willing to share hers. We listened closely and spoke intimately. It felt like a holy time in a magic shop that had once housed a famous psychic who had been a close friend and confidante to the voodoo priest and famous musician Malcolm John Rebennack Jr. (known as Dr. John - one of Don’s favourites). This shop had been frequented by Jackie Gleason, Mick Jagger, Bob Dylan and the likes, all coming for readings from Mary, apparently a psychic for the ages. 


Donna Lee explained there was a portal in this building and the spirits were abundant and full of love here. She said she was disinterested in any ghost seekers or people looking to find evidence or non-evidence of the beyond. She was there because she believed there was a beyond and she was compelled by what was there, and the spirits that blessed her. Even my skeptical sweetheart took comfort in her stories and I felt both our energies shift as we spent time chatting with Donna Lee in her dark little spot in the French Quarter. We were blessed with something inexplicable in that tiny shop and Don walked away with a little gift - a silver angel coin - that he had noticed in the front of one of the cabinets and she had said, “Oh, you just take that. I think it’s meant for you.”


Our dear Emily is ever-present on our minds, whether we are talking about her or not; we can each feel when one or the other of us is overcome. We know when to give space or when to hold one another. It’s almost becoming second nature.


This city, for all its boisterous energy and beauty alongside quiet desperation and music that reaches out and grabs you by the throat, combined with spicy food and strong drink and fried chicken I’ve never tasted the likes of, is full of a radiating energy. I believe the spirits are present and are helping us with our healing here. Today we are visiting an out-of-town cemetery (The in-city ones you have to take a tour and we would rather have our own wander), and I hope to commune with the angels, including my own personal Emily angel. Sunday promises to be another spiritual day, and finally a blue-sky one as well.

Wednesday, March 6, 2024

Road Tripping

 


We are in Memphis, Tennessee. Don is browsing in Goner Records and I’m enjoying a coffee next door. On yesterday’s LP perusal, I found a cozy chair and read a few too many bleak bits of news, so I am here today to bring a little light into the world. That’s what Emily would want.


Here’s what’s been happening: we are down south picking up our car from dear friends who gratefully and gently used it while we were in China, and we are driving it back to Canada. We’ve been to Nashville, now Memphis, and our next stop is New Orleans. Then we are going to boot it home to Canada, pedal to the metal, because we are missing Charlotte and we also want to start getting ready for our imminent move to Vancouver Island.


I find myself talking back and forth with Emily all the time these days. Of course, both voices are mine (and I’m doing a lot of it out-loud, under my breath), but I just feel the peace washing over me when I converse with her, so whether people think it’s real or not, I don’t care. It feels real and I am honouring and loving our playful banter.


One of our favourite things to do is go thrifting and it’s a whole new can o’ worms here in the south: different merchandise, fun styles, lots of polite ma’ams and accents that I don’t understand, so I often find myself nodding and smiling, even though I’m not sure what I am responding to.


After a pothole-filled drive to the LP store (People living in Tennessee probably need to set aside a special budget for tires each year), Emily ‘said,’ “You guys make sure you have a good time. And don’t rush Dad. This is his happy place.” Hence, here I am in the vegan cafe.


When thrifting, Emily’s common refrain is, “Those look like pajamas, Mama, so they’re probably perfect!”, “Don’t buy it unless you love it,” and yesterday’s was, “Don’t feel obligated to buy something that you know I’d wear - our styles are radically, different, Mama.” Also, “You look so cute, Mama.” That is sweetness I will take, every loving spoonful of it!


We’ve been listening to live music on Beale Street each of our evenings here in Memphis. It’s pretty quiet as it’s early in the week, and I’m thinking tourism and the economy here in Memphis is not what it used to be. There are a lot of boarded-up places and hard-living is evident throughout this city. It’s a place definitely tinged with heartbreak, ongoing reconciliation and a complicated history. 


