Toast to Starman, Good Bye to Major Tom

The one and only, imcomparable Bowie. 

Ziggy Stardust. Starman. Thin White Duke.
Aladin Sane, a Lad Insane.

Ten days into the new year, the unexpected, gripping news of David Bowie's death makes my heart jump. It's been over four years since I smoked my last cigarette. Shouldn't times like this be an exception, I wonder. I do resist the temptation to smoke one in his honor, but it isn't easy, as the first lines of "Rock-n-roll Suicide" echo in my head: "Time takes a cigarette, puts it in your mouth..."

Just a couple of days ago there was much talk about his music. Was it because he was already dead, then? But no, he had released new music then, on his 69th birthday on January 8. Only two days later, he is said to have died "peacefully after a courageous 18-month battle against cancer." I hadn't known of that battle at all. These facts I cannot instantly register. 

It seems strange that such an unearthly thing, too, submits to the mundane--terrifyingly absolute and final, yet much too inevitable as to be mundane--human fate of death. And cancer, no less. Now that I look again at the few recent photos published in news media, they show faint yet unmistakable signs of illness, marks of chemo. It is heartbreaking to imagine this unearthly man undergoing the  process too familiar to me. It may be ridiculous to be mourning a pop culture icon, but I find myself reeling with a visceral sense of loss. This loss feels more personal than is reasonable. I do not want to be seeing all the obits and headlines that pop up everywhere on the internet. Nonetheless, I see, post after post, an endless stream of tributes and memories on Facebook, even from friends who tend to be indifferent to celeb culture. The shared grief is comforting, though--this unbelieving sadness shared among so many of my generation. All of us ‪#‎DavidBowie‬‬ mourners must have reasons why we are so personally affected. 

Mark Ruffalo mourned him as "Father of all us freaks." Indeed.

I was quietly but absolutely fascinated with him throughout my adolescence, which was spent under the oppressive mandates of gender normativity and textbook uniformity. Living in a culture that gave me no language with which to describe what Bowie was doing, I didn't even know how to verbalize that fascination. Watching him play and perform, I learned that being weird, abnormal, and transgressive could be all right, fun, and even necessary at times; that a different form of beauty might be born of conscious defiance of received notions of beauty; that gender could be also liberating (as opposed to regulatory) in its fluidity. No writer or teacher I had access to at the time could teach me such things. He was the love of my namelessly deviant and wordlessly discontented youth. His varying phases of self-invention and his invariably exquisite vampiric beauty definitely affected my preferences in certain things. I happily hold him accountable for at least a small portion of what I am--an incorrigible if inconspicuous queer spinster freak.

As I got older, I also grew to appreciate his music and the incredibly sophisticated lyrics much better. Even now I cannot get tired of listening to "Rock-n-roll Suicide," "Life of Mars?" and "Absolute Beginners," when driving. Most of my past relationships were with the persons who shared or at least understood this special significance he has for me. Any one of them would have been willing, if possible, to have a drink with me on the day he died; one or two of them might really have thought of me when they heard the news, I'd like to think. That the boy who had given me the Bowie at the Beeb CDs a few years before died only about a year ago makes all this the more poignant. The year 2015 was ushered in with the shocking news of GD's untimely death; 2016 will be lived in wake of the death of Bowie himself.

Getting older, one cannot avoid these accruing deaths. These losses, however, add up to make me increasingly aware that dying IS something that one needs not be afraid, that death is not far away and is what life transitions into. When my mother died, I learned that dying really was how one ends living. Death seemed a state into which one disappears naturally, and despite the shock and grief inherent in bereavement, this discovery was more reassuring than could be explained in words. Bowie's death now invokes a similar feeling. He also makes me realize once again how I would like to face death, especially because it is obvious that he transitioned into death doing until the very last what he had been doing all his life. His last album "Blackstar" must have been a parting gift, which turns even his death into art with a reference to the tumor. 

Many others seem to feel Bowie's death is surreal. Because what he did is immortal, we tend to have thought that he too was immortal. What a life to have touched so many. I will always be sad about his passing, a corner of my heart will always crumble and melt freshly every time I remember that he's now gone from this world. Instead of mourning, though, perhaps a toast is in order for the Starman, who has now become the Wide-Eyed Boy in Free Cloud.

Salute to Major Tom.

Wishing Peace

It's been a year since GD passed. A year and two days, to be precise. This year started out with the news of his sudden death, the shock of which lasted until this very moment. My disbelief never gave way to belief even today. When a person leaves this life, it is not simply a small hole of absence that is left behind. His or her entire world disappears, and that loss is not equivalent with an individual's physical absence. I cannot begin to fathom what the loss of his life and world could mean to me, but it is the loss that I will have to live with.

