these grey days
Some days drain the life from you, rainfall — washed out — sewage water — — — — clichés— — — — — — — — — — ..-. ..- -.-. -.- / -. — — — ..-
Some days you remember that grief is something someone everyone experiences eventually, the consequence of loving and being loved, the consequence of — fucking blah blah blah… blah.
Bad days look different when grief is no longer abstract. The thestrals at Hogwarts are real. You can see them rear their ugly heads. You can appreciate how they pull the rest of the world along, dumb and enchanted by the shiny castle up ahead, not aware they are being perpetually scammed, one season after another, mischief mediated by death.
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10 #BrandTruths That Will Change the Way You Look at Grief
Sponsored by fucking nobody. Written by some angry bitch.
- Grief is like waves. It comes and it goes. It ebbs and it flows. Sometimes the waves are choppy because of El Niño and global warming and look out, here’s a fucking hurricane, let’s hope it has a masculine name, so fewer people die. Some days they are placid and chill; you can go out to waist height and feel safe, you can share a popsicle on the sand with your childhood friend, you can make sandcastles together and laugh when they wash away.
- Grief makes you uniquely equipped for supporting others, especially those who have also experienced real, raw, unadulterated grief. Having someone close to you die, when you’re young and everyone you know is bright and shiny, unifies you like nothing else. It’s the worst secret society out there.
- Grief makes you an untouchable. People don’t want to be near you. No one wants to admit that they are one bad decision away from dying, one streak of bad luck from grieving, themselves.
- Grief is not fucking osmosis, assholes. It is inevitable.
- Grief flattens away the people behind the equation — the griever, the grievee. Who died? What was their story? Who are you missing? Who will you never know? Who will never know you?
- Grief has a normative media representation which is clean and neat, when it’s really like pulling all of your teeth out with a set of rusty pliers. No one cares about 5.) who the person was, who you were, who you are now. People see the crying mess in the corner and ask it politely (or impolitely) to get the fuck out.
- Grief is brushing your hair in the Whole Foods on Bowery while stress eating a baguette. Grief is sitting down your new boyfriend and telling him, in Washington Square Park on a stone bench, in the Shake Shack near the Natural History Museum, in your bed, in his bed — you forget, that grief never ends. The “he” might come and go, but the grief is still here, and it is still something ugly you have to explain, to new “he”s, to the same goddamn “he”s, even, for the rest of your life. Grief is skipping class and painting in the back room of the high school art department while blasting Nirvana. Grief is denying anything is wrong until he steals from you $20,000. Grief is cutting out matted tangles in your hair, cutting out friends who think you should be over it by now, cutting out dairy products because surprise you’re East Asian and now you’re an adult and Lactose is Not Made For You, Bitch and —
- Grief is throwing a temper tantrum in the grocery store, except instead of snacks and stickers, you’re 22 and what you want more than anything is your mother to teach you Chinese; you promise you’ll pay attention this time. For her sister to be experiencing college life, for his father to be surfing and skiing, he was just in the prime of his life, in all of their primes, primes, they’re so un-fucking-predictable, aren’t they?
- Grief is knowing you have no time and you have so much time. No time to waste on people who aren’t right for you. No time to waste on drama. All the time in the world to spend with those you love.
10. Grief is being SO. FUCKING. SICK. of well-meaning people constantly telling, advising, nagging you what to do.
“Be strong, you have to be strong.”
“You’re the man of the house now, you can’t cry.”
“You shouldn’t date him, he’s the worst.”
“Why are you not over this yet?”
The price we pay for living full authentic lives is occasionally having our hearts broken
has been in my Medium drafts for months.
48.
cheryl wu | host, nyc | Cheryl lost her mother to suicide when she was 16, in 2010. She chose to attend NYU over art school at the last minute as she always knew she belonged here. After some New York lulz, Cheryl got herself a fulltime Big Girl Job as a Product Designer on Wall Street. She loves fostering inclusive communities and connecting worthy people, especially in the tech industry. Cheryl became a Dinner Party host in 2015 because she was adrift with her stigmatized loss. She wanted to meet and help other New Yorkers in the same boat. Cheryl lives on the Upper East Side near Central Park. She shares her studio apartment with houseplants Stanley, Star Child, Smiangle, and Severus; several adorable (fake) bees; and inflatable dinosaur Stromae.
