Excusing the errors of our ways – a necessary mechanism?

I dreamt again of the fine french linen with the broad faded-pink strips – the one I had planned for more aprons. I felt annoyed that I did so, for it is one of the recurring unresolved dreams. See, a cousin had lent it from me more than 7 years ago for a photoshoot. At the time Mike had made a joke about it not needing to be returned (for he deplored my fabric stash), & I had refuted him on the spot. When I got it back, it was but a fraction of the bolt it was – barely enough for grownup’s apron, not to say a child’s skirt. I was surprised. I hadn’t brought it up… I barely think about it when I meet her in person – I don’t consider it a defining feature of our relationship.

Yet my subconscious appears to disagree.

It is interesting to find the mind (especially in such primordial, weakened states of slumber) can return again & again to the thought of those who wronged us. I know older relatives whom, every time we meet, cannot help but relate ad nauseam, with unaltered passion & vehemence, certain stories of being wronged. They are preoccupied – there is little new, & they rarely reminisce good stories. So one grows wearied.

It is this preoccupation I wish to avoid – there is no purpose to it… it has been so long & of little import, & I would rather my energies be given to other projects.

So, in the state between half-sleep & wake I asked myself: how I might resolve this?

The first thought was to ask her about it next time we converse. This means I must remember to do so – but oh, it means I must carry this notion til then; it will taint my anticipation of our next interaction; &, we speak so rarely that, should we talk, I would rather it be of other things!

Then I asked myself why she might have returned less than the full bolt? In my half-dream state, I thought perhaps her dog had peed upon it. Most of it being ruined, she could only salvage a portion to return. She might have felt embarrassed about the fact (which is why it was returned via intermediary).

This being a most acceptable excuse to me, I suddenly felt more settled. Despite knowing it as an invention, I prefer to see it as the most plausible truth – resolve it to my memory of the case, & hope to never to dream of it again!

2020-04-14-0935 To Mike (missing)

My mother sent me a message, saying that on Sunday evening she kept dreaming of you. And that you said you miss me, that you miss us.

Somehow this had never occurred to me. Though I do have a very good imagination, there are somethings, I realize now, that I choose not to imagine. How someone feels in absentia – what they are thinking, what they are going through. When there is no information of their circumstances I find it better not to speculate, else I paint a more unflattering picture than the truth. If needed (to talk with another about it) then I imagine more charitable scenarios. For I would be in a worst wrong to accuse someone of a guilt, when they are down. Besides this being easier for me.

As a child with an overactive imagination I was afraid to sleep alone. I would imagine my room being a passageway for ghosts. One time after my grandmother died I imagined seeing a pair of slippers on the stairway. And I told my mother. And she took it seriously.

Afterwards I told myself I didn’t want to see these things. In Taiwanese folklore there are people who are able to see things – what we call the third eye. Some are born with it, some can cultivate it, and you can always choose to close it off if you want to. I have met one or two people who claimed to see things, and I believe them that they do see what they see. Whether or not it is something that actually exists is not worth speculating, in my opinion. I don’t even know if what I had felt was a figment of my imagination, but I have not had such experiences since then.

Having not imagined anything but the void, where no consciousness can exist, getting that message from my mother was a shock. I had imagined surprise and anger – for you did not know you were about to die. And you hate for things you care about to be outside your control. I had imagined that you would be upset. And this thought that you have been snuck-up-upon. That you willed it not. That you could not, in the last, “rage against the dying of the light”… this was what most bothered me about the whole situation.

For you cannot help dying. And there was nothing we could do to save you. You were already dead when I got there, though your lungs breathed and your heart beat. There was no more brain activity left. I kept being drawn to your ICU room and – finding no one at home. And the tests confirmed this.

So what then? Try to survive. Find out what I need to do to make sure we have all your assets secure. See if it was possible for us to live. My brother came over for two weeks to help me fill out forms, make calls, prepare an excel sheet for me and get the info necessary for filing taxes. Friends and neighbors helped cook dinners, take kids to playdates, donated money. Everyone knew the gravity of the situation. But for me, for whom reality is finite and I could only see what was in front of me at the moment. One step at a time. I needed to work on what I can control, and that which I cannot control I do not think about, much.