I didn't feel like writing much about my own living moments for a long time. But I want to learn to live and write despite that strange feeling of loss which weighs me down. I needed to formularize somehow this irreverent desire for closure interwoven with a woeful sense of loss.

I earnestly and sincerely did and do mourn him, frequently if intermittently. Sometimes for long, sometimes for mere seconds, but invariably with a sharp sense of irreparable loss. I don't see it changing much in the future. I'll always mourn him, sometimes concretely, sometimes abstractly, but perennially, eternally. I hope death means peace to him if in the form of its terrifying nothingness. I'll make peace with having no other means for wishing him well but this vain, silly wish for peace. Good bye, GD. You'll always be in my life as this feeling of loss.

Did You Really?

I was half waiting to hear that the terrible news of GD's untimely death was all a big mistake. But notes and reports were posted on University web-pages and there were also the obituary and notices of the funeral service. Seeing his photo in the notice or the obituary issued by the funeral home does not make it any more real to me. Is that the same person that I knew, touched, and held close to me once? This is beyond absurd. 

The strangest thing of it all is that no information whatsoever about the cause and circumstances of his death is being released. No remark other than that he died "suddenly" and "unexpectedly." No information at all, anywhere, from anyone. Nobody seems to know or have heard anything. It's been over two weeks, and the viewing and the funeral are all over now. I find it extremely strange, as he was quite a prominent scholar in his field, too. It is as if those in the know are resolutely keeping some painful or damaging secret in order to protect the happy memories about the deceased. What could be so bad that they have to be so secretive? Are they really trying to hide something from public knowledge? It is impossible to shake off a dark, ominous feeling.

Knowing that GD had a history of alcoholism and depression, I find myself reverting over and over to the image that I really would rather not envision. His depression was under control with medication and therapy, as far as I know. He also kicked his alcoholism quite a few years ago with continuous participation in the AA meetings. When I saw him last in 2010, he told me he would still go to the meeting every now and then. And recently he seemed finally happy. Why, then? What on earth happened? His usual itinerary is likely to have placed him in his parents' house around Christmas and the New Year's. One notice reported that he died late at night--and I didn't like the sound of that. Could he have gone out and had an unfortunate accident? But wouldn't it have been mentioned in that case? Was he in his own home? Or at his parents'? How does an apparently happy, healthy, and successful person with a history of alcoholism and depression die late at night in his or his parents' house, leaving the loved ones behind? There must be other ways, of course, but for now I can only think of one very particular way. And I don't know what to think or how to feel about this. I would be happy to learn from some one that this is only my sick imagination running wild. 

G, I don't know which is worse, honestly: being forced out of life unwillingly by an accident or some sudden illness when everything else was good, or finally choosing to get out of this world which somehow did not suit you any longer. The two possibilities seem equally cruel--both to you and to others close to you. But a clinically depressed person's suicide is not really a choice. It is a surrender to the dark force that overwhelms and dominates. What did you do? Or, what befell you, should I rather ask? This not knowing, though ultimately of no consequence, is profoundly unsettling, to say the least. The person who now has a claim to all your life and death is not sharing with anyone what she knows. Is she trying to protect you? Or herself? I long to look to you for some little intimation of your wherefores. But now that you're over this world and beyond, there is no knowing what kind of gaze you're sending back. Did you, really? Did you? All I do not see and hear seems to be pointing to that possibility, but I am still unbelieving. In my unbelief, however, I keep hoping that you finally found peace, G.

Remember You by All the Love You Gave Me

This morning, still in bed, I got a message from a friend that GD had passed away a few days ago. No details, just a short report of what she heard from someone. What the hell does it mean that a healthy person of 45 "died suddenly"? On Monday, December 29, 2014, as I learned later. My stomach turns. Not grief, but utter disbelief grips me. But does an ex-girlfriend have a right to grieve over the loss of a man who all but cut her off and got married?

My head is clouded with all the things that I said and did which might have caused him pain and unhappiness. Oh dear, they aren't few. I wish I didn't remember some things at all.