22.
I see myself now at 22 and my life is taking off. I see my mother’s life at 22 and her life is taking off. I don’t want a crash landing, like hers, like her mother’s before her.
I see myself turning into my mother in beautiful ways.
I always wondered how she could go anywhere and make new friends. I was the shy girl, keeping to myself. My fifth grade teacher, Mr. Craver, told my parents that I was a radar — silent, but picking up on everything around me. Shortly before she died, I went to Montreal with my parents and stayed with her friends, a local councilman and his wife. She had met and befriended them on a plane ride from Taiwan a few months prior.
It’s not so hard to do this, I can see now. I have become someone who truly tries to make communities, truly tries to make friends and connect others, truly tries to do right. I don’t always succeed. Some say there is no try.
She always told us about her college days at National Taiwan University. The Harvard of Taiwan, in the capital city of Taipei. She was a RA. She studied linguistics, Chinese etymology. Her best friend studied library science and still works in the NTU library. The campus is pregnant with flowering vines and the slow polluted haze of a busy city. College students buzz around, laughing, planning futures, looking at each other starry-eyed.
Her other best friend at NTU is a famous Taiwanese LGBT writer and activist. He called one day her in high school.
“Hello? Who is this?”
“This is LEE. I wanted to call to say goodbye.”
“What do you mean ‘goodbye?’”
“I’m going to kill myself.”
“Why are you doing that? That’s stupid.”
“I’m gay.”
“So what?”
16.
I met LEE for the first time at the funeral, almost three decades later. The flowers are still on campus, but they’re not the same ones, several generations come and gone. The funeral home in Taiwan was set up like a game show. They played a clip of embalming on a LCD screen, on loop, while everything was happening.
The adjacent room to the funeral production studio was a traditional shrine. Covering each wall was a small plot, with a picture of the deceased. Shiny lacquer tables. Little gold trays to put offerings. Burn some incense at the door and make a wish. Bring oranges to your stupid fucking mother who killed her-fucking-self and fuck you mom and fuck this stupid fucking picture of us being happy in Venice only two years ago. You (YUH YING) were smiling. What happened in two years? What happened in twenty-two? What happened in forty-eight?
Looking around the room, most photos depict a grandpa or grandma. Smiling. Sagging. Probably natural causes. You see some small children, maybe congenital illness. You see a young woman, possibly a freak accident. You see your fucking mother, straight ahead, fucking dead.
8. (fugue)
It reminds you of the portrait of your father’s father, hung up in their home for years. All the children lived together in the same house for decades with their parents. Your dad went to grad school in the USA. Bright blue background, as if an elementary school photo. 爷爷 with his smug grin, the kind of man who left a will saying 3/4 of children were complete disappointments in life, and that your own father was the only one who succeeded, by abandoning the family to go to the United States.
LEE is dressed in all white. You are dressed in all black. White is the traditional color of mourning in Taiwan. You remember this because the last time you were at a funeral, it was for asshole grandpa. They had the kinds of toilets which were holes in the floor. You were 8. You could not really control yourself. You peed on your white garment. You cried. You saw Grandpa’s decaying face, covered in makeup. It did not look anything like the bright blue Picture Day. You cried. You did not know grandpa.
16.
You’re an American. Your brother is an American. Your dad is somewhere in between. He goes to pick up the urn. The game show host says “nonono, children of the deceased, children of the deceased.” Your 13-year old brother picks up the white marble urn. It is filled with ash. It is filled with your mom. To this day, when people make “your mom” jokes, you tell them
“My mom is literally dead, you fucking asshole.”
It’s fun to see them turn white.
The game show host does his spiel. He knows nothing about this case, it’s just another day at work. Who knows if it pays well? You are stoic. LEE is crying ugly tears. You look around the room. You were expecting to see a line out the door. You see few people, just her siblings, just a few random former students of hers who heard the news and were free. You do not cry.
You are angry that there’s not a line out the door.
