different names for the same thing

him: I mean the initial, like, the beginning…

he was in first class, i was flying coach

me: Hey, how was spring break? I saw you on the flight back from LA.

him: Oh really? I didn’t see you…

me: Well, I was sitting in the back. You know, in the case of a crash, the survival rate for those sitting in the tail section is really much higher.

Martha Graham

I take the puppet, which is myself, and I fling him against the sky.

eulogy, part 2

I met someone new today, a graduate student in the Statistics program… and I caught myself before asking him if he knew Minghui Yu. The truth is, as much as I dislike being part of this mourner’s fad, just being on campus is involvement enough. I can’t divorce myself from the permeated environment where thoughts on this tragedy are just a breath away.

Maybe I was too rash in my judgments about those who flocked towards grief. Maybe through death, we can find unity that ties together our separate lives. Maybe, like me, those who did not really know Yu can still understand the grief of a parent losing an only child. Although I have begun to see sincerity among the mass of mourners, I still struggle with the idea of sharing this grief between complete strangers. It seems to cruelly tainted in some way, once your grief has also become his or hers or theirs. With every person they touch, emotions fade a little, as if someone had to take a piece of you in order to empathize for a while. I’ve always thought that allowing that somehow meant that I was slowly losing a piece of my reality.

Perhaps in this case, the right thing to do is to share, and to carry the burden of death and grief in each of us. At least for a little while.