Ten Years

In ten days we'll mark ten years since Alice died, and I can't even believe it. The mildly good news is I've finally stopped eating donuts and more donuts. Like maybe I've shed the sorrow from losing her. I'd been wearing it around my waist all these years. I think it's receded into my bones, along with my memories of her, and will live there for now.

Thinking about this past decade, in a way I'm grateful that Alice's departure from the world prompted me to write. Without her, I could have easily spiraled downward, suffocating from my grief. But Alice's spirit propelled me to chronicle the story of my loss which led to creating a blog about workplace issues then publishing personal pieces in other outlets. I've catalogued my work at chahinian.com. Alice is in every line I've written.

Rereading the lines on this site, I want to edit them so they're sharper, more descriptive. But as I get set to print this blog as a memento, I'm afraid to touch the poor word choice and grammatical errors. It's like my yearning for Alice lives in the sometimes bad sentence structure. I don't want to erase that.

So this online journal will sit, messy. Like me all these summers, struggling to make sense of my sister's death.

San Diego

For the last ten years I've been looking for Alice, everywhere. From the corner of my eye I'll spot a figure that resembles her, and do a double-take on a woman with pixie hair and a lean frame. Perusing family photo albums, I'm always hoping I'll come across an image I haven't seen before. Sometimes I'll even hear her voice, but if I turn around there's no body.

When the pop punk band blink-182 came out with "California" in August (an album I love love love), I glanced the track list and wondered if I'd spotted her: in "San Diego." Listening to the album start to finish, I finally got to song 13. My ears pricked up. Omg it had Alice written all over it. Check out the chorus:
-----
I can't sleep because what if I dream
of going back to San Diego
We bought a one-way ticket
so we can go see the Cure
and listen to our favorite songs in the parking lot
and think of every person I ever lost
in San Diego
Can't go back to San Diego.
-----
"And think of every person I ever lost in San Diego. Can't go back to San Diego." So true for me. I only lost one person, but she was extra significant to me. Unfortunately I feel repelled by the city Alice moved to and in which she died. I still can't go back there. Other details fit too -- Alice and I went to see the female version of the Cure: Siouxsie and the Banshees. Not in SD but in Orange County. Same difference right? We totally listened to our favorite songs in the parking lot outside the Grove.

Those are the lyrics. Then there's the music. Travis Barker does amazing handiwork on drums, natch. But what sent chills up my spine while tears rolled down my cheeks was the harmonies. Starting near 2:18, the guys are singing background and I swear they're wailing. For my sister. The screen even floods with "A"s right then in the lyric video. Have a watch-listen:



Blink came to town this past weekend. I'd bought a single mosh pit ticket. But I was conflicted because that same afternoon we were throwing a big barbecue for L's 11th birthday. My mom would be traveling 3,000 miles to be there and Sophie'd be coming from far away too.

I'd been feverish the night before the party. The morning of, I doubted I could host a shindig then drive 70 miles to a concert and back. But everyone at home chipped in to make the celebration happen, and I rallied. Heading to the rock show I felt like the luckiest guy in the world: I had my extended family together, and they'd made it possible for me to go to the gig, and look for Alice.

Midway through the set, the guys played "San Diego!" When it came time for their howling, only Matt Skiba sang. Why didn't Mark Hoppus join in? But they sang my jam!

Which I played again back in the parking lot, by myself.

A Dream of the Three of Us

Last night, er, this morning I had a dream. Sophie and Alice were there, and Sophie was trying to make nice with me, like adjusting my collar, making sure I looked nice. But I wouldn't look at her because I was p`ssed at her for whatever reason, and she just said, "Oh, Haig," really lovingly, really acceptingly, patiently, while Alice looked on. I didn't look at her, though. I kept to myself.

Riding the bike is

My mom called me in the middle of yesterday, saying she wrote a poem about riding her adult tricycle. It came to her in 15 minutes, and she wanted to read it to me over the phone. I was touched.
-----
Riding the bike is
(by M. Chahinian) 

Wind blowing the hair

Breathing the fresh air

Flowers everywhere

Trees planted along the way.

Exercising is the best

Going east and west

Stopping for some rest

And perhaps be the guest.

Happy people to greet

Chit chat and meet

Embrace the heat

Bid farewell and proceed.

It is a good way

To start the day

Continue till midday

Then call it a day.

The pleasures are endless

Always happiness

Joy and gladness

Knowledge in quietness.

Looking at the birds perched on the wires

Without any cares or fear of fires

Well protected and fed by their Supplier

He who is our Heavenly Father.

-----

Totally cute, right? 

Alice used to write poetry like this. Did my mom impact Alice's writing?Or did Alice influence my mom? 

Probably both.