In Mandarin the words “to be sad 很傷心” literally means “to hurt one’s heart”.

To think that you might be in some interstitial space, longing for us, helpless to act, unable to make contact with us or even to see us… this hurts my heart.

So what did my mother say?

“他很想念妳 (He says he very much misses you.)”
“他掛念你們 (He misses you guys.)”
“Help my kids and my dear Grace.”

I don’t know how true this is. If you indeed found a more receptive messenger in my mother, when your wife is so obdurate in closing off any connection to the spirit world. But it could be true. It sounds like what you would say. I wouldn’t deny you the possibility of having some intentionality left, however immaterial and unverifiable. I would like you to exist or keep on living in some shape or form, and be able to go on to a better world… To me your existence is insufficient merely in memory (for our memories too change, and are indistinct), or genetic material (for our children are their own people in themselves, they are not you). But it’s all I have. Your love for us I never doubted. To think it lives on, unable to act, hurts my heart.

I wish I could talk with you. But I am unwilling to open my third eye. I want you to know I love you. That I miss you too. That nothing will ever alter who you are to me. You take up your own unique place in my mind. And the children miss you too. So much.

We just gotta keep on going.

2020-03-16-1832 To Mike (how much more can you live?)

Dream dreams and sing songs
what a wonderful thing
I think of you daily
my own, my own
All life is a treasure
I hold most precious
Ain’t nobody more
beloved than thou
— poem song made for Mike while he was alive

Yesterday I dreamt about you again. This time we got to spend 3 days together before you died. Three extra days where somehow the claws of fate were delayed by the sole strength of your intention. As before, I played the anxious Cassandra, you the concerned receiver of ill news. Much of these days were spent busily seeking solutions – trying to obtain a brain scan. The rest of the days were spent together, in the daily rhythms of life – cooking, eating, cleaning, taking the kids out.

It never fails to startle me that, regardless of intent, there is only so much one can squeeze into a life, into an interaction. How much more tightly can you hold a person without eventually letting go? How much time can you spend in endless conversation without there needing to be respite? How deeply can we experience love, convey love, inform the other of their status as cared, valued, – before the intensity is more than a person can effectively receive in a moment? You can live life with greater intention and presence, but you can never go beyond the threshold of what can be effectively sensed [1].

So our three days went by (pretty much) like every other day. With touch, conversation, exchanges of affection, and shared work on our most precious projects – our children. And now these too, despite being in the dream world, are in the past.

I do not believe in life after death. So I do not imagine your spectre stalking our home, your ghost along the corridors of your work, your spirit bemusedly drifting along the hallways of the ICU or inhabiting the container where your ashes now dwell. No, I do not think it feasible. Sometimes, when I am feeling especially weak, I imagine you spooning me. I imagine you putting your arms around me. I imagine because I know that is what you would do in life. What you would do if you could.

And as these are true things they are allowed in my fantasy as a representative facimile of your actions in moments of turmoil. On this at least I can time travel into the present, a present inferred from the past. Where for that one quirk of fate, I allow myself to dwell – for a very brief moment – in that preferred alternate universe.

 

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[1]:  of course there is individual variation to this. One of the most interesting analogies comes from a person I read online once who was talking about giftedness. He referred to giftedness as “living life in higher resolution” ↩︎

2020-02-17-0822 To Mike (the stars)

The sun is coming out earlier now, around 7.30 the sky is bright. I wish you were here to see it. I have had several pleasant sensations since you passed away – the sashimi where I tagged along with Caleb to get away – but realized it was because I didn’t want to be left alone. The flowers in the house… I had thought cut flowers are such a frivolous thing, but somehow they do give some comfort, perhaps in particular as the trees are still bare outside. I guess I just needed to be empty enough to feel the comfort they give.

I wish you were here to share these sensations with me. Yet we have, indeed, shared as many moments as we could. Nice sashimi, for example. One time we were fighting on that beach resort vacation, because we somehow expected that no one was taking care of the kids. I was feeling quite upset and couldn’t sleep, and went out of the cabin all in disturbance. But then I saw the sky… and I went back in, and said to you “Come outside! The sky is amazing.” And you immediately came with me, and we stood there for a while staring at this night sky full of stars, holding hands. When we went back into the cabin again soon later (for these are one of those moments where the flavor is often chosen to be savored shorter, rather than prolonged for very long), we were once again at charity with each other.

