Death is sad no matter how long we prepare for it. I feel like I’ve been preparing for the death of my family for a very long time. But when it happens, even after months of suffering, it still seems too soon, too shocking. My mom was going to see him today, but he died this morning before she got there. We had just seen him two weeks ago, so I’m glad for my last moment with him was a double high five. Nearing his death I would massage lotion into his hands. He really liked it when I did that, and the last time I did he even clapped for me. I wrote a poem about it, how his skin felt warm and thin, fragile like overripe persimmons.

When I first started making work about grief, I had felt a void where the loss was in my life. It was cold, scary, empty, bleak, heavy. But now it feels different. It feels like my grandpa has risen or arrived at some space within me, in his spot in my ancestry. A filling up of, an arriving to. I feel alone but not at all. It’s weird, and kind of warm, and kind of comforting. This is a new feeling. But also tragic, and heavy. I know it was too soon for all of us but it would have always been too soon. There is never a right time, the time just happens. We are witnesses of it. It really feels like a breath of air, now that he has been released of his aging prison. Seeing all the suffering, I am relieved. 

But seeing my mother lose her father, my grandmother losing her husband of 60 some years, my uncles losing their father, my cousins losing their grandfather, me and my sister losing our grandfather, I am so so sad. He meant a lot to all of us. He loved us and we loved him. And we will always be thinking of him and always miss him and his laughter. I am heart broken of this loss. 

We barely exchanged any words in my life, even before the aging took his tongue. The language barrier has always been present. Yet I feel like we were still able to develop a rich relationship. He saw me and I saw him. Language did not need to be accessible for us. Though I would have loved to have that facet of relationship with him. But I know love is beyond language, love is inherited, love is gifted, love is ever present. 

It’s okay, he can go. It’s been long enough. We thank him for his service to this family and carry him with us where ever we go. He and everyone else lives within us. As spirits it sometimes feels like they are more present than living ancestors, just like thoughts are the loudest sound, ancestors are the closest to us, maybe? Does anyone else feel that? It’s like a pressure on the back of my neck. There seems this urgency to be alive. To experience aliveness. Thinking about death exhales the thought of life. (In the same breath). Or like, thoughts of death create a hyper awareness of life? Every cell of my body feels alive, and I feel that as I think of my grandfather’s. It’s kind of a dark and scary thought. It always feels too soon.

I think about that one scene in season five of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. I forget the episode name but I remember the scene well. Golden clouds billow in the sky and the sun shines brightly down, in a blinding, brilliant, godly way. The shade of golden is bright and deep, some sort of brilliant and cold yellow, vibrating off the screen. They are billowing as if of smoke from a fire, upwards into the sky with urgency. Giorno stands witnessing it all, as Bucciarati ascends into true happiness, heaven, after finishing his role. He ascends surrounded by cherubs, no doubt to accompany him on his journey. He looks straight forward, unwavering towards his happiness. The movement of clouds is slow and dramatic, as is his ascension. It’s so bright, and absolutely tragic. But there is no tragedy. Bucciarati is at peace, and Giorno is given his inheritance. Giorno rises to the task with determined eyes. This is my favorite and most beloved representation of death in media, of all the media I’ve seen. The animation, frame composition, colors, and music all create an incredibly immersive and beautiful experience of death. I like to think that it really is like that in our lives. 

I am writing this now, it has been a week and two days. He was cremated two days ago, my birthday the next day. At this point, I fully recognize that the distinction between days to be an illusion. Just as the past, present, and future all exist as one bodily experience of time, I suppose it’s obvious that days are just that as well. It may as well be the same day as my birthday, his death day. I mean his physical death’s day. Death surrounds us as we celebrate life. This all makes me feel closer with him, even as his body is reduced to ash. In a month my mother, grandmother, uncle, and aunt will take his ashes home to Taiwan, where he has a permanent space waiting for him in a Buddhist temple. Our great grandmother, his step mother, is there too. My grandmother has a place in that temple waiting for her as well. 

The beauty of the culturally specific family unit is just that, we are a unit. There is a culture of taking care of each other just because we are each other’s family. (Of course there are harmful sides to this, but that’s for later.) When there is loss in that unit, the affects are profound. I mean, death is always profound, but I just feel very conscious of it at this time. I mean, he brought us to the states. He carried this family on his back and now we are all thriving, at least financially secure and stable. We always talk about the sacrifice of immigrants moving across oceans, and I feel that in my bones now. When we were children I always thought of my grandparents as gods. Now what do we do in the face of a god’s death? Cry, I suppose. Gods are not supposed to die, I thought? Or rather, gods are not ruled by our laws of life and death, they are something different. A presence so stable in my life, in our lives, taken too soon. But also the perfect time. The perfect time because it is the time. The universe is perfect and we are perfect. We are all gods.

I suppose I am writing this as evidence of this god’s existence. And it’s too close, too personal. Too close to my life’s source, like his life’s energy has been transferred to me, and us. I can feel that transfer, shift, portal. It lingers with a pressure on the back of my neck, in the back of my throat. Behind and within. Behind as in, I am the face of now. Within as in, we are all one. I wonder if anyone else can describe this too, maybe better. I spend all my days finding ways to feel and express. As my grandmother phrased it, 阿公去玩了, grandpa went to play.

My body shakes as I speak and the sun warms me up. The sun reminds me of my place here, as an inheritor, as a cultural producer, artist. I am filled with an urgency to be alive, but I realize I am doing that already.

The end of winter has a tendency to take our weakest. I find most often within February and March. The end of winter and the beginning of spring also marks my birth day. I find great symbolism in that, for a reason I am trying to articulate, something about my life beginning when life is fresh and budding and newborn, every year I still feel new born. Stepping out of death into life? Or feeling the presence of death while being born? I’m not sure how to phrase this. We are so close together in time, death and life, side by side, walking together. Life feels so vibrant and new. The universe is being intentional here and I can hear it. Every day I breathe new life and life breathes around me. We hold each other close to console each other about the inevitability of death’s arrival, our ascension. We hold each other close so we stay alive as long as possible because our bodies love to be alive, we love to be alive. 

March 2022