— पांच हजार आठ सौ अड़तीस —
July 1 is now a strange day for me. It makes me think of death, particularly death of family, and it may continue to for the foreseeable future.
I don't often spend that much time thinking about "death anniversaries," but I do a lot more now because Shobhit thinks about them all the time. He comments on the anniversary of his father's passing, which happened in 1990 when he was 16, nearly every year. And until the one-year anniversaries of both Shanti's (May 19) and Guru's (July 1) deaths, he was mentioning how many months it's been nearly every single month.
Today is not just the one-year anniversary of Guru's death, though—which Shobhit mentioned in the bathroom this morning. It's also the five-year anniversary of Mom passing. Kind of a notabele chunk of time, five years.
I shared my original Facebook post from 2020 on the day she died. This is the second time I have done so on the anniversary of her death; I also did it two years ago, in 2023. I feel compelled, though, to reprint here
what I posted there today:
Five-year anniversary now, of Mom's passing.
They same time heals all wounds, but losing a parent is something on a different level. These days it doesn't feel so much like a wound as it does a hole that has never been refilled, and never will be. My characterization at the time of it altering my reality remains accurate: there's life when Mom was alive, and then life after she was gone.
Today is also the one-year anniversary of Guru passing, and that's a fresher emotion to revisit: when I saw that one in my Facebook Memories this morning, I shed a couple of tears. We still haven't gotten any new pets and I have no idea when we will, making this the longest by far that I have ever gone without any. Some of my ambivalence about it is tied to how much easier it is to travel right now, but I will definitely get another cat one of these days.
These are still wildly different losses. I kind of a had a new experience with the memory of Mom's passing this year, because I look at my Facebook Memories feel nearly every day, and from five years ago, there were a bunch of updates about Mom's strokes and her status at the hospital, for a couple of weeks, until she finally passed on July 1. This year, each day those memories came up, I scrolled past them all. I did not want to relive any of that experience.
It's better just to remember the better times, and the parts of me I am most proud of that were actually shaped by her (whether she liked it or not!).
Thinking about this, I supposed a bit morbidly, also makes me think somewhat regularly about the parents I still have left: Dad and Sherri. Sherri once asked me if it was still hard not having Mom around, and I said, "Not really, I had a spare." That sounded like a quip, and in a way it was, but it was also true. Sherri has long been "Bonus Mom"—it's even how I have her listed in my phone. Having another mom actually did help soften the blow of losing the first one. I mean, there was nothing "soft" about it, but there was still the added comfort of a materal presence still being around.
I do sometimes think of when Dad passes, though, wich some kind of deep-seated dread. I think losing Dad will be far harder than losing Mom ever could have been, and losing Mom was bad enough. Hopefully Dad's still got another decade or two in him. He turns 70 next month. I'm not sure I could ever feel like I can fully convey what he means to me. My entire adult life I could not have asked for a better dad. The things I am most proud of about myself really come from Mom, but I also had a wildly complicated relationship with her, creating a sense of imbalance and a great deal of ambivalence. There's none of that shit with Dad, though. My relationship with him is completely uncomplicated, and that's the best. It's something I long to hold onto for as long as possible.
— पांच हजार आठ सौ अड़तीस —
— पांच हजार आठ सौ अड़तीस —
In other news, I left work at 3:45 yesterday so I could meet up with Laney at the AMC Pacific Place, and we saw
M3GAN 2.0.
The reviews were so much worse for this movie than the original—score on MetaCritic of only 55—that we both went in with our expectations in the toilet, hoping for pleasant surprise. That's kind of what happened. I only gave it a B-minus (the first one wasn't a lot better anyway: solid B), but I still had a pretty good time with it. It basically delivered on its promise, just like the first one. Well, except for the shocking amount of stuff in the trailer that was not in the final film, something I note at the beginning of my review.
Laney had walked, very slowly, from home, her ankle feeling much better but understandably not wanting to put a lot of strain on it. I had ridden my bike, and she opted to take the bus back home. So, I rode back home, and then spend about an hour on the review.
After that Shobhit and I watched some TV: both the HBO shows from Sunday that I had been too busy that day to watch,
The Gilded Age and
Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. By the time all that was done, it was time to get ready for bed.
I have no other plans this week until Thursday. Kind of amazing, two nights in a row totally open! I had a blast in June but the number of events, between Shobhit's and my anniversary and Pride, can get to be a bit much. Mellowing out a bit in July is a relief. Although we do have Independence Day this coming Friday, and another short trip later this month: I'll be staying a night in the North Cascades National Park in the same town as Dad and Sherri on Monday the 21st, the same week Shobhit will be gone three nights in Portland / Vancouver, WA for a Washingtob State Labor Council conference.
— पांच हजार आठ सौ अड़तीस —
[posted 12:30pm]
