humans are funny

Category: death

  • Dead Dad Part 2: acceptance, leftovers, and magic wands


    This week was shocking. So many friends and strangers and bloggers and dads reached out to me to let me know how much they related to my Fathers Day tribute. Or how much they cried. Or how much it made them feel (It’s here if you haven’t seen it).
    And hearing all this is really the most wonderful thing to hear. Knowing that my words have moved someone to tears is astounding. And unreal. And feels so fucking good. That’s really my life’s goal– to make people feel something.

    But I have a confession to make. I feel an obligation to tell you that that post took me 14 years to write. Not literally. I wasn’t sitting at a desk for fourteen years with a pen poised over paper. Then you would have probably never met me, and I would either be really fat or malnourished. But writing that piece required that I accept everything about my dad, which took a while. Accepting everything about someone is like inviting everyone on the entire street to your party. And being okay with the homeless people who show up and raid your vegetable crisper. You have to truly accept things that you may not like. Or things that scare you. And the hardest part is that you have to admit to yourself that your way is not the only way. TOUGH stuff. For me, it’s easier with dead people. I have yet to accept any boyfriend without requesting minor changes in personality and character. Yes, honey, I swear I love you but really you should be more motivated and also like the things I like.

    Parents are even harder to accept. You have an idea of who you want them to be, and when they don’t turn out like that, you have to just swallow it. I didn’t imagine my dad would be gay. But I accepted it. And just when things were cool, he up and committed suicide. Great. Hadn’t imagined that either.
    I gotta hand it to him– the man was an ace at surprises.

    When someone commits suicide, your entire perception of him is stained. Every good memory is accompanied by flashes of death or guilt or panic. For a long time, I would see a size 15 New Balance sneaker, and I would remember my father. And I would smile. And then immediately my brain’s channel would flip to him dead on his bed waiting for someone to find him. And then I’d undoubtedly remember his neighbor saying that he only knew my father was upstairs decomposing after he’d cleaned out his refrigerator and realized that the horrible odor was indeed not Korean leftovers. Yep, my decomposing father smelled like old kimchi.
    It’s gross. And perhaps horrifying. So I was positive those good memories were stained forever.
    I thought his goodness was gone. I thought I could never get the good back without a slap in the face with the bad.

    And then 14 years went by.
    And it’s finally happened. I’m at the point where I can imagine his brown slippers and see only 3-year-old me pretending they were boats. And then smile. And then move on.
    Only now can I listen to tapes of him playing the piano and simply remember his long fingers and how they swept across the keys like magic wands.

    14 years is so long. So so long. It could have been sooner. All I had to do was make the choice.
    But it’s hard to make that choice when you don’t understand there’s a choice to be made.
    My dad had a choice. He had life right there asking him to decide. He could have said ‘This is hard, but I’m learning how to get through it.’ Instead he said, ‘This sucks. I’m outtee.’

    Life’s all about those decisions. I have been choosing for years to say, ‘I grew up with a dead dad. That sucks. Whatever. I’m not going to think about it.’ And now I’m finally choosing to say, ‘This gives me a different perspective, and I’m going to learn what I can.’

    Once I made that decision, things became clearer. I figured out that my pops was just a man. Like any other man. He had problems and fears and traumas and delights. And he spent his life winging it. Just like all of us do. We’re guessing right now. And that’s all we can do. In 1996, he felt hopeless and helpless. And he guessed wrong. He made the only kind of mistake from which he couldn’t learn. Before, I used to wonder what he was thinking in those minutes before death, completely conscious about his decision and his imminent demise. Did he think about me? Did it take long? Was he gasping for air? Was he thrashing around? Did he change his mind? Did he regret it? Did he regret anything? Did he wonder if he’d left the iron on? Did he know he’d end up smelling like Korean leftovers?

    I’ll never know. But I have finally decided that I don’t need to know. I know that he was great when he was great. And I don’t need to spend any more time asking questions I can’t answer. Questions nobody can answer.
    I have chosen to finally move on. To finally forgive this man and see him as just that: A man. A man who made a mistake. A man who would undoubtedly take back that mistake. A man who would be here with me right now if he could.

    That’s why that tribute was so important to me. And that it means so much that other people got something from my years of work. 14 years in the making. 14 years to this moment where I can finally see our picture together and remember only the man whose feet I climbed onto. The guy who would dance me around the living room. That was my dad. That guy. That’s the guy I miss. That’s the guy who made everyone feel. Thanks again, Pops. You’re still teaching me lessons every day.

    Now… on to the difficult task of accepting the people who are alive.

    Me: Dad, I can’t believe you let Mom cut my hair this short. It’s hideous.
    Dad: You look fine. I’m the one with this horrible beard. It really itches.
    Me: Your beard is great. And those glasses. Just wait til 2010, and you’ll fit in with the hipsters in LA.
    Dad: Nah, I think I’ll head out in 1996 instead.
    Me: All righty then. It’s been fun. I shall remember this time we had together. Peace out.