The game show is over, nobody has won. Somebody whisks away the urn, or maybe they did that before, it’s a whirlwind. LEE comes up to you, crying still, enveloping you in his white suit. You do not cry.
“Be strong. Be strong. You have to be strong now.”
Is it fucked to tell a 16-year old American Girl that she needs to “be strong” when her 48-year old mother just killed herself? Or is it sage advice? Is it just life, so it fucking goes?
I don’t see myself turning into my mother in horrifying ways.
But I fear it every day.
17.
The phone calls came in over a couple of hours, progressively worse.
She’s in the hospital, we don’t think it’s cancer…
The first call.
I was 17. A boy had stood me up for a date, he lied and said he fell asleep; he wasn’t interested in me, he was flattered by the attention. My dad was driving, we were going to pick up my new iPad, the money I bought the iPad with I had earned in the web development company I self-built with the flake’s friend who I fell in love with partly because he supported me through mom’s death and everything was happening at once and this other boy my best friend introduced me to is a manipulative asshole and I’m afraid I’m pregnant and I don’t know what to do and —
After a week, he told me we couldn’t date. He felt too much like my father.
The notifications came in on my original iPhone, its feeble buzzing accompanying our drive, with my actual father, through suburban New Jersey. I went home and unwrapped my iPad. It likely made shiny boopy noises. It likely smelled like New iPad Smell. I made a chart where I compared my college acceptance options on a sheet of tabloid paper, black China Marker, measuring the costs in butt-tons. I drew butts.
NYU cost 5 butts.
She was 17. It was two years later. I got the phone call in NYU’s Bobst Library, in one of the north study libraries facing the park. It was finals season, right before Thanksgiving. I was trying to figure out Rosalind Krauss’s ideas about the original and grids. I doubt I had slept. I went to the hall, overlooking the atrium. It had been recently framed in with golden metal pixels to prevent anyone from jumping ever again.
“Hi this is XYZ, I’m ABC’s friend… ABC wanted to let you know that her sister just passed away.”
“What?”
16.
She had spent the past few weeks lying in bed. It was Spring Break, you were in high school. The previous day, you spent running around Suburban New Jersey with your friends. You broke into an abandoned insane asylum to take photos. Your former best friend (12–19) loved taking photos in dangerous properties. You tried to break in, at least. You did try. The police caught you right away. They shone the light on you and your coterie of four. You told them your friend had come from Massachusetts. They said “yeah fucking right, you didn’t walk here from MASSACHUSETTS.”
Your now best friend (now, at 22) was an acquaintance then. She was kosher for passover. You went to a Mexican restaurant and she ordered a side of meat, no cream, no cheese, just meat. They rang it up as MISC FOOD OPEN. She was fucking pissed that you didn’t tell her what your former best friend was planning.
The day before that, you had picked up the Massachusetts friend with your dad from Providence, Rhode Island. She took the train in from Boston. You had always planned to go to RISD. This was the goal you made with your mom, because she saw you loved to make art. She had driven you to weekly drawing and painting lessons since you were 12. Over the hills and through the woods, to a cramped basement in Berkeley Heights we go. Drawing glass and gourds. Listening to Kurt Cobain on repeat. Laughing with your friends, who took drawing less seriously. Learning to see what really exists in front of you, instead of what you wished things could be.
Other people said you were too good for the Berkeley Heights basement. Mom brought you to pricier classes, farther away. The teacher was well-known for her bicycle test expertise. Everyone seemed more serious. You were still shy. You liked that everyone was focused during class. Mom made her sweet red bean soup. The teacher decided your work was good enough and decided to take you on.
You went to your first class and realized she wanted you to copy compositions from art magazines. You were not happy about this. You remembered what your art teachers in your public school said about working from images. She made you paint pictures of lilies in Egyptian vases and dramatic seascapes, items and places that you’d never seen. How were you supposed to know they had ever been real?
Now Mom was on one of her Taiwan trips again. She said she missed home, her parents were aging. She brought you lavish gifts every time she returned. She hung out with her old friends from college. She seemed vibrant, inspired, every time she came back. Leaving your New Jersey house this time, she was wearing a purple sweater. She seemed like she had been crying.
