The Year Nothing Feels Right

Much as I theoretically love the Christmas season, past Decembers have often been hard - sickness and depression and polluted skies and exhaustion. This year we haven't been sick too much, the air is clear, and thanks to modern medicine, my depression is improving.

But still.

This year nothing feels right.

Grief pierces unexpected moments in the midst of ordinary life.

Decorating trees and

viewing lights and

– loss –

and singing songs and

baking cookies and

– loss -

joy and grief

and confusion

and heaviness and

– loss –

---

We went to my parents’ house to help them decorate because there is nothing like the excitement of children to make these things feel worthwhile. We hung all of Anna’s personal ornaments collected since childhood. They blended in amid all the others, just like always.

Then mom pulled out the stockings. We each have personalized stockings my mom made over the years for children, sons-in-laws, grandchildren, cousins and grand-cousins. This year we finally have ours shipped from China. All of the stockings are together at last!

She looked at Anna’s stocking and stopped. “What do we do with this? We can’t not put it up.” For 32 years, that stocking hung on the mantle with the rest of the family’s. So many years ago mom carefully stitched the name “Anna” in sequins.

In that moment, the wrongness of it all broke through again. How do we have this stocking that Anna will never again open? She can’t just be gone. How does someone just cease to exist on earth? It shouldn’t be this way.

---

As I strung the tree with lights, the girls exclaimed over the ornaments. Juliana said, “Hey look at this funny ornament!” She was holding up the ridiculous brocolli-as-a-Christmas-tree picture that Anna once found in a magazine when we were kids. We both thought it was so funny that she made it into an ornament for me.

Every year for many years I asked for a harp for Christmas even though I knew I wouldn’t get it. One year Anna worked with my grandfather in his workshop to make me a “harp” from wood and guitar strings. She knew what I really wanted and her six year old self tried to make it come true.

As children we would say, “Christmas is two months away!” and then, “Christmas is two weeks away!! Remember when it was still two months away?” and we laid in bed at night talking about how slowly time moved.

We paged through the giant Sears catalog and decided which toys we wanted most. We searched for the hidden stash of presents (usually in mom’s closet) and argue over who was getting which toy.

I remember standing at the top of the stairs, waiting for the “okay” to come down and see the Christmas tree. Anna had kept her secret for so long she just couldn’t handle it any more and told me what my present was.

We missed a lot of adult Christmases during our years in China, but when we were there, she worked to make it special for the girls. She put up a tree in their room and bought – or made! - matching Christmas jammies.

I celebrated 21 Christmases with Anna. All of my memories of Christmas with my family are wrapped up with her.

-----

When we visited Santa at Bass Pro Shop the day after Thanksgiving (I did not think that through), I really wanted to text Anna.

“We are stuck in line behind this very talkative lady who doesn’t believe in the vaccine and thinks the hospitals are getting paid to fake virus cases and it’s all a conspiracy by the Chinese government and oh my gosh it’s been 30 minutes of this!!”

“Juliana is totally (nicely) giving it back and challenging everything this lady says with, “but actually…” and I am so proud of my child right now.”

“Now she is saying something about paying on your phone as a sign of the end of times??”

And Anna would have texted back about how people are stupid and Juliana is awesome and also WTF?? I can predict almost exactly how she would have responded.

---

This year I decided to make Christmas cookies for ALL the people. Somehow the list morphed into 34 people/families/groups. It’s one of those decisions I made when I wasn’t thinking so clearly, and I wonder, “WHY did I chose this year of all years?” 

Some days I enjoy mixing up cookie dough and doing all the Christmas things. I am actually happy, plugging in the Christmas tree lights every day and sitting by the fire. I feel energized watching the girls' Christmas performance.

Other days, I feel like I am dying. I am so emotionally exhausted that my body hurts. I wonder how I will be able to press through all the way through Christmas. I wonder why I am putting all my energy into making cookies while the laundry piles up, the dining table has been practically inaccessible, and I’ve resorted to “I don’t know, just find something” dinner.

I guess I need to expect the unpredictable ups and downs. I try to save some energy for those days I feel like death. I try to give myself grace in this year instead of guilt over not doing all the things. Sometimes I am successful.

I just wish I had Anna to say, "Yeah, I don't know what you were thinking. Did you make some that are allergy friendly? Gluten free? Vegan? Nut free? That's important. And did you make some for me? 😀"

I Used to Have That in China

Five months and nine days after we entrusted our most important belongings to the postal service, our final package arrived!