2020-03 To Mike (3 stanzas of pain)

2020-03-02-1005 arms

When alone, I sometimes make this movement with my arms. I imagine you are there, and I reach out to hug you. Of course my arms close on thin air.

This is predictably upsetting. I should stop doing this.

But I still want to hug you.

2020-03-08-0203 

I’ve never been particularly good at keeping in touch. And this crisis has made me appear worse – simply because the volume has gone up doesn’t mean the capacity has.

I know it would probably make me appear in a better light if I opened up a bit more to people, but it’s just not in my way to do it with everyone. To be triggered every time. The issue is still predictably raw. I just don’t want to go there.

I still want to just continue to speak with you, even if it’s just an effigy wrought of my memories of you. I couldn’t hold the whole picture of who you are to enact a sufficient simulacrum, but I have little bit perhaps that would do. I just want to talk with you. My husband. You didn’t cease being my husband even lying in a hospital bed, in a coffin, in a container now.

 

2020-03-14-1846 in an alternative reality

He may know the law of all things, yet be ignorant of the how. We are woking to completion, working on from then to now… I have loved the stars too truly to be fearful of the night.

— Sarah Williams, The Old Astronomer to His Pupil

Occasionally I have tortured myself by imagining what it would be like if this was all just a bad dream. I will walk out of the shower and you will be there. I will open my eyes in the morning and hear you making coffee downstairs. I will be doing something and hear a key in the door and then you are there again, standing at the top of the steps, taking your coat off.

I imagine, then, that there is only one thing I would do – I would go into your arms and sigh with relief. “Oh you will never believe what a terrible dream I had.” “It went on for ages.” “I thought it would never end.”

It does seem to have been going on for ages. Far too long to be merely a mirage. Whenever it strikes me again I have to catch my breath, move slowly for a little bit.

 

 

2020-03-02-0917 To Mike (between dream & wakefulness)

Yesterday morning I dreamt of you. It was the first time I consciously experience a dream of you since you passed away. [^fn]A lucid one. What was I doing in this dream? What were you doing? Well in this dream I time-travelled. It was perhaps a few weeks before you died. And I was convincing you that you were going to die, and how, and you were attentive and concerned, and since you had no symptoms, we were scheming of the ways to get the necessary examinations (brain scans) that would allow you the surgery you need.

At that point one of the kids came in and told me to get up, and I refused and tried to go back to sleep. Dreaming about being with you is at least a nice experience – to see & talk with you again. But as often in these cases it was impossible to continue the same thread. So I got up again.

I can imagine for some this gives much seed for the parallel universe fantasy.

It appears my subconscious refuses to lead me into fantasy. I cannot pretend you are not dead. The reality of it is irrevocable. But… nor do I want to betray myself by this pretense. Such comforts lead to nothing but another disappointment. Since adolescence I had disavowed a roller-coaster life, and made sure, at least where myself is concerned, anything nonessential nor functional that would give such emotional upheaval unlikely to be instigated natively. I think I succeeded very well. Too well perhaps. In the first moment of the news I felt my blood congeal at my feet. & yet at the same time I felt steely resolve. What next? What can I do? What needs to be done?

But one must go someway when leant upon. And I suppose, instead of rage and despair at moments I just feel overwhelmingly tired and pacified. Not enough to not keep going, but just enough to hide and not respond to people.

[^fn]: because we dream but only remember/consciously experience the ones around wakes. Sort of like how we were interrupted in the middle of putting some mental files away and the lingering impression of the messy room becomes a new memory. [@walker2018]

2020-02-16-1633 To Mike (& yet life keeps growing)

The kids are still growing rapidly, as is wont for their age. Despite your absence. The other day the social worker from the city Ouder & Kind (Parent & Child) team came by and said that in more than 90% of cases, children survive these incidences without great psychological trauma – their drive to play, to grow healthily, is still so strong.