Last night we heard a woman named Baunie and her small band singing the blues. She was truly magnificent, though the bar was nearly empty. It felt a privilege to be in her space listening to her soaring, booming voice, her beautiful energy coming through her bodacious body. Don got very emotional, and did some full-on crying in the bar and I just rubbed his back and let him feel it all. As he said, “They don’t call it the blues for no reason.” So true.


During a break, we went to speak with her and Don told an abbreviated version of our Emily story. Her eyes welled up for us, and she said, “I just couldn’t even look your way when you were cryin’ because I knew I’d cry too.” She told us she’d be praying for us and talked about all the child angels in heaven. It was very touching.


We are settling into crying, laughing, enjoying, mourning, remembering, forgetting, doing and not doing. This is the routine or non-routine of our life right now. I truly hope there will be more of the happy and less of the sad. The shift is already happening. TIme is indeed passing. Our grief remains, but our capacity to hold it grows. 

Monday, February 26, 2024

Preparing for the Worst, Hoping for the Best




When the worst has happened - and I cannot honestly think of anything worse than having your child end their own life - I had thought it might alleviate my sense of panic about other potentially frightening life events. After all, what else could go more wrong than that? How much more could I actually hurt than I already do Yesterday, I realized how things could get worse: by losing our other daughter.


I'm a learned optimist, but I believe a born pessimist. Perhaps it’s an intergenerational defect that I inherited or something I simply copied from my cheerful but cautiously optimistic mother. She had a few sayings that led me to believe that she too may have had a marrow of pessimism. The first was erst das lachen, denn das weinen (first the laughter, then the tears); the second was always wear clean underwear in case you’re in an accident; the third was hope for the best, expect the worst. Both my parents are refugees - first generation Canadians who survived the horrors of World War II and along with loved ones lost, probably, some faith in circumstances always working out for the best. 


Yesterday, Don and I went to the weekend flea market on Terminal Avenue in Vancouver: he got a bunch of old LPs and I found a rosary with the five stations of the cross. I utter “I love you, Emily, I love you, Emily,” and then when there is a break in the beads, I  go on to the next station and say, “I love you, Mama, I love you, Mama,” and in this way we talk back and forth as I quietly flip through the wooden orbs, ending on a smooth wooden cross that has been repaired and feels like a righteous symbol of strength, which I am in need of. The loop of love.


After our flea market venture, we picked up Charlotte at her university and went out for some authentic Chinese dimsum in a boisterous, clattery restaurant where Charlotte already had accrued some happy memories with friends. We were feeling melancholy and grateful at the same time because a dear friend of Emily’s had posted a beautiful tribute for her on her obituary webpage and it had just been passed on to us. We sat in the car and sobbed for a few minutes before ordering our prawn dumplings and pork buns and fried rice and drinking cup after tiny cup of jasmine tea. The rambunctiousness of the eatery buoyed us, but we still felt overwhelmed with emotion.


Our plan was to take Charlotte to her lifeguarding job at five pm. After finishing up our meal, none of us could think of what to do to pass the time until she had to be at work. It was a blustery day and we drove aimlessly, me in the backseat and Charlotte feeling carsick in the front, with Don saying, “Someone just give me directions somewhere.” Yet none of us had ideas or fortitude to think of anywhere we wanted to go or anything we wanted to do. Finally, we pulled over in a residential neighbourhood, Don and Charlotte leaned back in their bucket seats, and we all watched an episode of Friends together on Charlotte’s iPhone. It has been a program that has cheered me up a few times in my life’s journey when I just needed some levity and little less stress. Charlotte, almost unbelievably, had never watched it, and loved it immediately, so I am delighted that I can share something with her that is new for her and already a balm for me.


We lay in the chilly car and laughed at Chandler being caught in a bank vestibule with a Victoria’s Secret model and Ross trying to ask Rachel out during a blackout in New York City as a cat attacked Ross’ head on that envy-enducing balcony of theirs. It was ludicrous and nothing could have been better in that moment.