When we unwittingly left China in January 2020, planning to be back in a few weeks, we brought beach clothes. We left an entire house set up and waiting, perfectly preserved as a moment in time: Beds made, clothes folded in drawers, shoes by the doors.

Once we realized we were settling in America and would not be able to return to China anytime in the near future, we started looking into options for shipping a few of our most important possessions back from China.

It was a long and arduous process including months of planning and frustration, and incredibly helpful friends who spent hours and hours gathering and packing and repacking on the China side. On June 6^th, five boxes and one bass guitar finally left Yinchuan. Due to the nightmarish shipping delays, they sat in Shanghai for three months.

Finally in mid-October, the first boxes started arriving! A month later we were still waiting for the final package. The last tracking update was June, and I was starting to lose hope. But yesterday, our shipping saga concluded; all our belongings have safely made their way across the ocean!!

We were all so excited to be reunited with our things again. The girls exulted over Barbies, stuffed animals, and seemingly random “treasure collections.” I was thrilled to see the handmade afghans and stockings and embroidered pictures, the little books I had filled with baby memories, and old journals that told the inner story of years in China.  Practical things like favorite winter clothes arrived just in time for cool weather, with a big jumble of jewelry and electronics.

I was very happy to see all these things after nearly two years. But emotions are rarely pure and uncomplicated. In the midst of the happiness, I felt letdown. I found myself picturing where each of these things were in our apartment. The recipe cards in the pantry, my jewelry on a hook in my wardrobe, the Little People overflowing their milk-box-turned-toy-storage.

For a whole year, I pictured my China home set up and waiting. I thought about all the special and useful things I wished I had with me. Now, I am faced with the reality that the home we never said goodbye to is gone forever.  I already knew that. Knowing that brought a bit of closure, a sense that I could start to move on. 

But now it is real in a new way. My hair-tie inexplicably smells like our apartment, a familiar scent of chalky walls. The physical evidence of our presence in China is gone, as if we never lived there. The last tangible connection to our past life is severed.

The dismantling of our apartment symbolizes the unraveling of our whole lives in China. Even if we did go back to China, everything would be different. Our dear friends and the sweet community we formed would be gone. Our students would have graduated and moved on.  Who knows which of our favorite shops and restaurants actually survived the pandemic. The China we miss no longer exists.

These five boxes encompass 15 years of life. Most of our things are more recent, post-children possessions, but they also hold reminders of years past, the early days when China was such a different world. A handmade “wish jar” from my very first class in Yangzhou now sits on my dresser. I loved them so dearly, and they were enamored with me, their 22 year old teacher, the first foreigner many of them had ever seen.

We shipped another wish jar, full of intricate hand-folded paper hearts, from two shy students in Weinan, ones who said they were so touched by Kevin’s teaching because they had never before been complimented.

An angel figurine that was once on our bookshelf now rests on the mantel, a memorial of our first pregnancy that ended in miscarriage in a Chinese hospital. The paper IKEA gift tags that Kevin and I used to decorate our first Christmas tree wait with the handmade stockings my mom sewed for each new addition to the family.

I look at my painting, now torn, and remember the painting class I took with friends. The mug from my favorite coffee shop reminds me of quiet moments alone, deep connections with friends, and the best ever hugs from the owner. The terra cotta warrior figurines remind us of bargaining down the ridiculous price quoted at a stall outside this historical landmark. I remember where we got every single one of these items and why they are important.

And now we have them back. These tangible reminders of our lives in China are scattered around the house, slipped between newer items of this newer life.  Our past and present lives blend together a little more. While it sometimes seems like a dream, like another world entirely, China will always always be inextricably woven into the rest of our lives. We look at these treasures and remember who we are.

The Days after Death

I have been thinking a lot about what my cousin told me a number of years ago. She had just lost her mom, my aunt, and I had just suffered a miscarriage. She told me that everyone grieves differently and no matter what other people expect of you, there is not a right way to grieve.

We have an idea of what grief should look like. Crying. Lots of crying.  But grief is much more complicated. Dull sadness and sharp pain, fog and feeling lost, irritation and rage- it shouldn’t be this way!, numbness, memories, tears, exhaustion.