I disappointed him once, and nine years later I failed him again--or we failed each other. The first breakup was mostly due to the circumstances: I had to leave, and as we could not manage over the overwhelming physical distance between us for many reasons, I gradually gave up. The second time around, I was the one who wanted to revisit that margin of possibility left unexplored between us. The first breakup hadn't soured our mutual fondness and we were still good friends who knew each other intimately. Turning 40 and getting nowhere near happy with any man, I longed for some comfort, fun, and familiarity. I knew he still had a soft spot in his heart for me. Settled in more comfortable places in our lives, we gave it another shot. For over a year, I really did what I could, traveling the distance twice, talking to him on the phone almost every day, trying to sound out all the potentials of that relationship. However, whereas a long-distance relationship with extended periodic separations perfectly suited me, he dreaded its attendant dangers. Though he enjoyed having our lives reconnected so closely, he was wary of investing fully into that reconnection. I was willing to divide my life, but to my frustration he refused to budge from his own comfort zone. Aware of his painful recovery from alcoholism that followed the disintegration of our first relationship, I couldn't blame him. My long-distance scheme was proving unfeasible to him, and his wish for me to discard my own life and move in with him was just as impossible. In a strangely passive aggressive stance motivated by his distrust of my feelings, he was refusing to revise his set pattern of life for me, while waiting for me to give in entirely to his own terms. But that uncertainty and reluctance of his wearied and disenchanted me in the space of a year, and my growing disenchantment ironically justified him in his doubt of me. Disillusionment and fatigue made me see in him things that I did not want to see, and drew out my own foibles. It was a strange breakup, for I am not sure I was the responsible one. I broke it off but I felt rejected, for it was actually he that would neither have me as I was nor bring himself to the halfway point between us. But he resented it bitterly. He became touchy and defensive even with Kim, who initially had introduced us. As his resentment and anger got compounded toward both me and Kim, he dropped his friendship with Kim, too. But I don't regret having tried the second time, because I really did do my best, which frankly I didn't the first time. On his part, though, I could see why he was so angry. Perhaps he felt that I reopened the scar that took time to heal, only to leave him wounded again. 

He didn't defriend me but I knew he left me barely hanging at the tail of his "folks who are practically dead to me" list. I never told him but the second breakup was a bitter one to me as well, for I was sorely disappointed at the failure of what then appeared my last resort. Even now I would not be too surprised if it should prove to have been my last chance at a tolerably 'normal' relationship. If I could not form a committed long-term relationship with a good man who loved me, if my best shot wasn't good enough for him, doesn't it mean I'm hopeless? It was not a pleasant notion and, tough as it was, I had to come to terms with it. 

Over a year later, while in chemotherapy, I got back in touch with him. I knew that he had just gotten into a new relationship and that I had forfeited his friendship, but I wanted to tell him myself, because he was still someone who mattered to me, who I wanted to spare the awkward unease of hearing secondhand of my illness. Maybe a strange thing to do, but an uncertain prognosis made me imagine the worst. It wasn't to everyone that I wanted to spread the cheerless news of my breast cancer and its dark implications. Little had I expected such a cold shoulder from him, though. He bluntly expressed his regret. A non sequitur update about a friend filled the rest of his terse reply, in which he mocked this friend who he knew to be my special favorite. The anger was naked in this email, and it was upsetting that even a critical illness could elicit from him no other emotion than anger for me now. I wasn't exactly expecting him to fly over to my side in tears. But a stranger would have expressed warmer sentiments than his. He had reasons to be angry and I probably shouldn't have written him at all, cancer or no cancer. On the other hand, I felt all right about letting him know. He had dodged a bullet there. Since he ended up evading the shitty lot of dealing with a cancer-ridden girlfriend, wasn't it all for the best? I wouldn't have minded if he had secretly gloated over his narrow escape, not that he was the type who would. Although using my cancer to wriggle my way back on his good side wasn't my intention, his coldness was hurtful. A lasting friendship with a man whom I broke up with twice was a selfish fantasy, and that was where our communication ended. That was December 2011. The following summer, I saw the photos of him in Jeju Island. He married that new girlfriend the next spring. I remember seeing those photos on Facebook in silent wonder: how was it possible for him to go so fast and far with this woman, when he wouldn't travel anywhere for me? The answer was obvious. She wasn't me and she must have loved him in a way that made him go far and wide. And he must have loved her in that way too, whereas his love for me was mostly a source of anxiety. It wasn't jealousy that I felt. I was a little chagrined, but his new-found love and subsequent marriage gave me a sense of relief, too. If things turned out nicely despite the damages I might have done him, then surely I no longer had to feel too bad about having been the bad guy in our history?

