My grief bifurcates my emotions. Noah taught me about bifurcated serifs when he found a Zabar’s mug at a thrift store in Arizona on our move to LA. We actually didn’t know about the iconic bagel empire, but he of course could not resist the pull of this very cheap, visually stunning mug with orange type. Bifurcated serifs are pretty extra; my first association is Zabar’s, then old Western movie posters. Bifurcated emotions are also pretty extra. What I mean is that often my reactions to things are double layered (or as my nephew started saying, “Double double decker”). When something nice happens to someone, I am genuinely delighted, then super bummed that either Noah didn’t get to witness it or he doesn’t get to experience the same for himself. When I hear of terrible things happening, I feel despairing and powerless, and my mind immediately goes to compare the suffering of the victims to Noah’s suffering. I still sometimes feel unwarranted rage at old men, walking around with their old wives. Even when they’re obviously a cute couple. Maybe especially if they’re a cute couple. I know people say that eventually you begin to enjoy things as if your person was there, vicariously living through your experience. Not quite there yet, I am afraid. I’m also a little afraid that my spiteful spike of contempt will not dull over time.
My October was full of life. I got to meet two babies that were new in my life, go celebrate a long life of Noah’s uncle in beautiful Santa Cruz, and go to a wedding party of one of Noah’s oldest college friends. Noah’s dad described it as “A perfect trifecta. Birth, marriage and death. Life in a nutshell.” (Sorry to all the unmarried people, we also have life, don’t worry.) I went apple picking in Wisconsin, visited the most beautiful Taco Bell in the world, got seasick on a ash-scattering cruise, danced in my vintage cowboy boots in Texas, saw a heron catching a fish in Chicago, had a birthday picnic for Noah by a lake with friends. I realized October is nice most places, people rushing to pack fun things into the month before it gets to be real fall (even though in Chicago it was 70-80 degrees recently, spooky season). As if we won’t all make it through the winter to see another warm day, which is true for some folks of course. It feels so abundant to see pumpkins and gourds and squash dotting the fields before it gets very very cold.
At the wedding weekend, I realized that all of the boys Noah lived with in college that he was still close to were either dads, married, or engaged. At the welcome party, there was a pool. We jumped in the water, hanging out on floaties or playing with a volleyball probably a little too competitively or splashing each other terribly with cannonballs. It was a weird time flattening moment, like we were still in our 20s or something like that. What a strange way to feel good and nostalgic, but also realize everyone around you is grieving the same person as you. Time continues on, people age, the edges smooth out. We went out to a club for the after party and we realized that the college kids were really into “Fergalicious” and they knew all the words. (???!) They played Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Heads Will Roll” and Kid Cudi “Pursuit of Happiness” back-to-back, and I was jumping, spilling Lone Star everywhere. It’s weird to know that in 15-20 years, these kids will be going to a wedding and feel nostalgic and feel the passing of time in the music and the smallness of the college kids and their knee pain. I know it’s impossible to explain to younger people what aging is like. I often tell people that it’s just not how life works, you can be told a million times what it’s going to be like, but you never know how you’re actually going to feel in that situation. Same with grief.
The thing I thought about while dancing in the club with the youths was that I am a fun person trapped in the life circumstance of a person dealing with drudgery and grief. Everyone probably feels this to some extent at different points in their lives, or maybe even all the time. We think: I’d be much funner if I didn’t have to work so hard to pay rent, I’d be much funner if I wasn’t sleep deprived and exhausted from taking care of children, I’d be much funner if I didn’t have to worry about ailing relatives. I’d be much funner if there weren’t global conflicts that we are acutely aware of and feel powerless about. I guess what I am learning to do is to be that person anyways, to be alive and cry when I want to and dance when I want to and eat many things that make me happy. With the crazy layers of bifurcated emotions I am juggling.
But I’m also not one of those incredible widows we hear about who accomplish herculean tasks after their partners die, at least yet. Maybe they start a foundation in their dead partner’s name to funnel resources into cancer research, or become a super mom, or become John Wick. That not everyone has something to say or compelled to do anything after the person they love the most dies. Obviously I’m writing this Substack, but some people don’t say very much publicly. I started reading Jenny Odell’s How to Do Nothing because I was staying right by the Rose Garden in Oakland, and she quotes a passage from Gilles Deleuze’s book Negotiations:
“We’re riddled with pointless talk, insane quantities of words and images. Stupidity’s never blind or mute. So it’s not a problem of getting people to express themselves but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don’t stop people expressing themselves but rather force them to express themselves; what a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing the rare, and ever rarer, things that might be worth saying.”
Sometimes I don’t write a post for a few weeks and I have many many things to say. Then sometimes if I let it sit around too long, it feels like I have nothing to say. But I’m pretty sure it’s like a weird pool of water where different things pop up at different times of the day. Sometimes all the animals are active, but sometimes they recede into the mud. Sometimes they lay eggs, they hatch, then they fly away. Maybe they can never be recovered. The ability to read everything and post anything is so crippling to me, that there is always something to say, always a response. Sometimes I wish everyone could listen, shut up, then figure out if anything needs to be said at all.
In the lead up to the elections, I’ve been thinking of how much we’ve gotten used to talking about what we want, but in this very flat, blunt way. In many situations of conflict, I tend to think, “Then what?” “How are we going to repair?” (Incidentally one of my favorite early childhood concepts) No matter how much we want to be right or win or be in power, how do you move forward if not with kindness or grace or compromise? I’m not talking about not having boundaries or getting stepped on, I’m talking about how we see each other as people worthy of life. I’ve also been in a lot of conversations about our criminal justice system, and it’s all connected, how we discard people when they are accused of a crime or say something offensive or criminal and there’s nothing they can do to redeem themselves, or be part of society. Another way that Noah’s level-headedness and actual kindness, not just niceness or politeness, permeates my thinking. He really resisted outrage culture, even though he spent a lot of time on Twitter. When we’re in such a rush to get big things addressed, we forget the small things we did for each other. I have been aiming to focus on more small things recently. I listened to this podcast of adrienne maree brown, whose tone and calm cadence of voice is one of the most soothing things to me, talk about her commitment to social justice and peace but with the understanding that sometimes you don’t get to see the actual thing you’re working for in your lifetime. But you do the little bit you can contribute in the time you have. It’s a similar idea to MLK’s “I may not get there with you.” And I don’t think it’s just for big, societal, global issues. I think it’s also personal. I do think Noah did everything he could in the time he had to impart kindness and wisdom and creativity and fun. It definitely wasn’t for nothing, even if he didn’t get to personally fulfill all of his dreams.
p.s. There’s a TikTok dance going around using a snippet of The Yeah Yeah Yeah’s “Maps”. I’m kind of worried that people aren’t listening to the whole song. They’re missing the most wistful guitar solo known to humankind, IMO. Maybe they haven’t seen Karen O’s face in the music video? If you have any tweens and teens in your life, please make sure they listen to the whole song. The whole album is fire and Karen O is an Asian-American icon. Someone on Reddit described this song as a portal, like when Anton Ego takes a bite of Remy’s ratatouille in Ratatouille and is transported back to his childhood, but it transports them to being young and when everything was ahead of them.
This post ended up being so much about youth, probably because I’ve been hanging out with a newborn and a 2-year-old everyday. Let us be as open to mistakes and repair as they are.
Love you, Hitomi
You touch on so many things . Love to read these and imagine hearing Noah saying and doing this stuff. It keeps him alive. ❤️
<3