I Remember You; I Miss You “nho”
“When does a war end? When can I say your name and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?” -Ocean Vuong
Dear Alex,
I read recently that in Vietnamese, the word for remembering someone and missing someone is the same-
nho
nho, Little Man, more than you would believe.
But you would believe it, wouldn’t you? Some people with good intentions have told me that you wouldn’t want me to be so sad, and they’re right, of course, but I’d also say, you’d understand why I am. Especially knowing all that you do now, you’d have to know how precious you are to me; how precious what we had was. You’d also see that I do have joy. That the Lord has been closer to me than I could ever ask or deserve. You’d see that I am happy a lot too. Your dad, Kinsley, Logan, and I still joke and laugh the way we always have. We even tell your parts of the stories. Mikki, Savannah, and Mollee came over for a Christmas dinner and they told your story about the epic game of Sorry that sparked the most heated ethical debate between your dad and me that any of you had ever seen. Ethical debate sounds better than silly, heated argument, yes? Mollee brought it up, then true to your spirit, quickly said, but you two can’t start arguing about this again. She said this because any time anyone brings it back up, we start our “debate” again. You’d say “that’s enough” every time. (I’m sorry in advance for this, bub, but we did re-debate it when Mollee brought it up. And I’m sorry for this as well- but not sorry enough not to say it. I stand by the ethical principle that IF YOU KNOW THE RULE AND AGREE THAT THE RULE IS A GOOD ONE, YOU SHOULD FOLLOW IT WHETHER OR NOT SOMEONE ELSE FOLLOWED IT PREVIOUSLY. I digress. Sufficed to say, I enjoy a good story and a good laugh like I always have. I am still me, Bud, maybe more me now that I don’t care about some of the foolish things I cared about before.
Losing you, I did not lose myself. But I lost us. I never truly realized until I lost you how empty a me is without an us. “But you have so many other us’s” someone says. Yes, I do. Thank God. But an us is unique. A million other us’s don’t make up for one that was lost.
I thought about this when I watched another mother and son at a hotel pool a while back. The little boy was probably 8 or 9 years old-blond hair stuck to his head by the pool water. He swam and played while his mom sat in a lounge chair with her beach hat over her face. She’d had enough sun, but she let him play. He got out and came over to ask her if they could do something else, his shoulders hunched forward with cold, shoulder blades coming to points in the back, the same way yours did at that age. She gave him a towel to wrap up in. He was trying to jump from shadow to shadow that the chairs were making while he was waiting on his mom to get their stuff together. The mom looked at me and I realized that I had been staring. I was seeing her scene, his scene- a moment in their lives, but it was as if I was also seeing my scene, your scene. How much of it is exactly the same?! So much of mothers and sons are the same. I know to her it seems like an ordinary day. Maybe even an exhausting or annoying one. Maybe she wishes she had a little more “me” time. And all I can do is sit here and think of everything that I would give for one more day in the sun by the pool with “us.” It’s universal the love of mothers for their sons. Does the shared experience make it more precious or less? More, I think, in the way the love is undeniably bred to the bone.
I’ll never finish this letter if I don’t stay to the point. Isn’t this the way it always is with me? Can’t write a single word in your Christmas stocking note this year, but on a Monday morning when I desperately need to attend to other matters, it all comes pouring out.
My only point is this, Bud. I miss you and I remember you.
It has been 2 years since you left us. The hurt of the way we lost you has numbed a little but missing you has gotten worse. Why wouldn’t it? You’ve been gone longer than last year. The holidays are particularly painful. I knew that before you died. Everyone says it. It’s a trite expression, which means that it is used so often that its lost its impact. But here’s something- things become trite because they are used so often. They are used so often because they are universally felt. What makes holidays hard may be less universal though. I’ve heard some people say that what makes holidays hard is that everyone is happy while they are sad. That’s not what’s hard for me. Some people say that being around a family shines a bit of a spotlight on the one who is no longer there. I get that a little more, but that’s still not the biggest challenge for me.
The hardest thing is this. Holidays make me remember. They make me think about past holidays- the things we always did, the different ones, the things that happened. And you were always there. It’s why I refused to participate in the first thanksgiving without you. It’s why, if I could do so and still be a good human being, I’d still be refusing. Remembering you hurts me because remembering, for me (and apparently for the Vietnamese), is still the same as missing you. My heart is so torn, Son, because all I care about most days is remembering you, but I cannot live this life missing you every second. So, I have to stop remembering you to even function. I remember my grief therapist saying that you have to get to the point where you can remember without hurting or something like that. Remember without it ruining you, I guess. Is it possible?