  • Varanasi is a Six Flags for dead people.

    It is THE place to die in India since, according to Hindus, dying in or near the Ganges pretty much obliterates all those pesky rounds of reincarnation.
    If you die in Varanasi, you ride a roller coaster to enlightenment.

    Somewhere on the outskirts of the city, a man with a booming voice says, “Keep your arms and legs inside the vehicle.” The dead person’s family takes that pretty literally. They tuck him into a stretcher made of bamboo. Then they wrap the corpse in several decorative garments and, depending on how much money they have, add several layers of ornamentation.

    The same loud man says, “Enjoy your ride and the rest of the day at Six Flags.”

    The corpse is then on its bumpy journey, carried above the heads of his dear family members. He careens down the crowded labyrinth of streets, Godly chants in his ears. He accelerates as the family pulses downhill. He streams past restaurants and tourists and sitars and astrologers and yogis and goats and sadhus and men selling tins and samosas and tea and spices. He stops short to avoid a cow and rises above the stampede of religious pilgrims pushing pushing pushing. His cart bumps bops bumps to the rhythm of his marching stretcher bearers and takes on one last downhill slope until gliding to a stop.

    This ride offers the choose-as-you-go ending, so not all corpses land at the same destination. The unwritten Varanasi law does the choosing for the corpse depending on wealth, status, cause of death, and whether or not he was pregnant when he passed.

    This particular corpse was a regular stand-up guy who owned a copy-making/faxing business in Bihar, the next state over. He had a wife and two daughters, but they aren’t with him on the ride. Women aren’t allowed to accompany their loved ones because, according to the boat driver on the Ganges, “they might cry.” Fortunately, he had a son and some cousins, so they are with him to make sure he gets the royal treatment.

    He is. He had 8000 rupees ($160 US), and so he is fortunate to be burned with real fire wood. His stretcher lowers to a pile of wood, and the sweaty employees pile more on top of him. One of them puts on a tenth layer, but another takes it off after realizing the 8000 rupees only covers 9 layers of wood. If they want a tenth, they’ll have to pay.

    The man with the booming voice shouts, “Hope you enjoyed your stay. Please come again.”
    The cousins cringe because they hope their cousin never has to come again. That’s the reason they drove him all the way up to the Ganges and missed their cricket match.

    After a while, the man from Bihar is burnt; the cousins chant a mantra and slip his ashes into the lukewarm river.

    The man with the booming voice leaves. He has an appointment just down the road. The ride has abruptly ended for an orphan who fell off her bike and was trampled by a horse-drawn carriage. She has some girlfriends, but again they aren’t allowed to accompany her on her ride. Tears might put out the fire. The orphanage director had no time to come either, but he instructed the employees to do her right, and slipped them 500 rupees ($10 US). This is an electrical facility so they put her body on a sort of stove for humans. Since no one is there to watch, one employee shuts off the hot stove, pockets the money, and slips her body into the river. Whole.

    The man with the booming voice shouts, “Hope you enjoyed your stay. Please come again.”
    Her body will later wash up on the other bank of the Ganges, a dog will eat at her neck, and some tourists on a boat will take a picture. It will be their seventh dead body sighting that day.
    Kids, pregnant women, and men who died from cobra bites will also be thrown into the Ganges whole. Their rides end as they are swathed in white and thrown in with a plop. Even if they are chewed up by dogs or fish, it’s just the continuation of life. And at least it’s all happening in the Ganges, the holiest river on Earth.

    The Varanasi Six Flags is home to several employees who live right in the park and work to ensure the corpses’ families and the constant religious pilgrims who come each year to bathe away their sins have a place to stay, eat, pray, and buy scarves that say things about God. These employees along with the pilgrims bathe in the river daily. Many also wash their clothes, do their duty, brush their teeth, bathe their water buffalo, swim, cut their hair, and pray right in the river– among the bobbing bodies and trash that is hosed into the Ganges from the streets every afternoon! It’s a holy river. It can handle anything.

    Varanasi is a Six Flags that never closes. One million pilgrims pass through each year, and the burning of bodies goes round-the-clock. It’s even hard to get an appointment and some corpses wait in a long line. Longer than the line at the Superman Ride.

    Some say the Ganges is disgusting. Some say it’s miraculous. I personally thought it was pretty comfortable. The temperature was bath-like, and it was nice to bathe with a bunch of other people. If I hadn’t had already seen a man pooping next to a girl brushing her teeth and a few floating bodies, I would have stayed in longer. I lasted about two minutes.

    This Indian guy turned white! There’s something strange in that water.

    These guys are on hand to sew the crotch of any pants in Varanasi. Many pilgrims get excited in the Ganges and do the splits.

    Air conditioning for water buffalo.

    “Aw damn. I dropped my toothbrush, and I picked up a finger instead.”


    -Grammy, that tourist is taking a picture of our bath time. -Yeah, white people are weird.

