Tag: introspection

I might be a worse person after my sister’s death

That title may be sensational, but I am less than what I once was, and I can’t pretend it isn’t true.

I’m way worse at responding to text messages and emails, sometimes taking days to reply.

I am flakier than I have ever been in my life.

I am lazier than I used to be.

I’m less hopeful that things will “just work out.”

I am more of a hermit than I was before. Not because socializing is especially draining, but the desire for it ebbs much more than it flows.

I don’t have a bow to tie this up with, that’s it.

I’m sadder more often than ever before.

I guess this is who I am now.

A father’s grief, a mother’s grief

This post is a snapshot of what grief looks like on our parents. It has been 400 days since we lost my sister. I didn’t set out to commemorate the specific day, but it worked out that way when I sat down to write.

Our father’s grief is quiet, subdued. His phone wallpaper is a rotating set of photos of my sister. He’s found ways to craft symbols of my sister into his hobbies and onto his vehicles. He is characteristically reticent to speak of his emotions, but the cloud of sadness that passes over him at times speaks for itself. I sometimes wonder if he has places he goes to break down, because since the day we said goodbye to her body, I have not seen him cry. I could not tell you with any amount of certainty whether he is “okay.”

Our mother’s grief is grasping and still raw. My parents are nearly drowning in photos and objects both of and from my sister, all of which my mom has been amassing. Hundreds of photos, no matter where you stand in the home. My parents always had a decent number of photos around, but the contrast is striking now. My mom also has only just barely begun to consider the possibility of not holding onto every one of my sister’s worldly possessions, but right now my sister’s childhood bedroom is a shrine to all that she once had.

Both of my parents look older. Far older than 400 days should have worn on them. They have only just begun to figure out what their future and retirement looks like, because my sister’s death absolutely imploded the prior plan. They slowly seem more stable in many ways, but the sadness and sense of meaninglessness still hangs heavy in the air. That said, they’ve started making plans for their future again. Spending time with friends. Slowly stepping back out into the world after a year of mostly being cloistered away. I was allowed to take away two bags of my sister’s things that no one had strong memories or attachments to.

It took only seconds for our old reality to crumble, to burn to the ground. Sometime during these 400 days, a tiny sprout of something resembling a new life also began to grow.

Loneliness

On the one-year anniversary of my sister’s death, exactly four people reached out to me. Two of them are people I have never met in “real life” but connected with on grief spaces online. There was something profoundly lonely about the lack of recognition of the significance of the date. Or, I suppose, about the reminder that the date is of little significance to most of the world. Because that’s the core of it, isn’t it? I want her to loom larger in the minds and hearts of more people than she does.

But how many important dates for people in my life have I forgotten or never even committed to memory? I don’t know any friends’ anniversary dates. I hardly know birthdays anymore⁠—maybe ten percent, if you don’t give me credit for when Facebook reminds me. I have certainly forgotten death dates of friends’ loved ones, too. I simply cannot hold someone else to a standard I can’t meet. It just feels infinitely more personal when it’s a loss that still wracks me with grief.

It took several weeks for me to be able to write this, because I needed space from the acute pain to think. There’s a delicate intertwining of the isolation of no one remembering the day of her passing and the quiet, background noise of my subconscious reminding me that I am alone in a different way, too. I’ve lost the companion I was supposed to have by my side for decades to come.

This grief has also twisted my view of myself and the fact that I am single. I used to feel genuinely okay with the prospect of waiting⁠—perhaps forever⁠—to find someone I would enjoy being with. I now feel some existential dread about the fact that I am alone in this way. (And you know what I bet isn’t attractive to potential partners? That level of desperation.)

And then there’s the loneliness of a career for which I move a lot. I am surrounded by people, but I lack a depth of relationships, a community, and a stable sense of home. These, too, used to be things that excite me, but I now regard them a little warily as I wonder whether I am enough of who I used to be to be able to continue on this trajectory.

Only time will tell.

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.