The sense of guilt cannot be dispelled though, even when I know that I, we, did what we felt compelled to, true to our needs and desires. People love, hurt, and break up all the time, and as Kim says, it's a normal emotional passage between real people. It would be a terrible presumption to think that I was some sort of femme fatale or even a semi-trauma in his life, after all. But we all know of our secret emotional bookkeeping: sometimes you give more than you get, and other times you get more than you give. This bookkeeping, albeit nonsensical, at times issues mandates that are hard to ignore, and I cannot shake off this feeling of owing something to him that I can never repay. It is too bad that I did not try to reconcile with him. But it was clear that he had no intention to do so. Whatever sense of guilt and regret I have would have quietly dissipated in time, had he lived long and prospered. In the end, it all boils down to my own difficulty in accepting a good person's tragic premature death. Mortality is painful, because there is nothing anyone can do about it and there is no getting used to it; no possible way to stomach this helplessness calmly, and no right way to react to it. In a sense, guilt may be a living person's way of translating this unbearable, inexplicable pain into something more manageable. 

Life is absurd. My breast cancer is absurd, but GD's death is even more so. I thought by now I've gotten familiar with my vulnerability to the random violence of life and death. When I am busy hardening myself against the weight of my own vulnerability, the mortality of someone else, someone who was once very close to me, hits me in an unguarded spot. It is selfish to be bitching about my own living aches when GD is dead and gone, but it does hurt. Perhaps that is why the living get to hog the attention when death descends upon us. Friends send me separate messages of sympathy and consolation. I deeply appreciate their concern and am encouraged that I am not alone in this muddle. But I remain unsure if an ex-girlfriend has a claim to their condolences, especially the one who bred considerable pain, anxiety, doubt, frustration, and anger in the heart of the deceased. Maybe they offer their sympathy because they know the guilt of a bad ex. 

I am not the bereaved one. There is the wife, the poor woman whose heart must be rending at this incredible death of a loving husband. Weird as it sounds, I'm glad he had a wife who will grieve for him. I wonder if it is horrid of me that I do not feel entitled and would rather not grieve. I would like to find consolation in that GD was finally happy, at least happier than I was, in the past two or three years. He must have been happy with her--I want to believe, for his sake and also for my sake.

GD would often surprise me with his recollections of minute details from our earlier days together. If not as many, my memories are also plenty. I remember how shy he was the first time he took me out, I remember that house-brewed beer in that restaurant. I remember all the places we went together. I remember how worked up he would get about the upcoming departure every time I had to leave, how attentive and protective he was whenever I was upset. He loved my cooking, and I enjoyed messing with his scarcely-touched, top-quality kitchenware. I would make fun of his food-greed, but in fact his bad eating habit worried me. I remember the tiny red birthmark on his wrist and the childhood story he told me about it. I remember him trying to feel my heart beat for no apparent reason. Some of my eccentricities annoyed him to no end, while some of his drove me crazy. But no one was as openly affectionate in his everyday dealings with me as he was. No one I dated made me feel as pretty as he did. I know he loved me dearly, and I was ever so thankful for his tenderness and good heart. I really hope he left this world with only kind memories in his heart and sweet images in his eyes.

G, I thought I was likely to die before my friends. You upstaged me there, honey, and what a sad surprise it is. My heart grows heavy when I imagine how unfathomably lonely you must have been at that absolute final moment. Death must be lonely, for you go alone. I hope you're in your happy place now. I miss the time we spent together in that firehouse loft of yours. We had fun there, didn't we? I am sorry I couldn't give you all of my heart then, but I am happy to have been responsible at least for a small portion of your happiness. Do you know that I left a few bobby pins in the guest room bedside table drawer in your house near the park? I left them there, knowing that I'd come back the next summer. I forgot to take them out the next time, though. I think unconsciously I wanted to leave a little trace of me there with you, wanting not to disappear from your life altogether. I never wanted to stop being your friend. I am happy to have been your first real love, and I am sorry to have been such a pain to you. I am sorry I teased you so much, but I never meant to hurt you. I was frank with you, and I'm glad you told me you knew it. We know things about each other that no one else does, and that intimacy means a lot to me. I know you always had your own aches and darknesses that you found hard to bear. May your soul rest in peace now. Though I can't have been that important to you in the end, please forget all the hurts I gave you, and remember the good times we had together. I know you were generous and patient with me for a long time. Thank you so much for all the love. I'll remember you by the love you gave me. But dear, why did you have to go in such a hurry? I would rather have you hate me and stay angry at me alive than remember me fondly in death. I still have that little spider man that I forgot to bring you last time. What am I going to do with it now?

