Death has always won the last hand

It has been an exceptionally emotional week for me. At the beginning of the week I received news that one of the bosses of my many AV employers had passed away. His death came as a shock for me even though every one in the company knew his health was in grave condition. Days before his passing I came upon his crowd-funding page and learned that he was waiting for a double lung transplant. From his updates he sounded optimistic and that he was waiting for specialists to check out his condition. Even a day or two before he died, he was still posting updates and thanking people for their outpouring support. Little did everyone know that he would be gone from us so soon! He was one of the nicest and kindest supervisors I’ve worked with. He had a friendly approach and would always joke with his crew on gigs.

It is hard to wrap my head around his death, and I’m not sure why it’s affecting me so much. Perhaps it’s that he is leaving behind a 5-year-old son, or the fact that no parent should have to live to see their child die (both his parents were at the memorial). Perhaps I felt that there was always something relatable about his interracial marriage. I’ve never lost a colleague in a workplace before, and I’ve definitely never mourned for the loss of a grown man I barely knew. But somehow the circumstances surrounding his death reminded me a lot of my own father’s death. The fact that he passed away so suddenly alone is enough to bring a connection to dad’s passing in 2007. It has been two days since the memorial; even though I am busy with work and my mind is occupied with other things, I still can’t shake the shock-factor…

To add salt to the already raw emotions, I went to see Ga Ting at the Cultch tonight. The play is about how a son’s [Asian] family deals with his sexuality after his death by inviting his [white] boyfriend over for dinner. Needless to say, the plot already resonates a great deal with my own life: me being Asian and my partner (and ex’s) being Caucasians, and the fact that my parent(s) don’t accept my sexuality. The blatant stereotypes of each culture is addressed and often laughable because the stereotypes are just so ridiculous.  I did not expect the play to be hilarious and remained so through the majority of the show. Then, ‘bam!’, out of nowhere towards the end of the show, the story quickly got serious and emotional. I wavered back and forth between identifying with the boyfriend and the dead son. They both have struggles that I have faced or still am facing – I have come out to my mom and most of my family, but my mom is still in denial. Or she refuses to acknowledge that it’s actually a part of me, just like the parents (more so the dad) in the play.

Guilt, shame, and blame are the three stand-out themes from the show; three things I recognize so strongly having grown up in an Asian family. Miscommunication, or the lack of communication, rather, also stood out like a sore thumb. The show made me wonder how my dad would have reacted if I had come out before he died. Would he have been the moderator between my mom and I and help us negotiate or communicate, or would he have been like the stern, difficult and rigid father in the show? It reminded me how important one’s sexuality is in identifying ourselves – or at least it is for me. It is part of who I am, how I behave and conduct myself. If I can’t be myself due to your close-mindedness, then you’re not getting the full ME. If I can’t even tell you that I am happily dating someone of the same sex, then you won’t know who’s important in my life and how I’m prioritizing my time. SO MANY of the lines uttered by the actors tonight I’ve heard in my own conversations with my mom. The show also briefly touched on mental illness, for it is depression and bipolar that prompted the son’s death.

There wasn’t one issue in the show that I didn’t identify with; I could say that I’ve experienced everything the show depicted. I saw the show by myself, wishing everyone I love in my life could have seen the show – my ex, my girlfriend, my brother, and most of all, my mother. I was jealous how frankly the characters talked to and confronted each other, but was also deeply saddened by the fact that it took a son’s death for the family to finally recognize their son for who he was. If my death does half of what the son’s did in terms of reconciliation within the family, then my death will have been justified and I’d happily meet the Grim Reaper tomorrow.

Shits and Giggles

I went to a comedy night for the first time ever in my life yesterday because an acquaintance I know was doing a set. And like all stand-up comedy, there are hits and misses. All of the comedians that took a turn on stage were female. Most of them cracked jokes about feminism, tampons, vaginas, and periods. One of them even said, “this is the only place where we can talk about them!”; uproarious laughter ensued in the room. We’re all either too painfully aware of the lack of conversation about women’s menstrual cycle so we cover our discomfort with laughter, or we’re just so bitter about it now that there’s nothing to do but laugh bitterly.

On the way home I thought about putting together enough material for one set and what sources of inspiration I could draw from. It didn’t seem as hard as I had originally thought. My life has been quite colourful and dramatic in the last few years, so stories are in abundance. If I may say so myself, I think I am a fairly funny person. I enjoy lots of puns and cheesy pick-up lines. And I also have hit-and-miss comedic timing in life; mostly with “that’s what she said” jokes. So there might actually be a lot of things I could talk about! I’ve just never thought of turning them into jokes for the public.

Who knows. Maybe it’ll be a new venture. I’ve finally sang at an open-mic for the first time last November, and now maybe I’ll do stand-up comedy. Just to say I’ve tried it.