Take Courage

I have a friend who is terrified of snakes.

They viscerally freak him out. In the decade I’ve known him, his fear of snakes has been part of at least a quarter of our conversations. A lot of it is him sending me articles about the snakes in Hong Kong and why he doesn’t want to visit here any time soon. I didn’t have any such terror of our slithery friends, perhaps due to my limited experience with them.

When we moved back to Hong Kong from Shanghai nine years ago, our goal was to live close to wherever the boys went to school. After attending boarding school in China, we wanted to maximize the last few years we’d have together before they flew the coop to university and work. A real estate agent in the little beach community we currently call home showed us a dozen potential places, telling us over and over again about the many snakes here. You can barely walk down the street without stepping over one, she told us. I withheld this information from my snake-fearing friend but not-so-secretly looked forward to all the snakes we were certain to see on a daily basis.

In the entire time we’ve lived in our little beach community, I have seen exactly four snakes here. The first one took a year to see, and it was indeed in the road, run over by a bus. The second was in our neighborhood pet supply store, a pet snake someone had left behind when they left Hong Kong. The third was a huge python nestled in the leaves under a bridge, and it took the security guard literally grabbing my head and pointing it at the snake for me to see it in its natural camouflage. And then seven years passed.

I finally saw my fourth snake in Hong Kong during 2025’s Year of the Snake. I was lamenting how often people were posting snake sightings in the community Facebook group, and how I was never lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. I was taking Michael for a slow stroll around the block to get him some gentle exercise when we saw a group of people bending over a storm drain, taking photos. I left Michael leaning against a wall and ran over to take a peek… sure enough there was Hong Kong’s only venomous and poisonous snake, a red-necked keelback, hanging out right under the grate where I walk our dog Lucy Rocket every single day. It took no special courage for me to get as close as I did, all I felt was awe and wonder over seeing such a glorious creature literal steps from my front door.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what courage looks like in different people and situations, and how what takes a lot of strength for one person barely registers for another.

Public speaking is the most common fear, but I’m well known for saying I will never turn down a microphone if you hand one to me. But heights? I live on the 10th floor and have a balcony. My knees shake and a hollow feeling begins to spread in my chest every time I step out there to water my plants. But for Michael heights were no big deal. When I first met him he worked as a rigger on the sailing ship Columbia at Disneyland, tying stunt lines high above the deck for the nightly Fantasmic! show on the Rivers of America without it even raising his blood pressure.

We named this newsletter Plucky Day because we needed a lot of courage to get through each moment following Michael's diagnosis (and because it was a play on our "Lucky Day" story from our time in China). In the 24 hours before Michael died, when we knew he would not be coming back to us, I understood courage to be like sprinting. You can run fast and hard with all your strength for a brief period, but we're not designed to do that at all times without something breaking down. There are limits, even when you spend a full year "training" in courageous living, fighting a life and death battle with terrible odds.

That last day I knew the fight was over and I had to rapidly shift from being an active participant in keeping Michael alive to an observational sponge of whatever happened next. My Beloved's time here on earth was slipping away and I didn't want to miss any of it. I was scared, truly terrified, every moment he was in the ICU, crying so hard each night I broke capillaries surrounding my eyes. But for that final day I was somehow able to set the fear aside and face what was coming without looking away or hiding under the covers. I was fully present and paying attention, not kicking and fighting against the reality of the situation but instead experiencing it all as if it was a movie that had long ago been written and filmed and edited. Nothing I could do would change any outcome before the credits rolled, so I simply relaxed my body, gathered my sons, and held my Beloved's hand while the hands of the clock in the ICU continued their incessant march forward.

Honestly, I look back in absolute awe at that Heather, the most courageous person I've ever met in my entire life. And then I wonder where she went.

Today is October 7. Ten months have passed since we lost Michael, one for every finger on these hands that held him so tightly. I have cried every single day, never at the same time or over the same thing. And things that I used to do all the time without a thought have suddenly required some serious courage.