Wherever She May Be

It's been over seven weeks since mom passed away.  In the past ten years or so she had tons of health problems that made her life miserable in all kinds of ways, especially last winter and spring.  But she willed through a few serious crises and when she finally got home after the three-month tribulation in the hospital at the end of February, it was a great relief.  We'd all thought she made a huge turn and therefore was going to be with us for some more time yet.  She spent two full months at home, wobbly and fragile but no longer bed-ridden.  She had a healthy appetite, and even her complaints were becoming as energetic as before.  But going is always unexpected, I suppose.  When I arrived at the ER she was already unconscious, and my brother who'd taken her to the ER told me that she had had a fall in the house.  It was the brain damages--the doctors could not tell whether the fall caused the hemorrhage or an aneurysm caused the fall.  No matter.  The ER doctors showed us brain scan photos and told us that she was not likely to regain consciousness, and she did leave us that very night, only about 6 hours after coming to the hospital.

When her recovery seemed almost unlikely back in January, my sister and I worried so much about how to take care of her.  For a time, her weakened physical condition affected her mental capacity so severely that we believed her lucidity gone for good, although the doctors repeatedly told us that they believed her dementia was temporary.  Even with an around-the-clock medical aide, she was more than a handful, and we wondered whether we would have to put her in a special-care home when her surgical scars finally healed, for the university hospital was surely not going to house her then.  But to our great surprise she did regain lucidity and control just enough to be able to live at home with the help of the live-in medical aide.

When she suffered the massive cerebral damage with the fall, she did not hang on for long.  The slim chance of her recovery would have only meant permanent disability and paralysis, which we know happen to some families.  She left in a hurry, as if refusing to be reduced to that state that she herself had feared so much, as if she had known our fears as well.  I was let into the ICU, when the nurse told me she had only about half an hour in this life.  She was already growing pale and cold, as her heart was slowly giving out.  We held her hands and kept telling her she needed to hang on for a little longer, for her favorite son was on his way.  Her heart quietly stopped the second he ran into the ICU to her bedside.  Witnessing mom's passing, although it is impossible to describe the enormity of it all, I also saw that the final transition could be a peaceful closure to a lifetime of struggle.  And that was an immense comfort amidst overwhelming emotions.

Two days after her passing, we put her ashes to earth.  Leaving one's body, not physically having a place in this world, does not have to be terrifying, especially when the body has become such a source of disomfort and pain. 

My sister and I had so many issues with her while mom was alive, which we never successfully addressed or resolved, but what does it signify now?  I just don't believe that those unresolved emotional issues with mom translate into a "scar" or some such thing for me.  However, I ache to imagine how lonely she must have been in her emotional alienation even from her children, which must have had to do with her bodily and mental deterioration.

Last weekend, we marked the seven week anniversary with the traditional Buddhist ceremony that wished the spirit a blessed journey to the afterlife.  The ritualistic immolation of paper clothes and shoes at the end of the ceremony symbolizes the untying of the spirit from all things in this world.  It probably meant that we needed to let her go as well so she could go freely.  As the fire consumed those last symbolic ties mom was supposed to have had to this material world, I wished her well and I once again wondered where she really was.  And I honestly wondered what ties I now had to mom which I was supposed to sever or retain.

Obituary

This is my mom's obituary I sent out to friends shortly after her funeral.  

Dear friends, It's terrible to send this news. My mother passed away at around 2 am, on April 30, only hours after she was taken to the ER and the ICU. She had had a fall in her house the previous evening and hurt her head, which led to multiple organ failures very quickly.  She was strong enough to overcome cervical cancer 30 years ago and then breast cancer 8 years ago, both times undaunted and successful.  But the increasing illnesses in the past few years had shrunken her courage, and the series of surgery since last December had weakened her already frail body.  She must have been unable or even unwilling to endure any more.  My heart aches to remember all the pain she had suffered before this happened, and my guilt of adding to her pain with my own recent illness will haunt me forever.  But we take small consolation in that she didn't suffer too much or too long in her departure and that her transition at the final moment was surprisingly peaceful.  We sent her back to earth on May 2, deep in sorrow yet hopeful that her energy will enrich and beautify nature in more ways than our limited understanding can imagine.  Please join me in wishing her well, now that her tiring journey in this world is finally over.

A shorter notice had been sent, or a phone call made, to a couple of friends the day she died.  My sincerest thanks to all those who have been unsparing in their warm sympathy and condolences.  Special thanks to those who came to pay repect to her at the funeral home.  On seeing her photo, many complimented mother for her beauty.  She would have liked it very much.  She loved it when people told her she was beautiful.