I’m still here.

Michael’s youngest sister Heidi left Hong Kong to go home to America a week ago. She is an organizational pro who shares many of Michael’s best qualities, so she stayed with us a few weeks after the memorial to help with things around the flat as we begin to make big decisions about the near future as a family of three instead of four. That was the plan anyway.

Unfortunately, I got quite sick right after the rest of the family departed and wasn’t up to doing much of anything. Then I began to feel the overwhelm and panic of our present situation and it became obvious that what I most needed was to not make any big decisions but to just be still for a bit. To have deep conversations and be fully present with Michael’s sister and my sons. So while there was precious little to show as far as checking tasks off a list, there was still plenty of the less obvious important stuff happening as we continue to make sense of our new reality.

I’ve written and begun editing a few new Plucky Day posts which will be on their way soon, but I wanted to send something to you right now to say please hang out awhile longer. When we started this publication, the idea was to treat it like writing a book in real time, not knowing what was about to happen next, none of us having a clue how it was going to end. That was a bold, vulnerable, risky move on our part. Unfortunately it did not work out how any of us hoped. My sons and I continue to struggle in both expected and surprising ways.

There’s a piece of advice about writing that says you should write from your scars, not your still-bleeding wounds. The general idea is you need some perspective before communicating what you have learned in an authoritative, meaningful way. Losing Michael has been a lot like losing half of myself… painful, messy, traumatic, horrifying. That kind of catastrophic “wound” can rightfully bleed for an awfully long time. Grief and mourning have their own timeline. They don’t need to be rushed.

My sons and I are still in a fair amount of shock, recovering from not just the loss of Michael’s presence with us here and now, but all we’ve gone through in the last year. It’s fair to say it may be some time before the bleeding slows and scars form, allowing me to write from a more distant viewpoint instead of the intimate, visceral words which keep flowing out of me. It’s also fair to say I’m not very good at taking advice about writing, or art in general.

Before Michael was ever diagnosed, I spent a year on a deep study of grief and loss for a creative project I was working on about home, Hong Kong, and losing my Mama. Though the project doesn’t really work anymore, none of that research is wasted. The material will be repurposed for something else, which has become a much larger story. However, all that previous work has been helpful to remind me how there is a huge spectrum of normal when it comes to loss, and neither my sons nor myself need anyone’s permission (even our own!) to feel however we may be feeling at any given moment.

Experiencing a great loss like the death of a loved one is something all humans eventually have in common. So anything I share, be it from still bleeding wounds to almost invisible scars, will be relevant at some point to most anyone reading. I’ll keep writing and sharing, remaining vulnerable with as much pluck as I can muster, and invite you to sit with me here awhile longer. That way when it’s your turn it won’t be scary. Actually, it might still be scary. Scratch that, it will most likely still be scary. But when it does happen, I’m hoping perhaps you can face it with a little more courage, holding onto the knowledge that none of us are ever truly going through this alone.

More soon.