I guess it’s a reflection of the privilege of our times that death of a parent feels like such an anomaly. I am glad they are so strong, because I am not sure I have the capacity to help them with such a great loss. I feel it even greater because I know what a wonderful father you are, and have the potential, to be as they get older. I know this. They do not. So their limited time-perspective is in many ways a blessing.

I get the sense that sometimes people want me to show more grief – that they find it also strange that I do not express so much devastation, that I do not use this language. But you know how little I allow myself to express extremes in language – part of what I found refreshing about you was how you were capable of making such exact judgements in cases where I was perhaps more sympathetic than the other deserved… though I still think you were sometimes less charitable than you could be, in most cases your heart lay in the right places. Moreover, your mettle lay in action and not mere words. I, on the other hand, seek to ignore those situations I can do nothing about. Your death, for instance. The fact is not worth dwelling on, for there is nothing I can do – & the doctors assured me there were no signs that could have indicated this situation. You had a long-standing back/neck/shoulder and sporadic headaches – & we were disappointed by several doctors who only insisted on X-rays instead of checking the soft tissue (tendons), which you were sure were the case… At this point I know there is nothing to do. But if we could have spared you those few years of pain & irritation… You kept saying there is no time to see the doctor. You know I would have been happy to make that time for you!

The week before you died I was planning to buy you a health panel with the part of the money I wanted to keep for myself from the part time job I just got. The one where you get a full-spectrum test of your nutritional status, indications of inflammation or toxin…etc. It was not an *object* because you said you don’t want more things. I guess I was too late… and yet, even we did get this, it wouldn’t have detected a pulsating aneurysm in your brain…

But what was I saying? Ah yes. It shouldn’t be a surprise, but I am glad the children still keep going on growing as they should. I think you would be pleased to hear this. My period was late by two weeks this time. This was a little concerning – I have a contraceptive but if a ‘miracle’ should happen the sentimental part of myself would struggle – the last piece of Mike’s DNA. And yet I also know you didn’t want to have more children. “Not unless we won the lottery.” & I know for certain I would be very very tired with another child now.

Thankfully my period did arrive. Late, as does happen when I am under pressure. So the question is moot. You have 3 humans on this earth now carrying your DNA. Pretty cool huh.

2020-02-22-0103 To Mike (your path ran out)

 

Now that the first adrenaline rush is over, and the second stage of administrative urgency is past, I find myself rather in a less good state than I would like to be – a bit more withdrawn, confused, lacking in clarity and focus. Perhaps it is these late nights and the mornings when I still do not sleep as long as I like, or on some days can… where the reality of your absence seems to wake me more than the comfort of your waking me up.

I still wish you had come to kiss me goodbye that last morning you left for work.

I feel that I miss the opportunity to see you lounging next to the camp fire as the children run around consorting with other children, in a forest full of little cabins of other children. I imagine such scenery of course – none of the campsites I saw on-line look remotely like this. These changes of sceneries we’ve experienced together in different locations together via travelling and living in different places really brings a sense of more moments as to me, each new place was gave a new drop of freshness which embued my memory with a clarity it does not always have. In these moments we feel the potential to live as slightly different versions of ourselves, a little energy to observe better. Whenever these little flashes of memory occur to me I would tell you of them – of my happiness of travelling with you to so-and-so a place. And you briefly entertain my appreciation.

I wish you had taken the patience to bring me into your more practical concerns – the financial pressures you felt – much more. I do not lack the willingness to work with you, I only lack the ability to treat as reality something I cannot see clearly. Neither you nor I enjoy acting blindly in a situation – so offer some pity for me, your wife, who would like to tread this life with you through thick & thin. If only you would let me. I am not trying to be obdurant or intentionally malicious when I do not work with you – I am only unaware. See here – it took me a whole week of looking over our books and figuring out taxes to feel like I have a better handle on our finances, and thus be more sure in what we can or cannot afford. Being that I am aware of finances as something I need to manage in the future, you perhaps underestimated my willingness to learn this subject – or the depth of my ignorance. You refused to give me a budget, instead requesting that I notify you whenever the account ran low – a ruinous education.

