A Month After....

It has been the weirdest month, to be in a house which does not feel like a house. A big chunk of it is missing, and simply everything in the house just remind you of her. It is the weirdest feeling, to go home at night, knowing there is no more her to talk to, to wake up in the morning, seeing the kitchen without her cooking. It is the weirdest feeling, to realize in the middle of the day, that this is real, no more her figure no matter where I look for it.

It is the weirdest feeling, to be in a house that was so full of her presence, but now without her presence. It is hard to look at the cookies that she bought with me at Walmart, without being reminded of her. It is heart-breaking to see all the photo albums that she carefully gathered and collected, leaving her no chance to enjoy them. To look at the chocolate that she hadn't had the chance to eat, to look at the Korean drama that we didn't get the chance to finish. To look at her trinkets, her make-up station, her bible with her handwriting on it, her glasses, just bring up sweet memories of her, together with a painful fact.

It is the weirdest feeling, and words fail to describe what is this feeling. I think human learn and survive partly by association. We associate America with freedom or prosperity, women with being motherly like, and men with athletic prowess. That is why some truths are easier to learn because we always connect an idea with an existing idea, our mind is entangle with so many associations; a strong yet malleable link. Strong, that is why we found it hard to believe when the US economy plunged, simply because the event counter-attacked, violated and raped our existing idea. Malleable, we gradually learn to accept a newly introduced idea: business women or even stay-at-home dad. To have that link broken abruptly means to have all the associations disfigured, deconstructed, and deemed no longer valid. And the hardest of all, to have the link replaced and rewritten.

The house is deeply associated with her, from the biggest room to the smallest piece of art displayed in our living room. Her hands had touched, influenced, and curated not only the house but also all of us. She is always strongly associated with alive, with being alive, with her high spirit and genuine love. Alive!! And now how am I supposed to relive my life disfiguring the word "alive", rewriting it and learning the word "dead". How could I connect and associate her with that word?? How could I?? The association is so strong that I'm not only shouting for time to make it happen, but for a miracle to happen.

It wasn't until this time that I can fully comprehend this quote by C.S. Lewis and share in the agony,

"There is death .... I look up at the night sky. Is anything more certain than that in all those vast times and spaces, if I were allowed to search them, I should nowhere find her face, her voice, her touch? She died. She is dead. Is the word so difficult to learn?"

Is it even possible to learn? Or it is just a wishful thinking?

Our last memory. In the hospital, edited background, two weeks before she passed away,
still with oxygen tank and wheel chair...