I don’t cry much in general, and I sometimes wonder if I look sad enough. I cried when we gathered around Anna’s hospital bed, when she was both dying and already gone at the same time. But I didn’t cry at the memorial. I sat dry-eyed thinking, “This isn’t real.” It seemed so much like Anna that surely she was there.

The grief pendulum swings back and forth between surreal and all-too-real. Sometimes life seems normal and I think about other things. Laugh and work on my to-do list and forget. Other moments I bow under the weight of this finality, all of the life I lived with Anna and all that Anna was, suddenly gone.  

I think when a person is close enough, their loss is so big it can’t be grasped at once. If we tried to take in the enormity all at once, we might shatter into a thousand pieces. I feel the need to wrap my arms around myself so nothing falls out.

***

If you have ever lost someone close, you know the days after death are a crazy mess of details and logistics. Death certificate, obituary, talking to the funeral home, choosing a coffin or urn (or in this case, a biodegradable earth ball), preparing for the memorial. The people with the most grief have the least amount of time to feel it.

When it is all over, when everyone else is understandably moved on, when life moves on and you are expected to do all the things you did before, that’s when the reality sets in. Walking around the grocery store with a broken heart, folding laundry with heavy arms, trying to cook with a muddled mind. We no longer even wear black as a sign we are mourning. We all walk around looking just the same, as if death never happened, as if we aren’t broken inside. 

***

It has been such a long, slow loss. I started saying goodbye to Anna a few years ago, when she started talking to me about her death.  I think everyone close to Anna knew it was coming, we just didn’t know exactly when. The idea of her inevitable death - and even the grief - have been a part of life for long enough that in some strange way, I can grieve her death without fully grasping that she is not alive anymore.

Of course, even when you know it is coming, you can never really be prepared. Two days before she died, I sat in the hospital with Anna talking about all kinds of random things, as we typically did. The quality of various hospital rooms she had stayed in. My new neighbors’ tree massacre. Orthodontics. Nobody thinks your last conversation will be about braces, but I don’t regret it. I don’t regret the normalcy.  

I helped her organize her things, in hopes they would release her the next day.

***

Even as we prepared for her memorial, I thought, “Anna would know who the person in this picture is; I should ask her.”  I wanted her to know that I wore her hat and dress and scarf and earrings to the memorial. She wouldn’t have been surprised, because I wore all her clothes at Easter too. But she would have been surprised that over 1000 people watched her memorial – that is the impact one short, limited life can make.

Anna would have been happy to see how the girls are taking care of her tubie bunny and draining its feeding tube. She would have laughed about Nadia’s gleeful face when she said, “Maybe now we will get her candy!!” I would have told her about when Nadia woke up one morning and asked, “Does Anna remember us in heaven?”

I knew these things were all happening because of her death, but it still seemed that I ought to be able to tell her.

I constantly think of things I want to tell Anna. I momentarily forget I can’t message her like I used to do all the time.

“For superhero night at church, the girls dressed up as Malala and Susan B. Anthony! I’m so proud.”

“My phone has finally started predicting swearing!”

“Are you offended that Nadia’s memorial plant died, or is that an appropriate symbol?”

I feel a knife jab as I remember I can’t send these messages.  Apparently we talked a lot, because every day I think of things Anna said. 

I hear her voice in my kitchen: “Actually people’s sinks are the dirtiest places because they don’t clean them often.”

In my closet, now full of her clothes: “Almost all my clothes are black because stains don’t show.”

At the coffee shop: “They have this handicap space, but there wouldn’t be enough room to get a wheelchair up this sidewalk.”

My life is filled with reminders of her. Lately, this is how her being dead seems most different from her being alive.

***

I cannot wish her back to these last months, when her life got harder and harder, when staying alive became all-consuming.  In that sense, I’m glad she didn’t have to make the choice about when to stop fighting. 

I think back to before TPN, before a feeding tube, when she could eat all kinds of food and shower whenever she wanted and was not connected to any lines. I think back to when she could sit on the floor with the girls, could climb the stairs, didn’t even own a wheelchair or IV pole. There was a time when she could watch TV, when she could drive, when she could even live on her own. I grieve not just for her death but for all the life that she slowly lost.

***

It has been one month since we stood at her bedside, holding her hands as her life slipped away. Only a month, and already a month. How have we been living normal life for a month, a normal life that looks different from all the months before it? How can she really be gone?

One month ago the reality unfolded. The following days may seem hazy, but I remember the details of that day. 

