Something that stayed with me, unfortunately, was an incident at her funeral. One “family” member, with the backing of many others, accused me of not mourning enough for Grandma. It was a public accusation. I was nineteen. And from it, utter humiliation and ridicule haunted me for years, though the guiltless accuser likely forgot the incident in a minute’s time.

Yesterday, I visited my grandma’s gravesite at Gate of Heaven in Los Gatos. I kneeled in the grass and thought she had the nicest picture on the block. I now have an answer to that accuser (and fellows). I mourned in private because I was afraid. If anyone—even those who knew Grandma—got a glimpse of my pain, they would see into my relationship with Kimiko. They would see our jargon, our stories, and the way we were. I wasn’t ready to share that. At nineteen, bereft and in pieces, I wanted to keep her mine and only mine for a little longer. Even then, you took from me whatever composure I could barely muster.

Dear ______,

There needs to be a way to shut it off—the madness, the psycho, (all the words for thinking). Sometimes, a lover, a friend can do the job. And when I’m around this person, I remember how to stop thinking. I react naturally to the things around me, like a child. Yes, I even snicker and whine at the smallest things. But what if these juvenile moments are a way to claim my cradle? Don’t dismiss it just yet. In your absence, I have tried to piece together a child in me, one that has been hesitant to surface. I wouldn’t dare say that you’ve robbed me of a sort of innocence. Just that it may have been postponed. I’d have it postponed even further if you asked me to.

But the childhood having been put off, I see frivolous pieces surface now. Almost all at once, I buy baskets only useful for picnics and then go up the stairs two by two. In my weeping, “I want to, I want to because I wanted to, I wanted to for so long.” I wonder if I have made you proud somewhat, that I might have earned a favor. Could you lift this burden from me—and say that I am not “disgracing you,” that I can rest from the madness time to time. It takes a human hand to flip a switch and I might have found such a person who knows how to (tell the latent adult to fuck off). Though you’ve always had the voice of reason…that my relationships “cannot possibly last,” I say now, without thought, maybe it doesn’t matter (as much as you think) whether we persist or not.

No matter how much we age, he’d lived more than me in the most similar circumstances (environmentally, biologically). To me, his word was final not because he was exceptionally loud, but because his word conveyed the world I’d face. He walked, broke his bones before I did. So there was always something to learn and be afraid of. Though he was particularly cruel with his bullying antics in my childhood, I think I was scared for other reasons. I believed he had a right to despise me. My parents reminded, “he’s had it worse” and even he must feel—he was a child faulted for being one and had thus grown to be an adult prematurely.

The whole way, I’d felt sorry for myself watching him (things I’d have to endure but never came). Like a worn broom he cleared my footpath. By the time it was my turn, I had little to bear. Evidently, I had had a childhood at all. When my parents blanked, lost me in a wonder park, it was my brother to find me huddled by the cobblestone street. I realized it’s not him that scares me. It’s what I imagine: a boy having to find his own way back to his lost parents. And most selfishly, what I would’ve done without that boy having suffered so.

Last Saturday, I looked for Fettuccine Alfredo, not the good kind. I wanted the bland, over-sauced one from Chili’s. It had to be just that–not Olive Garden, not Maggiano’s because I’d thought about it so carefully between Ramen packets and Poptarts. I imagined sitting-in like a customer on the red stool and  polished bar. It meant I got to eat something because I’d earned it. Just a taste of a little more than what I have now meant I could see above this can-opener. Maybe if I keep that in sight, I’ll reach the weekdays I could have everything.

It’s never been easy to watch the friends I’ve built memories with have to leave. Despite the direction they may go and the ways in which I may change, I owe much to their warm presence and lingering voices. For helping to shape the woman I will become. Even by the loud hum inside the plane, I could hear the things we used to raise our glasses to. Could we have known we raised them for the simple sake that we met and that we got to share our lives with one another. Maybe I’ll have to write two research papers wasted again or I’ll find others that turn Ariel’s song into a vulgar rant of sexual frustration. But there is only one of each person in the world and I’m speechless that I found the one of each of them. With all this useless searching, it makes me feel awfully sentimental to say that I’ve found not what I was looking for, but what I needed right next to me.

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