I realize now how often I flinch and expect people to refuse my requests, so I feel so reluctant to make them. Because you so often refuse my requests (that you do something for me), and often with vigorous disapprobation, instead of even entertaining or communicating a rationale. And then, you wondered at my increased passivity in our partnership.

These less optimal behaviors do result in my missing you less – in fact, embue me more with a sense of resignation rather than regret – because it was not clear to me that such would have changed over a longer marriage. And thus that I would still periodically be emotionally disturbed, disheartened, astounded at your unreasonableness. But I still delighted in being your wife, mother to your children. I still enjoyed your company utmost of anyone. I still found such comfort in your pleasure at being a father. I was still wanting to work with you. I despaired and then the hope drives me to tears. Now, well, there is really nothing to hope for.

I mentioned before there is in me a core. Usually I do not feel it, but only the few times when something truly challenging occurs. This core is the source of the strength that moves me forward. I think & hope you liked that about me – this that which makes me not so easily subdued, unable to be sycophantic, unwilling to be capricious.

Well I feel my core beating very faintly now. Your death is not of the type of challenge that would scrape against my type of core. It does not inflame it, and you did not much inflame my core in life either, for your orientation was slightly different, though no less precious – and certainly an attraction to me. The current situation seems to only make me feel more tired, timid, and passive than I usually am… a cloak thrown over the flames. I will come alive again. I know these binds now are superficial. At the moment I do not find much meaning to being alive – but I am loath to die. Do not worry, I will take care of our children as much as I can in as much the way we would have liked us ourselves to be taken care of. To give them the utmost possibility to flourish and be of good use to others. And my core will take care that I want to live, and choose the path that makes living of high interest to me. (which I guess is why the suggestions of some irk me now, because they suggest paths of convenience where I know we are the least likely to be happy in the long term. Well, this shows I have enough fight in me yet.)

As I said to you before at the ICU, I do not regret the years I spent with you. I would do it over again. It would be lovely indeed to be able to relive moments in our lives, but then, the awareness of the end would always make it somewhat bittersweet. We have gone on a good journey together, you and I. I am glad to have shared paths with you parts of the way. What with your strong will and my complaisant heart we could have gone on longer still! As long as our paths keep running.

Which we did, didn’t we? As far as we could go.

 

2020-02-25-2130 To Mike (it just really sucks)

Objectively, this is a convenient time to die – you had just started working in the Netherlands so we are entitled to your pension here and the survivor’s benefits from the state (since everyone working here pays into that). And I am still young enough to be potentially attractive to another mate of good quality. But I like our original plan better – you will live to at least ninety like your mother, be grouchy and puttering about the garage we have that you’ve turned into your own workshop. I will be a nondescript matronly slightly plump middle-aged asian lady with bags under her eyes and travelling sometimes for my career. You will still be complaining about all the stuff we have and the books I won’t get rid of. and I will be complaining about how you are always complaining. I’ll massage the hard knots on your back with my still not very strong small hands. And you’ll like it because it’s free.

Perhaps the house will start smelling like an old person. But thankfully at that time my nasal allergies and age have significantly reduced the acuity of my smell. Hopefully one or two of the children will have decided to procreate so we have some variety in our lives. You will look on with proud fondness as a patriach of the next generation, and I will look with wonder at what this next batch of genetic mixture resulted in.

Well that still might happen, except for you not being here to see it. If anything makes me sad and even a bit angry it’s that you will miss these things you would so delight in. Quin moving up a level in her swimming, Knox reading so fast now! Inge showing such awareness and an interest in science just like her brother. Quin making an electronics board when I thought she would never be interested. Things you would beam in pride in.

And then there’s the beautiful nice chilly Dutch spring & the wonderful bright summer days – that end of summer vacation theater festal I like to go to and want you to go with us to. Inge’s 4th birthday, your own birthday, Quin’s 7th birthday… & on and on again.

Life should be like this. The cycles.

The 1st week after your death I took Inge to Micropia because she asked to go there, and I was watching the videos of all the animalia eating and interacting and living so merrily. And I thought with a little resentment how all these small lifeforms are alive, and you, this most miraculous wonderful multicellular lifeform, are not. It only took one vital part of your network to shut down the entire organism. One part went kapot. The damnest thing. I wish I knew more swear words to express my utter contempt of the situation.