The messages: She is not responding. The MRI shows a major stroke. Your sister is driving down from North Carolina. Come now. 

Sitting on our bed, the girls crying, “But maybe she will wake up. Maybe she will be okay.” Holding Juliana and telling her, “No. This is it.”  

Telling the woman at registration I was going to the ICU. When she said, “I hope it will be okay!” I didn’t tell her that, no, it won’t be.

Taking off my mask – the RBG mask Anna bought me – to blow my nose with tiny tissues, then quickly putting it back on again, over and over.”

Asking the nurse to remove all the IVs and lines and tubes because Anna finally no longer needed them.

One month ago, Anna died. The days keep coming and keep coming. The distance from that day will become greater and greater, as Anna stays frozen in time, ever 33. But also not. She is all the ages she was before and all that she never got to be. She is free from tubes and wires and medications and thank God, from insurance. She is everything she was meant to be. And while no-one really knows how it all works, yes Nadia, I think she remembers us.

I Have That in China

I found my keys.  I rifled through a not-quite-unpacked suitcase in preparation for moving, and there they were: the round apartment key, the red bike lock key, and the curved key for our san lun che (cart).  These were my keys that I had used every day, and now they are useless. I cannot jump on my bike for a quick trip to the store or pile everyone in the back of the san lun che to bounce down the road and play with friends. I cannot go into my apartment to sit on my couch or cook in my kitchen or sleep in my bed. Maybe ever.

Now we have new keys, fancier keys, to a van with remote control locks. We have a new house key and a garage door opener. I can hop in my air-conditioned car with seatbelts and actual seats.  I can unlock my door to sit on my back porch, turn on my dishwasher, or sleep in my bed. These are all things I wanted and appreciate. Why would I miss 20*F wind blowing in my face or a kitchen with no hot water? But I do.

**

We washed the dishes, but I left laundry on the drying rack. We cleared the fridge of any food that would go bad in a few weeks, but the freezer still held leftover soup in the freezer. We packed our bags sparingly for vacation: “I’ll just be wearing my flip-flops all the time anyway...sorry, the American Girl dolls are too big...how many shirts do you really need?” We turned off the gas, unplugged the appliances, locked the windows, gathered our bags– then the lock clicked three times deadbolting the door.  And we left.

We innocently left a house, a job, a vehicle, books and blankets and toys, a whole life. With the turn of a key, that world was over.

**

I think the strangest thing about buying a new house was the lingering thought, “But we already have a home!” As we have worked to furnish a new house from scratch, I don’t know how many times I have said, “But I have that in China.”

I had a mop, a fly swatter, AND an electric mosquito zapper.  I had knives – my Yangzhou cleaver.

Yangzhou is famous for its knives, and I can picture the little stone lane where I bought it.  I just bought spices and a stapler, a toilet brush and dish drainer. We are in the stage of buying all those insignificant things you forget you even need.  We had all those in China, plus rugs, a bunkbed, bicycles, blankets, and new Christmas toys barely enjoyed.

**

We pulled out the dishes from our wedding, supplemented by other hand me downs from family and friends. They are very nice dishes.  But you see, I had favorite plates – purple for a warm, comfortable feel or green for a fresher, cheery feel. I would seriously choose my plate based on how I was feeling. There was this one spoon that was just the right shape and size for cereal (very round, and just the right size).

It is all ridiculous, right? Mourning my favorite spoon. Complaining about a temperature controlled vehicle. All that other stuff…it’s only stuff. “You can’t take it with you” just came a little sooner than I expected. I should just let it go.

And yet, each one of those things represents a piece of that life we no longer have. The cereal I was eating with that perfect spoon was probably a birthday present. Life was simpler then, when unwrapping a box of cereal was cause for excitement.

My favorite mug was not only just the right shape and texture, it came from the coffee shop my friends owned. How many times did I sit in the cozy upstairs room, working on the computer, sitting quietly, talking and laughing and crying with friends?  Kevin performed music, we celebrated birthdays, we knew the owners and everyone who worked there. Even if we could go back, the coffee shop is gone, and all that is left is my green mug that I don’t actually have.

**

I miss my things because I just spent $30 at the dollar store rebuying a bunch of random stuff that I still own on the other side of the world. I miss already having approximately everything we needed. I miss having everything I need to cook a meal, right down to the pastry brush.