She asked if you would accompany her to the airport. You were alarmed by her puffy red eyes, their glassy nature. You were busy talking to your best friend. You were 16. You declined, but got up to give her a hug and kiss. You thought that this trip would be good for her. She obviously missed her home.
The last thing you said to your mom before she left the house for Taiwan:
“Get better soon, okay?”
So Dad was driving you instead. You were finally ready, a junior in high school, ready to see the RISD campus for the first time. You brought your portfolio with you, the work you thought was good enough. You sat in the backseat of the Toyota Echo. It was another rainy day, grey, misting down.
Gorillaz had just released their new album. You were listening to On Melancholy Hill on repeat. Dad stopped at a Dunkin so you could pee. It reminded you of when you would all go on road trips together, the entire family, when you were children. You didn’t think of yourself as a child anymore. You were still a virgin, though. That would be the last thing.
10. (Fugue)
When you turned 10, your parents threw you a camping party at Chesapeake park. You invited your former best friend (7–11). They sat you down on the picnic table. You were wearing a red velvet dress with cute flowers, even though it was sweltering August, because it was your birthday.
“You’re 10 years old!”
“You hit double digits!”
“You’re a Big Girl now!”
You were not convinced. You are still not convinced. You just spent the day crying in public, in front of strangers, in front of your co-workers, in front of your bosses. Screaming on the phone. You missed an important meeting because you thought it was 2:30 when it was scheduled for 2:00. Are you really a Big Girl?
16. (Fugue)
Your best friend (12–19) promised you that you could return to Chesapeake and make a bonfire in honor of your mom. It never happened. She later blocked you on Facebook. She asked you why you weren’t over it yet. She couldn’t stand your abusive ex.
She unblocked you, you think, because the crush who supported you through your mom’s death now works as a software engineer for a famous multinational corporation. She now lives in the corporate HQ’s city. They ran into each other on the bus, in a not-yet-gentrified part of town. Shortly thereafter you began seeing her name again on Facebook. She said nothing, he let you know.
You decided to attend NYU over art school because your best friend went to NYU. She is a year older than you. You thought you would rather be on the East Coast, close to your family, close to your friends. You thought you would be safe going to the same school as your best friend. You thought you would be best friends forever.
This famous multinational corporation is not Facebook, but close.
Now he lives in Facebook’s corporate HQ’s city. She lives in his company’s corporate HQ’s city. I live in my company’s corporate HQ’s city. I work in the headquarters office overlooking the World Trade Center, every day entering the lobby with the Brooks Brothers which served as the morgue.
16.
Dunkin has been peed in, dad is driving again. The road is sludgy with cars and pollution. We’re crawling along. I make friends with the rivulets on the windows. I remember what Mr. Craver said about people who take the path of least resistance.
10. (Fugue)
Get a piece of tin foil. Put water on it. The water will go down the path of least resistance. Then he played the Lee Ann Womack song. It was 2004. All things Country were in. It was post-9/11, we were still settling into life post-terrorism. We sang God Bless the USA every week.
He said this song was written by a dead mommy, addressed to her daughter. You were scared. How could someone’s mommy die?
So many mommies and daddies died on September 11th. Today, back in 2015, you walked through the World Trade Center Memorial on your way to lunch. You cried.
How could someone’s mommy die?
16.
Providence seems popular today. The traffic is not moving. Damon Albarn is singing about Melancholy Hill in your ears. Dad is likely listening to the radio, a detuned version of New York’s 106.7 Lite FM.
Something hits your heart like a lightning bolt. You suddenly want to know where your mom is. You check your phone, there is no service. You don’t know how to contact her. Maybe email, since text won’t work?
You break down crying, heart in pain. Crying like you never had before, streaming down your face like this rain down the path of least resistance. Dad asks you what’s wrong. You say you don’t know but you miss mom.
The coroner, her purchase receipts, and her email timestamps in her Yahoo account would later say this is around the time she died. She went to an abandoned unit of her younger brother’s apartment complex, locked herself in the basement, wrote a note to us, and swallowed her bottle of pills.
