Sarah

Two moments from “Shōgun” that perfectly capture my grief

“Shōgun” is a beautiful work of art, and two brief parts in particular so perfectly express a complex reality.

I did not expect a historical drama television series about the Sengoku Period of Japanese history to hurt. I watched it as a distraction. The show is also a beautiful piece of art. And as art, it has left me thinking about it long after I am done regarding it directly. I am stuck, in particular, on two moments that reached straight into me and pulled at the part of my heart reserved for my sister.

Warning: below are spoilers for “Shōgun,” so proceed only if you’re okay with that.

In episode 6, a highly respected courtesan, during the course of training a younger woman, says “You see where it is no longer. Presence is felt most keenly in its absence.” She is asking the younger woman to take note of the place where a flask once was, but the entire scene is layers of double and triple meaning throughout, and it is also clever foreshadowing for things to come later in the show.

I cannot get this quote out of my mind. It so plainly and gently captures the pain I feel to only really, truly have appreciated my sister’s presence once she was gone. And yet it isn’t a dramatic or overly emotional statement, either. It is a simple fact.

Toward the end of the last episode, there’s a scene of Anjin and Fuji sitting in a place where, previously, they and Mariko had sat. It is still framed as though three people are there⁠—because three should be there⁠—and both characters, through a significant language barrier, express the simple fact of the third’s absence. It harkens back to the quote above in a haunting way, and it visually captures how I have felt many, many times in the past year when my sister should have been right there beside me.

Was, is, will be

If I use language to represent my heart and innermost feelings, she still is. But if I need to clearly communicate undeniable reality, she was but is no longer.

In grammar, tense is a category that expresses time reference. A basic concept we use effortlessly every day, yet one that now causes me great pain when I speak of my sister. Every part of my emotional self demands to continue to speak of her in the present⁠—she still is my sister, after all. But this is such a complicated thing to navigate, especially in situations where I meet new people.

If I refer to her in the present tense, will I inadvertently be communicating to them that she is alive? (She is a chef because she actively does that today, not because that defines her despite having left this earth?)

If I reference something in past tense, will they incorrectly assume I mean something has changed? (She lived in her old town because she moved to a new one, not because she ceased living?)

If I have to say, “I used to have a sister but I don’t anymore” forever more, will I be able to get through this sentence without getting teary-eyed? (And why does it hurt 10 times more when I have to say it in a foreign language?)

I don’t have answers. If I use language to represent my heart and innermost feelings, she still is. But if I need to clearly communicate undeniable reality, she was but is no longer. Maybe I need to work on using the clunky phrasing, she will always be ___ to me. I can promise her a kind of future that way, but couching my remembrance of her in language that brings her into tomorrow.

West

Home is increasingly more complicated these days, but it is indelibly infused with the west, with nature, with her.

We are from the Pacific Northwest. I haven’t lived there in a long time, and my visits in recent years were brief and done by plane. I tell you all of this because the wild forest and coastal landscapes of this area are part of my core and were among some of my sister’s favorite things.

I left the east coast a little over a week ago and drove back home, drove west. It wasn’t until I hit Montana that I began to feel the west. The wild expanses of mountains and forests and rocky edges to bodies of water all started to feel like the rugged scenes of home. And it was somewhere halfway through my time in Glacier National Park that nature absolutely broke me.

My friend and I had looped around park of Lake McDonald and doubled back, and the thought hit me that I might never stand again in the places I stood, and I wanted to bask in the gorgeous landscapes. And then I realized that while I could return, never again would my sister stand anywhere she ever stood. And never again would she have the opportunity to stand in a new place. Her fleeting existence on this earth, among the natural sites she loved, was over.

I completely broke down. I sobbed silently and could not articulate to my friend what had happened. She never asked, and I never explained. She just waited with me as I let the intense wave of grief roll over me. It took me. Hard. I wasn’t ready for it at all. I honestly don’t know how long I cried.

From that moment onward, the trip had the tint of the reminder that going west meant going home, and going home meant returning to an existence steeped in her absence. Home is increasingly more complicated these days, but it is indelibly infused with the west, with nature, with her.

What I need

What I need changes daily, sometimes hourly. But a constant is the need to be truly heard.

I’m precipitously close to finishing the year of firsts, which will be capstoned by facing the first anniversary of her death. I feel in a lot of ways like I’ve just done my best to survive this year, making peace with all of the ways I’m a diminished version of who I used to be and occasionally having the clarity to see the unexpected ways I’ve grown. I’d undo it all in a heartbeat, if I could.

So now, as I look at stepping into this second year of The After, I am trying to figure out what it is I need. What do I need? As a person who goes out of her way to smooth out conflict and who diminishes herself if it creates peace, I can’t keep doing that. I’ve wasted decades of life not fully making choices for me, and haven’t I been shown in the worst way that there’s no time to waste?

I need to find the words to articulate this loss and I need to use them. I need know they’ve also been heard, been read, been felt, maybe even been understood. Because the most isolating part of grieving, in my experience, is when you’re convinced that you and you alone feel what you feel, miss what you miss.

She’s everywhere even though she’s gone

I am trying to prepare to move, take a final exam, and say goodbye to the city that I consider my second hometown. I’ve got a lot going on, and I am busy. I don’t have time to open Facebook and meltdown because a memory from 11 years ago reminded me of when I was assistant coach for the team I had been part of and my sister was then captain of.

This opened up the whole can of “now the only productive thing I can do is sob.” In this process of packing, I am evaluating every object I own and determining if everything comes with me to the next home. Except with this emotional overlay, I am now also considering every item through the lens of how it relates to my sister.

If it was a gift she gave me, it’s coming with me no matter what.

If it was part of my unwanted inheritance from her things, I can’t bear to part with it.

If it was something I happily showed her or she complimented, I can never let it go, because it’s the final bridge between me and those moments of affection I’ll never get again.

If I bought it after she died because it reminded me of her, I have to keep it.

Unfortunately for me, in this temporary home I’ve had, the vast majority of my objects fall into those categories, because the less-important-to-me things are sitting in temporary holding, waiting for my onward move. And so I am in this apartment, made chaotic by the preparations for movers to come, on the precipice of yet another huge change in my life, sobbing as I sit cross-legged surrounded by what, to other people, is “just some stuff.”

I’m completely encased in a sampler of things that relate to her, but the only thing I want⁠—her actual presence⁠—escapes me.