I miss our things because I miss our lives. I could almost be there, eating toast off my purple plate while peering out the window seeing how bad the pollution was today - rejoicing when I could see the mountains, despairing when the rest of campus disappeared in a haze. I could be sitting in the living room with my green mug of re-heated coffee, starting home-school. We rarely even turned on the light, with so much light coming through our large fifth floor window.

** 

There is a sickeningly tidy metaphor about one door closing and another one opening.  But not only do I hate pithy sayings, there is no tidy close to our lives that suddenly ended with the slamming of a door. 

We rebuy all the things. I let myself grieve over all that we lost, significant and ridiculous, and I remind myself that I will find a new favorite spoon. All of this will become familiar, and I will make new memories. I will look at my coffee mug, and I won’t think of Target but instead of times spent over coffee with friends.

I will turn the key to open the door of the house I love, of the oh-so-surreal life I learn to love. I will hang my key ring by the door: the van keys, the house key, and just maybe the red bike key, to remember that other life behind the closed door.

Sometimes We Get the Chance to Say Goodbye

When we left to come back to the US this year, our friends kept asking, “Are you coming back? How sure our you that you will be back?” They weren’t asking because they found us to be naturally untrustworthy people but because they recognize the reality of our transient community. I would usually answer, “Yes, we are definitely coming back as far as we can foresee. As far as it depends on us. As long as nothing big happens. We are leaving all our possessions here and saying, “See you next year,” not “I may not see you again ever.”

We feel a fear whenever someone leaves, or even talks about leaving, because we know none of this is forever. Not in a “the earth is temporal and not our home” kind of philosophic way but in a very practical sense, we are continually reminded of the tentative nature of our lives.

When we left China, another family from our city left at the same time, knowing that they probably would not be back. They were our friends, former classmates, our playgroup buddies. Our two oldest were international school classmates. Our two middles were best friends. Our two youngest were preschool classmates. But we were able to say goodbye and send them off to their home country, even though we would probably never see them again.

After we were back in the US, we heard that another family unexpectedly left our city to return to their home country where we will probably never see them again. Juliana’s teacher that she loved left our city and will not be back. Another family, in a nearby city, told us this summer they would not be back. Just now we learned from another family in our city, our good friends, that they will be leaving in a few months, before we get back. These times, we do not get to say goodbye.

Sometimes we, and they, can plan ahead. We knew that several friends would be leaving before we returned (in addition to the aforementioned ones). Some other friends, who have lived in China for over 25 years, have already been making plans to return to the US next summer. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, the move is sudden. We don’t have the chance for goodbyes. And so we hold a certain fear. Will they return? Will they stay? Will I see them again?

In the US we like to believe we control our own destinies, if we believe it we can achieve it, we can set goals and make them come true, we can do anything, nothing can stop us. We choose our jobs and our homes and our cars, maybe our children’s schools and our city or neighborhood. We have so many options that we can believe we are in control of everything – until a terrible diagnosis, or a tragic loss, or a sudden layoff.

In our lives overseas, most of those illusions are stripped away and we wonder what in the world we are left to control. We may lose our friends and our children’s friends. We may lose our most of what we own. We may have to leave because of our health or parent’s health or children’s well-being or because we are no longer welcome. We may lose our jobs and our schools and our homes and our way of life all in one blow. We carry this possibility with us each day, not because we are doomsday thinkers or extreme pessimists but because know these are realistic possibilities.

Lately I have been feeling this grief. Loss of friends. Loss of control. Loss of security. The uncertainty of the future. And the continual goodbyes. How many goodbyes, most likely permanent goodbyes, have I said in these years? Another year, another dozen goodbyes. I am tired of saying goodbyes, but I am grateful for each time I get to say them. I know that sometimes we won’t have that chance.

We tend to run in one of two directions. Sometimes we close ourselves off to friendships because who knows how long they will be here anyway. We don’t fix up the apartment because what if we have to move again next year? Sometimes we cling to things tightly in the hopes they won’t slip through our fingers. But we can never cling tightly enough to keep change at bay, and the loss tears us apart.

The only way I see through it is by holding our hearts out, and holding them loosely. We have to keep investing in people and a country, loving others, settling in however temporarily. We have to accept that change and loss are inevitable, that however hard we try we are not in control. Then when change and loss happens, we grieve in whatever ways we do it best. We allow our hearts to break and then be remade.