The coroner report says Asphyxiation — Accident.
My brother says her note to us said “please grow up strong and well.”
I don’t remember what she said to us. To her dad it said “I’m so sorry, dad. I couldn’t do it.” To my dad it said “please take care of the kids.”
I didn’t cry then. I’m crying now.
A week after you return from Providence, your mom’s younger sister calls. You’re probably on the computer, playing some game, maybe chatting on Facebook. You haven’t heard from your mom since you told her to get well soon, okay?
You hand the phone to your dad. You sit next to the phone, that’s your side of the computer room. Your brother is out somewhere, probably at Chinese orchestra practice. You always forget this detail when you tell the story and your brother always remembers.
Your dad leaves the room and comes back. He addresses you slowly in Mandarin.
“Mom left.”
“What do you mean Mom left?”
“Mom is dead.”
17.
The Melancholy Hill of Providence did not convince you. You went offroad with the Bike Test, drew a tricycle instead, a small landscape, your crush as a suited man with a head of broccoli. You didn’t bother to show Sharon, she would have ripped it into pieces, insisted you sat down in front of a real bicycle, drawn the minuscule treads, snatched the graphite from your hands and shaded it in herself, corrected your perspective with force. You stopped going anyway. There was nobody to drive you to class. Dad drove you several times, but it didn’t feel the same.
RISD required three other pieces that year. One where you used any medium you wanted, but had to incorporate text. The other two where you explored both sides of a paper.
You retreated into your sexuality after mom died. You made several bad decisions, drunk decisions, ugly decisions. You dated boys who left you at coffee shops, waiting for hours, because they had no backbone. You dated boys who saw your body as an object and your mind as irrelevant.
You don’t have time for that anymore.
You wielded your new sexuality as a weapon, against death, against the idea of your mom dying. Like the RPG games you liked to play. You were a necromancer, or a palladin, or a vampire. You were not yourself.
You don’t have time for that anymore.
You chose a text, a snippet of song from your new favorite band. You outgrew Nirvana. You got close to this British band whilst copying pictures of fucking sand dunes at Sharon’s. You couldn’t listen to Kurt Cobain’s smug face for a while. Elle Milano. They broke up right after you got into them. You were sad. You did not cry. You were a Big Girl.
For the first side of the paper, you drew your high school friends in a surreal landscape. Her sister is who died at 17. They’re still together, they’ve been together since high school.
She always looks like Botticelli’s Venus. Now she works in a hospital, en route to becoming a doctor. This has been her goal since you were children. You are glad that she is there.
In your picture plane, they are happy in the image. He is taking a photo of his love, in front of a romantic statue holding a bouquet. He loves taking photos. He loves her. There are cobblestones. It is winter. The clouds are reclining, nude women. They have tagged the statue with an Anarchy sticker, together. They have giggled, together.
The second image takes us several years later. Businessman. Suit. Letters. Graphs. The fucking camera, the fucking photographs. Everything ajar. The raven flying overhead. A box of cigarettes. The abandoned ring, promising forever, signifying what, exactly?
And no fucking shit, he is dead.
I got the thin envelope a few months later. Ain’t good enough for RISD.
A few months ago, someone told me I didn’t miss much in Providence.
What happens to us? How does life kill us, whether fast or slow? Where do we go? What is forever? What is family? What is love? Baby don’t hurt me?
Rosalind Krauss says: there is no origin, no originality.
I’m tired of crying.
- Please consider donating to my American Foundation for Suicide Prevention fundraising page. We have raised $550 so far! Donations are accepted until the end of 2015 and are fully tax-deductible.
- If you are looking for suicide (survivor) support, The Samaritans (in NYC, but around the world) are literal lifesavers.
- If you are looking for social support and badass friends after losing someone too early, I am a host for The Dinner Party — let me know and we can connect you with a table, or you can start one yourself, anywhere.
- If you want to support pediatric cancer patients whilst getting daydrunk in Manhattan, The Valerie Fund is throwing a Fall Open Bar benefit on Sat 11/21 in NYC. The Valerie Fund took care of my friends referenced in 17.