We like to pick Charlotte up after her evening shifts and drive her back to her dorm or to the house we are still staying at here in Vancouver, but on this day, we collectively decided that she would take the bus back to university after her shift because soon we will be relocating to Vancouver Island and she will need to become accustomed to doing it on her own. Also, the days are getting longer and less chilly so it feels safer, all in all.


Charlotte agreed that she would call us as she was walking from her pool to the bus stop, about 10 minutes away. As we chatted and she walked, a black, collared cat nuzzled up against her legs and began purring and following her. We liked the idea of this being Emily popping in to say, “Hi sister, you’re safe,” and she didn’t want to leave the cat, hence missing the bus and having to catch the next one, some 15 minutes later.


We happily stayed on the line, chatting, and once she was on the bus, Charlotte promised to call when she was safely back in her dorm room. I got involved in my Duo Lingo Spanish and Don in sorting through his vinyls, and we lost track of time. Well after 10 pm, I realized Charlotte had not gotten in touch with us, so I immediately texted her to make sure she was safe. Being a girl who is continuously on her phone, I expected the read sign to pop up immediately, showing that she had seen my message and for the three bubbles to start vibrating, showing she was texting back. Nothing. I called. Nothing. Don called and texted. Nothing. We were able to track her on the find my i phone app and it showed her phone was on Burnaby Mountain, but not in her dorm. My heart rate escalated. We continued calling and texting with no response. I realized that if she had dropped her phone, she would have no way of communicating with us to let us know she was safe, plus she might be roaming about searching for her missing phone; worse yet, I imagined her robbed or raped or murdered. 


Within a few minutes, Don and I had decided we needed to drive the half an hour to her university and go looking for her. We were bundling up and as I was grabbing a fleecy blanket for the backseat to wrap her in, in case we found her on the forested mountain, the bubbles popped up and Charlotte wrote, I’m fineeee bruh.”


Call me!! I texted back. Prior to that moment, it had been building adrenaline - cortisone vibrating through my veins - but after profuse apologies from Charlotte who had forgotten and was in the dining hall having pizza with her friends, Don and I both just collapsed. We cried and cried. What if we had lost our Charlotte, too? It would be unimaginable. The worst and then the worst again could happen.


I was unable to sleep without medication and woke groggy and upset. I dreamt that Don wanted to adopt more children to “make up” for the loss of Emily and I was adamantly against it, saying things like, “Haven’t we suffered enough already?” None of it made sense as both of our daughters were alive in the dream and they were still little girls. Also, I was prepared to flee the marriage and my children to avoid any more pain by having yet more children to love.


I got up and moved to the sofa, covering myself in the blanket that I had put aside for the backseat in case we found Charlotte’s lifeless or shivering body. I tried to read for a while to break my mind away from the dream before falling sleep again, but as soon as I closed my eyes, it reoccurred , along with a kinked neck from sleeping on the sofa. Upon waking, I remembered a time many eons ago, in another life and another marriage, when my husband didn’t make it home. My mother got in the car to go looking for him, putting a blanket in the backseat for the same purpose I had. When he was safely found, having spent the night in his office (before the time of cell phones), my mother said quietly, “The funeral would have been on Tuesday.”


And so here I am. Carrying on the legacy. Preparing for the worst, hoping for the best. It’s not the way I want to live my life. I’m not sure I’ll be able to change it now, though. Once the worst of the worst has happened, how can we go on thinking that the rest of life will be fine?