Meeting up with friends? It depends. I cry a lot and my brain is fuzzy much of the time, so if you're the type of friend who can tolerate that and either cry with me or simply say, I know, you're right, it's awful and nothing will change that, then I've probably already hung out with you. If you're a new friend, maybe not. There's a weird new reality where every new person I meet from this point on will only know me as Heather the person whose husband is dead, Heather the person who was married to Michael Chase, the love of her life, and is now alone. They will never know Heather the person who is married to Michael Chase, Heather the person who walks through this world with a partner who always has her back and loves her a ridiculous amount and knows her so well. And I must say that slipping into this new identity has been rough. I don't even want to get to know this new me, why would anyone else? The three times this year I bravely met with new friends, I ended up spending the whole next day in bed, overwhelmed and miserable and sad.

Another surprising thing which requires a lot of courage is all of life's admin. The paperwork, the banking, the tasks where you have to explain there's been a change in status. The mildest things feel impossible. Our church sends an annual email to confirm your contact details and I filled out the form with our new address and hit enter, and then realised I'd forgotten to change my marital status from married to widowed. You'd think it would have taken me ten seconds to reopen the link, quick change it, and then hit enter again, but you would be wrong. I stood up, paced around the flat, started crying, put on my shoes and walked five minutes to a nearby pond where turtles and seabirds congregate, had a seat by the water and cried some more before opening that link again to click the widowed box and resubmit the form.

Other, more consequential things, like probate court and dealing with the bank and the embassy have required so much more courage. I've had to ask for help so I don't have to do any of it by myself. This is a strange turn of events, as I am long accustomed to not just doing many things alone, but enjoying it! Dining out alone, traveling alone, including taking international trips, randomly exiting the tram at a stop I've never been to just to see a new neighbourhood by myself. Now these things produce an anxiety so unfamiliar to me and I can't just push through it.

A few months ago my little family was not doing well. We were trying to adjust to living in our new, smaller home, financial fears were giving us jump scares, and looking toward the future beyond any given day created a mix of panic and paralysis. We were stuck in a loop of doom and fear that none of us could break out of. It was then that I remembered when my kids were little, our solution to a lot of things was to put them in water. The ocean, a pool, even a bathtub would make things right. Everything else I was trying was wrong, all wrong, so in desperation I checked my airline miles, looked up cheap destinations within a four hour flight time where I could rent a private pool villa, and packed three suitcases for the boys and I, shoving them full of bathing suits, boardgames, and art supplies. And then I cried and cried knowing this was the first trip we would be taking without Michael. Not the first trip without him boarding a flight with us knowing he'd join us later, but the first time where I would not be texting him to say I was turning off my phone because they were about to close the doors of the plane. The first trip where I wouldn't be calling him every night so we could still pray together despite being in different time zones. The first trip where I wouldn't be collecting interesting stories to breathlessly tell him the minute I step off the airport bus into his waiting arms.

I was scared to tell anyone what we were doing because of how it might look.

Her husband died and so she took the kids to Bali? Or She must be doing just fine if she can afford that. Or Wow I wish I was "grieving" too, must be nice. I'd just found out I'd been the topic of recent family gossip and my brain decided to pile on with the harshness, leaving me to doubt and second guess myself instead of allowing any tiny bit of hope that time away with my boys might be a step toward healing. I tearfully confessed these feelings to a trusted friend who has walked right in step with us from the day Michael was diagnosed. I expected her to agree with the thoughts in my head, but she did not. She grabbed my hand, looked me in the eyes and said the most affirming thing I've ever heard: No one else will ever know how much courage it is going to take for you to take your boys and get on that plane.

That little sentence has carried me through a lot of situations I never previously needed any courage for. Changing our mobile phone contract out of Michael's name and into my own. Saying no to a fun event with a really good friend when I'm just not ready. And yes, the trip I took with my sons. Which we could afford because we had airline miles to get us there, condolence money given to us at Michael's memorial, and because we live in South Asia where a quick flight will get you a week in a private pool villa (including someone coming in and making us breakfast every morning) for less that the cost of a single weeknight stay at a mid-range hotel in my hometown in Southern California. It sounds like a dreamy bargain holiday, but it was actually a circuit breaker, where the boys and I stopped existing politely in this new reality without Michael and instead hashed out our fears and hopes and even our anger over how everything turned out. It was awful. It was painful. It was beautiful. And there was a really big snake.

I mentioned that my little family wasn't doing well and I need you to just take my word that things have been really bad because some things don't need to be shared on the internet.