2020-02-24-2056 To Mike

Hello love!

How are you doing today? I wish I could put that question to you.

Knox seems to be holding up well for the most part and steps in when help is needed. He offered the other night to read the bedtime books to the girls and told me “then you can have more time to work!” with that arch look of his, that look that he had just discovered a new idea! At his core he has such a good heart, coupled with a mind delighted with ideas. You would be so proud of him. At the same time I hope this will not give him too much strain that will show up later in his development. You know I dread the teenage years, when they turn into unreasonable humans again for a short while and we – I just need to make sure they don’t fall into the gutter, like you said.

Quin is a bit more rebellious and refusing to do things. You know I don’t connect as well with her. I am sorry about that. So I’ve been trying to take a moment to look at her with appreciation. Her behavior still baffles me and I’m sure my responses to her are not often to her satisfaction, but even if I don’t understand her I want her to know she is loved. And all she wants really is someone to say nice things to her and do activities with her, then she is happy.

At dinner this evening Quin was looking at your picture that her teacher had printed & put into a frame. She was looking at it very long, and showed it to Inge a long moment too. I said I could put up the pictures of you that were put up for the memorial, and Knox said no – until I understood he thought I meant to put a picture up of you when you were dead. When he agreed. But I am not so sure myself. I had taken them out to put them on the walls a week ago and seeing your cheerful face, that I found out I cannot sketch (on paper) from memory, just made me cry so much. So I put them back.

It is perhaps better that my mind does not spontaneously present so much precision to my memories. I am really grateful Antonia processed all the pictures for me, selecting the ones with you in it from which I could pick the ones for the memorial. It would have been tiring. Like my experience of the world before I had my eyesight corrected, a blurry world turns up no sharp edges for me.

And Inge is confused. Sometimes she cries about daddy but in situations where she wants more indulgence & I suspect that the teachers are giving her extra attention at daycare so she seems to be confusing this with a way to get attention. She also seems to expect you to turn up again unexpectedly – when she hears someone coming on the path, in the playground, or when she hears the sound of the keys in the door. It gives me a pang whenever she does this, and for a moment I imagine along with her.

For it was usually the way you would appear – sometimes we go to the park ahead of you and later you show up – after I messaged you letting you know we are there. Sometimes we are at home and I expect to hear the sound of the key in the door. Remember when we were in Qatar living in that skyscraper I would always go to the window to look for you with toddler Knox the time around your expected return. That should have been what should happen the same that day you died. You should have come home, turned the key in the lock. The children would have shouted “daddy!”. I would be cooking and felt a sense of quiet satisfaction, hearing you come up. It is always a relief, hearing you come in. Now all is well with the world again, he is home with us. Later I might feel a burst of affection, after the bustle of putting the kids to bed was over, and come over to lean close to you and stare into your face while you’re at the computer. You’ll say “What?” and I’ll tell you I’m just observing you. Pleased that you are there. You always say “What?”. You sometimes shoo me away because you’re concentrating. But sometimes not.

I work a bit more when you’re not home. Or when we have a disagreement. Then I work because I’m mad at you and want to get away from you. But usually when you’re here my attention turns often to you. I am not in your face all the time of course – I find it most pleasant to be in the room with you doing my thing – reading, crafting. Sharing a space companionably together while doing something pleasant. I know that’s not what you think of as spending time together, simply sharing space together. But I do. I love our dates when we talk over a surprisingly pleasant meal and then walk around the city for hours. I wish instead of going to Copenhagen in freezing winter we had done that over the Christmas holidays – hired a babysitter and had a few dates together. And then the next day we would be much more pleasant parents to the kids. But I don’t know if doing that would make me miss you more now. Would I be even more distraught if we had truly perfected the art of enjoying each other? Or would my pride keep me afloat as it does now – admitting of blame and regret for neither of us. Seeing the good as it were – with your full intent of staying married with me and my full intent of staying faithful to you. With how we decided to be as people – happy to be alive.

I feel the need to be surrounded by people now. It seems having someone friendly in the space with me in companionable silence, each doing our own thing, is enough to keep me away from the darkness. Then I don’t feel so cold.