Saturday, February 24, 2024

The Privilege of Pain



My friend Kristi spoke these words - the privilege of pain - when we met in December and she ministered to me by bringing a big salad full of all the things I love and having a picnic at my kitchen table, all things, even napkins, provided by her. She also picked up my daddy, who doesn’t drive a lot these days, so he could be at the bungalow with us. He promised he would just read and mill around and be a gentle presence in the background of our reunion. Kristi brought cosy pajamas for both me and Charlotte and a fluffy blanket for Don that we all continue to shroud ourselves in when we watch TV on the sofa together. And, most importantly, she brought along the easy conversation that comes through life-long friendship. How natural it was to laugh and cry together. During this visit in the early days after Emily’s death, she spoke this profound phrase: the privilege of pain. The recognition of this truth was present for me immediately; I even asked her to repeat what she meant by this phrase, yet my brain and heart were not yet ready to process what this meant on a heart level.


And then I woke in the early hours before dawn today, swathed in the soft blankets of my sister’s basement bedroom in Seattle with my sweetheart snoring softly beside me, some two months later, knowing explicitly what this phrase meant to me. What it has become to me.


The privilege of pain is to see you, all of you, to really see you, even if you don’t speak. It is to silently or verbally acknowledge that you too have suffered. How? I won’t always know. But to really know at a soul level that you have felt and experienced acuity, intensity: unfathomable things, and that grief resides within you for a multitude of reasons, many of which you may not even remember or have pushed away.


The privilege of pain is to receive each of you who has shared with me - about your own children, your spouses, your lost loved ones or ones you are in the midst of losing, your own depths of depression, sorrow, anxiety - with grace and with knowing. I hold each of those confessions like a warm egg, a baby chick emerging. The crack is already starting, my hands ready to receive the fluffy warmth. Each story you have shared with me, through our visits, through the many, many notes, through voice messages and texts, they are gifts. They truly are.


That you have been able to share something profound with me because my grief and vulnerability and openness have somehow given your that forum, this has been an honour. It is my privilege to receive your pain because somehow, unfathomably, it does not make mine deeper, but rather transforms it and eases it. To know that we are in this earth school together, putting our boots on the ground and doing what we have to do to carry on because we have made this choice, sometimes just minute by minute or day by day: this is a pact that we now have together that binds us. To help you just a little bit by allowing you to share the grief of your lost babies; your years of crushing anxiety; your unimaginable losses or hurtful gains; your rapes; your near-suicides; the vigilance with which so many of you must live day after day, for fear a loved one of yours will end their lives; for the breaths you take hoping this day will not be your last because you may finally receive some respite; for the sorrow of children not born; of people lost in the futility of war and hate surrounding us; the shocking sadness of a true love being taken without warning and the wrenching sorrow of the long goodbyes; the chronic and persistent pain in your own bodies and minds; the parents who have faded away with dementia yet whose bodies continue to function; the memories of happier times or the memories we cannot let go of, even though the experience is long gone and the trauma remains. Oh, my. Each time I receive these emotions through your words, my own heart softens. Instinctively, when I read your notes or hear your words, my hands go to my heart. 


Thank you for sharing, for allowing me into your worlds, rich with florid, robust emotions. Some of your soul sears are as ancient as the old growth forests, many intergenerational and inherited and brought forth from and with others. Your depths are so cavernously rooted and sometimes as dank and dark as the innermost labyrinth of trees that have somehow managed and strained to flourish, their trunks accruing years of wisdom and strength and solidity. Know that there is beauty in your forests - so much - and it comes from the pain. There is no rainforest without rain. None of us is exempt.


Thank you for giving me a glimpse of your forests; thank you for letting me into the depths of your souls. I take none of it lightly, and I receive it with such gratitude. Your pain eases mine. How can it be? It’s the transmogrification of something sacred; there is a communion that unites us. It is compassion. It is grace. 


May your hearts be eased. I wish for all of you peace and continued growth through all seasons. I wish you much, so much, warming sun, but also the rain that helps you to grow. May we all become vessels of compassion. May we all make space for one another. May we look up and see the sad eyes, the frazzled parents, the unkempt child, the downcast heads, the tent cities of people living with inexplicable loss, literal and figurative, and see these people, hear their words, know their pain, so that selfishly, ours may be eased and there can be a fusion of our forests. This is the privilege of pain.