    Three of these photos were shot by my friend, Pete.
    If you want to see more about the cremation tradition, this site has great photos and explanations.

  • Cambodia: a country of idiots.

    I never assumed they were stupid. And it’s not even a stereotype. It’s actually a fact that the Khmer Rouge spent the later part of the seventies throwing all Cambodians into camps and brutally killing off anyone with a seed of intelligence. Led by Pol Pot, meaning ‘Brother Number One,’ their goal was to make ‘1984’ a reality. This required murdering anyone smart enough to revolt or think for himself. And they succeeded in doing so for four years!

    In April, 1975, The Khmer Rouge started by tearing everyone from their homes in cities and thrusting them into rural villages. They cut everyone’s hair into the same style and forced the entire country into the same outfit. The educated people from cities were presumed second class citizens and given much less food and harder work than the villagers who were thought to be pure. If anyone was suspected of having a grain of independent thought, they were led into the forest and bludgeoned to death. Bullets were expensive and rarely wasted. You could also forget about living if you wore glasses, had previously been a teacher or part of the government, or had eyes that even remotely resembled those of the Chinese or Vietnamese. At first, Pol Pot was in favor of the Vietnamese, both governments working towards Communism. But then one day he changed his mind and decided to kill anyone who might even have a great great granny from Saigon.

    It is estimated that way over 2 million people died between 1975-1979, if not by murder by starvation. Food rations were scarce and the entire country was starving. But if you asked for another cup of rice because your son was on the brink of death, you were considered anti-communist for requesting more for yourself than anyone else was getting. Immediate death or torture. Lots of torture.

    In Phnom Penh, I nearly vomited at the images of all the horrific crimes of humanity. It took me a while to get to S-21, the actual prison where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed over 17,000 people. I procrastinated all morning, having breakfast and then having brunch. But I made myself go, figuring that, as an American who barely learned world history in high school, it’s my duty to learn as much as I can now.

    I walked through the eerie halls of the building that was a high school before it turned into a gruesome place (although some might argue it was a gruesome place as a high school). Building ‘A’ is room after room of lone iron beds, rusty with shackles replacing mattresses. On the wall is a tattered poster showing the death found in the room when the prison was freed. Most posters elicited gasps, all demonstrating the streams of blood that once stained the floor where I was now standing. One man’s lower torso had been twisted so that his butt resided in front. He was naked and barely more than a skeleton.

    Sometimes humans aren’t funny at all. I cannot understand how we can murder animals, let alone other humans. But they did it, killing 4-10 people a night in that prison.

    Unfortunately, an air of melancholy still bobs above the country. Every single citizen over 35 fought through those horrifying years. They each lost at least a parent, siblings, or children, often in front of their own eyes. All of them. One man, Pin Yathay, lost 17 members of his family including his 3 sons, both parents, and his wife. Awesome.

    It is not the most uplifting country to be in. Especially with the countless disfigured beggars who lost arms, legs, and eyes to the many landmines left by the Khmer Rouge in an attempt to punish those who chose food and life over big brother. (I think the US is also partly responsible for some of the mines, but let‘s talk about that later.)

    Thankfully, many of the smart people had enough brains to escape to Thailand, lie about their previous professions, or spend the years pretending to see without glasses (I cannot believe people with glasses were thought to be smart. I thought people with glasses had a curve in their eyeball. It seems like Pol Pot himself was pretty stupid.) I thought the country was rebuilding itself well. The Khmers have definitely grasped the idea of tourism and are fully comfortable with sucking the tourists dry.

    After some weeks in Cambodia, I had given all my savings to amputees, and I’d only seen two signs of stupidity:

    1. One waiter needed a calculator to add my bill of $2.75 and $1.

    2. The two big competing beers are Angkor and Anchor. It seems if you were to come out with a new brand to really give the monopoly a run for its money, you might want to make the name sound a little different. Or perhaps making the competition sound exactly the same is brilliant. I don’t know.

    This is the “bed.”

    This is the torture that took place in the “bed.”
    I walked past wall after wall of victim photos. So many were children.
    This is a skull of someone bludgeoned to death.
    This is the culprit.
    This guy smiled before dying. Why not?

    For a great read that you can finish in a few days, try ‘First They Killed my Father’ by Loung Ung. SPOILER ALERT: It’s depressing.

    The good news is that one of the main dudes in charge of the Khmer Rouge, Duch, is set to head to trial within the next 2 years. Pol Pot died without punishment in ’98.

    More good news: My blue period is over. My mom won’t let me write anything else that is anti-Communist (and thus depressing) for fear of my capture. This is the last one.

  • Nothing is certain but death and soy sauce.

    Since the Japanese are famous for their fish (and not just the ones who eat your feet), I forced myself up at 5am to see the famous Tsukiji fish market, the biggest wholesale fish market in the world where all the restaurants in town go to stock up on the day’s menu items. I saw all the fish I had just seen in the Great Barrier Reef. And it was sad. Because this time they were dead.