Sweet new friends of mine who never even met you have given me some gifts that have your picture on it, and I have balled at each one. I hope they don’t think I don’t want them to do it because it makes me cry. It’s all I want them to do. But I do wonder if I’ll ever be able to receive one, to look at one, and smile instead of ugly cry. Like, when will you be a Glen Campbell “Gentle on My Mind” instead? Trying to get there feels like a war. I’m sure it’s why I struggle(d) with my memory (isn’t it funny how you can tell a lie with a verb tense, with a single letter)? For a time, I even struggle(d) --another “d” lie-- with being able to form words and sentences. I had thoughts but bringing them out of my lips was a bridge too far. I could write though. Sometimes I’d have to text your dad a message about a random appointment he needed to know about because I couldn’t say it out loud. Sometimes I’d have to shrug instead of answering a question he needed me to answer and hope he understood what I meant. Good thing we’ve been best friends our whole lives because he does usually understand what I mean without me having to speak, and even more than that, he is usually willing to forbear, though I am sure it feels very personal to him that I cannot at least give him a word. Your dad… he’s always loved me like no one else. You were just like him in this way. What was I saying? You need to know this about me, Son: I’m either a dreamer or someone with attention deficit disorder- I’m not sure which. What I do know is that I struggle to stay on point, and I don’t work very hard to correct that. I like most of what I say when I’m trying to make a point but wander off. In a way, that wandering feels more valuable to me than the point itself. It feels more honest.
I think I was telling you about my poverty of speech. I wrote about it one day when I was deep in the middle of it. Unironically, I don’t remember writing it. Here’s an excerpt—
“I haven’t written in this book for a month and a half. There are things I want to put down so I won’t lose them, but there’s some strange barrier in my brain that I can’t seem to cross. And now the very things I wanted to remember have become part of that barrier, pressing back against me, making it thicker.
There were funny things Alex did—things I wanted to keep—but now they’re gone into the great unknown. Maybe I wrote them down already. I hope I did. I can’t read what I’ve written before. The barrier is there too.
I wish I could describe it. It’s dream-like, trying to move through it-like when you’re trying to run or speak in a dream and your body won’t obey you. Mike sometimes mumbles in his sleep, words you can’t make out, and when he wakes he says he was dreaming and trying to shout something. I wonder if that’s what’s coming out of me now as I write. All of this. Just noise on this side of the barrier, failing to reach what I actually want to say.
I’ll try to describe the barrier the best I can. It’s thick. Otherworldly. Like a portal I can’t find the entrance to. I can see it, though. It’s black and white, like scribbles at first—but when I look closer, it’s words. Thoughts. The whole universe written over itself again and again. Too much. Impossible to sort. I’m exhausted just looking at it, just trying to explain it.
Every memory I don’t write down goes into the barrier. Every thought. They become part of it, making it harder to pass through to the other side.
What’s on the other side? I think Alex is there. All the memories of him I can’t reach. All my thoughts and dreams and prayers for him—his whole life. All the love we shared for twenty-two years. All the precious everything I lost on October 31, 2023. And all the words about how I lost him. Those may be the heaviest words of all.
If Alex is on the other side, of course I want the barrier gone. But maybe the barrier is this beautiful brain God gave me, protecting itself from what I cannot yet survive.
Sometimes, though, I see a sentence in it. Sometimes I can pull one out, and for a moment I can see him more clearly.
Today, I pulled this out-something Shakespeare once wrote:
‘The breaking of so great a man should cause a greater crack.
Lions should live in the streets.
Men should live in caves.’
The end.”
I wrote that a good while back, so maybe I am making more progress than it feels like I am. I guess you can only really see how far you’ve come when you look back on where you came from. It feels like I have a long way to go, and based on the Bible, I can believe that. Sometimes It feels like there’s no where to go and this is as good as it gets, but based on the Bible, I can’t believe that. There will be a better day. There is a Day I am most looking forward to- THE Day of the Lord. But I am also wondering, hoping, that one day I’ll look at your picture and smile instead of being stabbed in the heart.
Maybe next year I can write you this instead-
“I still might run in silence, tears of joy might stain my face. And the summer sun might burn me 'til I'm blind. But not to where I cannot see you walking on the backroads, by the rivers flowing gentle on my mind.” [Gentle on My Mind by Glen Campbell]
But until then-
nho, Little Man.