We seem to have gone from one traumatic event to another, existing in what feels like a never-ending emergency while at the same time doing it all without my number one teammate and biggest supporter. It sucks. The idea for simply getting my sons to water came out of a terrifying situation beyond my experience. My oldest son has a current obsession with gibbons, which are native to this part of the world. So beyond just a "pool villa" I also looked for a place where we could go interact with apes. I also wanted it to be a place we'd never been before, so we didn't spend the whole time saying, "Remember when we did this with Dad?" Bali ended up winning because they have the Bali Zoo, where I booked coffee with capybaras and an after hours backstage tour which included interacting with a bunch of animals including gibbons.

The capybaras made me smile so hard my face hurt and we took a photo with them that will most definitely feature on our Christmas card this year. The gibbons were noisy and hilarious and such a treat. We hung out with lemurs, walked through a herd of docile deer, and snickered while huge ancient tortoises noisily and vigorously copulated in front of a crowd of children. After the zoo closed and our private backstage tour began, we were treated to a light meal while zookeepers brought out a wide variety of animals we could interact with. We weren't allowed to touch the gibbon they brought over, but the gibbon had less boundaries and reached right out and rested on my older son's shoulder like he knew that was what we were there to experience. We fed an elephant, talked to an orangutan, and when I, the girl who was promised lots of snakes when we moved to our little beach village, saw an albino Burmese python just chilling in the warm sunshine, I ran straight to him.

Living in Asia means the Lunar New Year is always bigger than any New Year's Eve celebration I've ever seen in America.

And somehow it is easier for me to remember events by which Chinese zodiac animal year it was than the numerical year. For instance, I know we left America and moved to Macau in Year of the Rabbit, but I have to look in my calendar to see that it was 2011. And I have two adult nieces who were born in Year of the Horse, and though I can't tell you what year they were born without doing math, I know how old they are because this year is once again Year of the Horse. I don't think I'll ever forget that Michael died in 2025, but so far each of the many (many) times this year I've had to fill out the date of his death, I always think to myself it was Year of the Snake when he left us.

Never having been so close to a snake before, I made sure to ask the zookeeper if I could touch the albino Burmese python. I was thrilled to find that though it was a hot day near the equator in Indonesia, he was cool to the touch. I was mesmerised, completely free of fear at the intimate proximity to this gorgeous reptile. There was a zoo photographer snapping away at the boys and I, but I made sure Benjamin got the photo above on my phone so I could look at it any time I started to feel blue about being promised a near-daily snake sighting in our little beach community and then only seeing four in just over nine years.

I texted my snake-phobic friend the photo and he immediately replied Whaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?! You are too brave. But I didn't feel brave, I just felt delighted to find that I'd had a close encounter with a snake and found I wasn't afraid. What is the relationship between fear and courage? It seems like they are two sides of the same coin, but if you aren't afraid of something to begin with, does it mean you are brave when you do it? I'm not sure.

Before Michael was diagnosed with this aggressive form of blood cancer, I wasn't afraid I would lose my husband. Considering all the steps we'd taken to stay fit and healthy in mind and body, it never occurred to me that we wouldn't make it to our 50th anniversary, that we would never even get past 29. Before we understood the incredible risks involved with bone marrow transplants, we weren't exactly afraid. I would describe it more like a sense of dread toward a difficult task. But the day of our first meeting with the transplant team when the doctor told us that without a transplant Michael would not survive, but with a transplant there was a just a small piece of pie on the pie chart in which he wouldn't die... well, terrified isn't a strong enough word for what we felt that day. I realise there are a lot of things to be scared of and it's hard to discern what is a real threat and what is just the knowledge that we live in a world with scary stuff.

So where am I now? My nervous system is not in good shape, but I'm not living in constant terror. After all, so many of the worst things a person can go through have now already happened. Tons of new and legitimate fears have been unlocked and I am facing them head on thanks to therapy and trusted friends. Yet it seems to be the most mundane of tasks which force me to pull courage out of thin air to make it through each day.

I want to believe it won't always be like this, that the newness of my present reality will wear off and some things I used to do without a second thought will once again enter the realm of no big deal. But honestly what I really want is more experiences like meeting that snake – it could have been scary but turned out to be pretty incredible. Right now everything is still so awful, but what if there is a day in my future when I am confronted with a situation where I think I'm going to need a ton of courage to get through it, only to find it all ends up being a total delight?

I'm so glad Benjamin took that photo. Yes, it's me and an albino Burmese python, but it's also possibility. I'll hang onto that for now.

More soon.