the cartography of grief

Today, October 14, is Vern's birthday. He would've been 22 this year. It's his fifth birthday since his passing.

It's already been five years, and something about that feels so strange to me. Five long years, five short years; I don't know which of these to choose because it feels like both. Five long years because so much has happened that if you were to take a snapshot of me at 16 years old and another of me at the present, they'd seem entirely unrecognisable. I've gone through university, I've graduated, I've traversed through countries I never imagined I would have had the opportunity to, I've done some amazing things and some lame things, like shaking the hand of the governor of Victoria while accepting a scholarship award, like sleeping overnight on a public park bench in Kobe with my friends because our travel plans had gone awry and we had nowhere to stay (and which of these two is amazing and which is lame is up to you to decide).  Five short years because if you were to look really hard at these two snapshots and poke around and investigate a bit, you'd find that everything about me is the same beneath the surface. 

So much has changed, so much hasn't. And this is just me—what else in this great big world would be unfathomable to any of us five years ago?

I keep trying to imagine what Vern would be like right now. 22 years old, probably just graduated or going to, thinking of entering the Working World™. And what else? I have random guesses and assumptions scattered about like puzzle pieces, but not nearly enough to form a full picture. Who would Vern be, how would he have changed, and would he still like me, would I still like him, would we still be good friends, or more or less than that?

There's something incredibly dissatisfying about looking him up on Facebook and seeing nothing has changed. No new photos, no new status updates, nothing. I don't expect anything to be uploaded, yet I still get disappointed. And I'm not even the type of person who stalks people on Facebook and trawls through a person's history out of boredom—I use Facebook once a week (if even that), and what other people update are rarely of concern to me. But looking at Vern's empty page with nothing new but posts from other people for the past five years...here I am, looking into portal into the past, into something unchanging, stagnant. How do you deal with the fact that the person you loved and love is unable to experience the adventures and changes that should be a part of life?

Sometimes I like to imagine how Vern would've reacted if he had been the one experiencing what I've gone through, just a bit of Ctrl + H-style replacing him into my life. What would he do, how would he wriggle his way through things, how would he have lived in my shoes. Sometimes I'd laugh and think "hah, yeah, I did a way better job handling that than he would have." And other times: "yeah...he probably would not have screwed that up the way I did. Good job, me." I think I'm trying to find ways to give him life within my limited capabilities and imagination.

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May 30th was the fifth anniversary of his death. 

I had thought of writing something then, but nothing came out. The spout of words had been capped. Normally, I'm quite good at forcing myself to write even when there is nothing to say (writing essays for university will give you that gift), or when I am completely uninspired (because if I wrote only when I felt inspired, I'd write once a month at most). But I truly was at a lost on that day in May. 

Five years.

What is there to say any more? I can echo the same things again that I've written before, I can recycle the same lines again and again. 

I had thought that grief would be a straight line down—you move on and on, gradually and slowly to whatever pace suits you best, but with that lingering memory (May 30th, 2009) eventually passing far behind you. Still visible, still in your thoughts, but further, further, further as the days go by.

It seems to me now that grief is not a straight line down, but instead a large circle that I've been roaming around on. I move on and on, but instead of May 30 fading far behind me, it stays the same. I'm walking in a big rotation around it, and no matter where I go, May 30 is equidistant. It is the point around which I revolve. 

Maybe this is okay. I'm still going on and traversing this circle, and I've been throwing myself into a loads of experiences and fields and worlds by following this path, and I've been growing and stretching and evolving. Maybe it's okay to have May 30 hovering in the periphery, rather than expecting it to linger by my back, out of sight, out of mind.

In a way, I'm imagining that God has given me a big piece of parchment and told me to go on and use it as a map. And when I've unscrolled it to have a look at it, I find instead that it's utterly empty besides thick black borders on all four edges and a large message written at the top: "Map this out yourself". It's up to me to draw out the world and chart my own course within these boundaries, and I'm to keep going forth into the darkness to see what I find. 

With Vern's death, I think that casts a different light on what I find in this terra incognita. Clearer or dimmer, I don't know what kind of light it is, but the way I perceive things and experiences is entirely different now. Maybe I've just matured, maybe I've learnt something or nothing at all, but the way I view things is not the same. 

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I had a good cry earlier. It's been a while since I've cried over this, and for a while, I had wondered if I had let Vern slip out of my periphery at last. But no, I've had a quiet day, thinking about him and the time before, and reminiscing about the past. I wish I could reach backwards and snatch him out of that prison cell of memories he's in and let him loose in the present. Let him experience life as he should, as he deserves. 

I had a very good cry, and it was quite unexpected.

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When I say I miss Vern, that I miss him more than anything, I mean many things with that. I mean that I regret many things that I've said and done and the many things I didn't get to say or do; I mean that I wonder what would he be like now; I mean that I want to know above all does he still care about me the way I do for him; I mean that I think it's unfair that he'll remain stagnant and still as I keep living and changing.

There is no direct equivalent for "I miss you" in Japanese. There are a multitude of ways to express the same idea in that language though, and the two most common ones (that I know of) are: 寂しい or 会いたい. They both can mean "I miss you" if you were translate them into English, but their direct meanings vary a little.

寂しい (sabishii) means 'I'm lonely.'

会いたい (aitai) means 'I want to see you.'

Sometimes, as I'm learning and practicing my incredibly shoddy Chinese and Japanese, I get a bit frustrated about how frequently there aren't any direct equivalents for what I want to say, and that I have to learn various other ways of expressing myself. But here, I think the Japanese options trumps the English "I miss you." 

Dear Vern,

I am lonely, and I want to see you. I miss you. 

Love,

yuan yuan