Every November
It was a little rainy the day you died. The air felt weird when I walked in the door after school. It was too quiet.
My umma called me to her from upstairs. I reached the top and saw she was still in her bathrobe.
Her voice was trembling. It got a little hazy and sounded like she was kind of far away.
You were gone, she said. You were gone.
Every November, November 17.
For Koreans, it’s 4s. It’s not supposed to be like this.
Last year, I fell in love with a stranger.
We went our separate ways and he reached out to me this past week on November 17. I remember loving him but couldn’t put my finger on why at first. And then I realized, one night this fall. “You remind me of someone. Something so familiar about you.”
I never dealt with your death.
At your funeral, I didn’t say a word. My mom tried to hug me, and I pulled away. She yelled at me. I did not care.
For years after you died, I kept close to your family. Sometimes I would go to your house to see your Mom. She would sit at the kitchen table sobbing for hours. I could not handle it one afternoon, so I went down to your room and sat alone on your bed. I felt I was waiting for you. To tell you your Mom crying was driving me insane. Come on. Let’s go out and do something. Let’s just get away like we do. And you never came through that door. I didn’t have tears after your funeral for years.
I didn’t cry when I was overseas in my late 20s on tour and would talk with your Mom back deck when I had a couple drinks in me. But one day, she just kept telling me to live my life and be happy and enjoy everything. I blocked her and never talked with her again after that. Later, I realized I had intense survivor’s guilt.
When my Mom told me your younger brother got engaged, I asked, let me see a picture. She showed me his picture with his fiance. He looked so much like you. I got so jealous. Then I felt like a bad person.
In the year you died, boys tried to talk to me. Tried to date me. I was mean to them and pushed them away. They reminded me of you. They were kind, sweet, and safe. They could not understand my pain.
I checked out. I did not skate the entire year. I latched onto this idea that I needed to “Be normal.” I rejected boys and went around and got 40 girls to join the synchronized swim team. My goal was to make it cool and distract myself by clowning the whole year. I joined the gymnastics team and became the youngest girl on Junior Varsity and won the District floor exercise title. I taught the older girls how to Aerial.
I miss you. After two decades, I can say it. I wish you did not die. I miss you a lot. I wish we could have got through school together and gotten married and had a normal life. I feel like since you died, everything has been kind of fucked up. There’s this trend on Instagram of girls who have been with their boyfriends or husbands since high school and they’ll post videos that say, “Just two kids uncertain about their future,” then do a vignette with all the pictures of them growing together over the years, getting married, having kids. I flip it whenever they pop up and I, for the longest, couldn’t figure out why I got so enraged and intensely jealous and angry. I just missed you and I still, to this day, struggle with feeling like I got shorted.
It also still bothers me a lot that they had you open casket. I do remember breaking down and being extremely upset after the funeral, telling my mom repeatedly, how wrong they were for doing you like that. It didn’t even look like you.
I’m crying as I write this out. I feel like. I don’t know. I always tell my clients you know, look at the behavioral patterns of your relationships after loss. Try to understand. So you can accept it and heal more over time.
That year I lost you, I lost my English prof, and I lost my Umma in Korea. I lost my childhood, in essence, or what was left of it. Mom here says she would have whole conversations with me after coming home from Korea and I would not remember a thing later on. Just broke with reality and checked out. I felt numb even when I was laughing.
After I broke things off with the guy who emailed me on the anniversary of your death this past week, I had been dating a different man. I didn’t know how I felt about him even though he said he was in love with me and asked me to get married and have kids. He started calling me his wife and later, started to scold me harshly for not being “a good wife, not following the rules.” I had no idea what he meant by that, but at times, I remember he would ask me things, and I would say, “Whatever you want, honey. I’m too tired to think or make any decisions.” One night, he called me from an unknown number from the airport. We had been on the outs for weeks.
“You are the One,” he said.
“You’re just too hurt you can’t see it. You just in a bad state,” he said.
At first, I thought I was being manipulated.
And then the more I sat with it, I realized, he was right.
I called him back and it did not ring. I left a voicemail as he put me on DND.
“I don’t have any excuse for my behavior. I am in pain. I will be for some time. I would want it to be you, but I can’t. I just can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
He asked me at the start of our relationship why I wore a ring on my hand if I was no longer with my child’s father. I told him, to protect myself. He shook his head, “Take it off. I’ll get you a ring, you my wife.”
I continued to wear it as I felt like he wasn’t totally wrong, but he wasn’t totally right. I was a wife, no doubt. But I just feel. Long ago I was made a widow, too.
***
I remember various relationships dynamics with men over the years like this. I realize now, I have been in need of time as good medicine for years now. I realize now, I have been deeply soul wounded by incredible loss. You leaving was no exception.
I need to heal.
I just carried it on me. When I met him last year in November, something in me came back to life. He reminded me so much of you. Your essence. I felt whole again.
There has been so much loss since you died. And there was so much loss after you died.
In 2025. I know I need to sit this one out. And just take some time to sit with it. All the ways. All the ways I’ve been being in this world without fully coming to terms with missing you.
Babe. What do I do without you? I’m still, after all these years, at a loss.