Birthday dream

I had a dream about Alice last night. More like she appeared to me in a dream. There's a difference; the dream wasn't really about anything, except Alice's presence.
I'm not sure where I was when I saw Alice in front me, beaming her megawatt smile. She wore a rust colored loose sweater, typically chic. I couldn't believe I was with her, and I was so happy. I wondered if I was dreaming, yet it felt very real, so I dismissed the thought. All the pain of her absence disappeared when I ran up and hugged her. I picked her up like a baby, her legs dangling over my right arm, my left hand supporting her back. So blissful, I kissed her cheek again and again. We were both laughing and smiling. We didn't exchange any words.
We're away for L's spring break, and I went to a yoga class this morning. Toward the end, we put our fingertips on our foreheads and our thumbs at our jaws, covering our eyes in a meditative stance. We were supposed to clear our minds and breathe. But it felt like an opening for my sadness to enter, and I sat there on my mat, crying, trying not to make any noise.
Today's Alice's birthday, she would have turned 44. I miss her so much, and wonder what our relationship would have been like if she were alive.

Unfinished dream

I never finished this post when I started it four years ago on the 6-year anniversary of my sister's death. I'm dusting it off to print now [9/13/16]:

I had a dream that Alice was at my mother's house. Alice and I had been working consciously on our relationship, struggling to work through our differences. I realize now that if we'd succeeded, we could have had much more fun. In my dream, the neighbor across the street looked young from behind. Alice and I were getting ready to do something together, and I was excited, and calm at the same time. The morning started out not tense. What a dream, indeed.

Then the day grew weary. At this point, I can't remember the other details. Such is my memory. And such is the unconscious mind. I include this scrap of a story as a means of keeping everything I have about Alice. I don't want to lose anything.

A Bad and Good Dream

I had a dream last night, and woke up sobbing. OK, it was a morning dream.

I'd dreamed that I'd visited Alice in jail. The walls were stale yellow, as was the lighting. I sat at a table in some kind of holding cell, waiting for her.

I had sent her a letter about how much I love her, and how much I know she loved me. A guard came up to me and said, "She got your message." Hearing this, I was overcome with relief, and gratitude. Hence the waterworks.

But in that moment I was also worried about how she would rehabilitate after being released from prison.

Only the Good Memories Linger?

A friend told me that after a death, only the good memories linger. I fear it may be more complicated than that.

I dreamed my biological family was on vacation. Alice was there, although she didn't look like herself, she had really long hair. This detail makes me wonder what she would have looked like today. In my dream I dumped all my negative energy on her; I hit her, I kicked her, I called her dumbass.

That's no way to treat your sister. She was often the scapegoat in our family. It was unfair. To target her repeatedly was untrue. She wasn't always the instigator. I regret treating her like the one responsible for all our ills. My father, mother, Sophie, and I had our own share of aggression, resentment, and rage.

I'm sorry for hurting you so much, Alice.

Soon after this dream, I visited Iris, a friend of Alice's from junior high school. I wanted to meet Iris's partner and hold their new baby Ivory, for Alice. It felt like my sister was there with us. Iris and I were Alice for each another.

The Armenian Genocide, Alice, & Me

This Sunday, April 24, 2011 marks the 96th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, when the Ottoman Turkish government initiated a campaign to massacre the Armenian population. They systematically killed about 1.5 million Armenian people, including all eight of my great-grandparents. I've been thinking about this lately, and how it relates to the aftermath of Alice's death.

Armenian civilians are marched to nearby prison in Mezireh by armed Turkish soldiers in Kharpert, Ottoman Empire, April 1915.

In 1896 my father's father Haigazoun was born in jail, in Istanbul. His father Der Nerses--his ordained name, we don't know his given name--was incarcerated, along with his wife, for being a Christian priest. Der Nerses was poisoned soon thereafter, and my great-grandmother--Khoutsig, I love that name--raised him and his two brothers alone, until she met her own demise at the hands of the Ottoman Turks around 1915.

My dad doesn't know the stories--or the names--of his maternal grandmother or grandfather; the trauma his mother experienced in her childhood seems to have rendered her early memories inaccessible.

My mother had no living grandparents either, and knows almost nothing about their lives. She tells the story of her father Garabed, age 8 in 1915-1916, visiting a vineyard with his father when a Turkish soldier on a horse came and took his father away, leaving young Garabed standing there. Her mother Azniv, bereft at age 7 in 1915-1916, was adopted into an Armenian family in Palestine, in Jerusalem, where she essentially became the nanny and took care of three younger children.

So my grandparents survived unspeakably harsh life events. By witnessing the elimination of their parents, my hypothesis is that a fear of annihilation was sparked in them at a young age.

I believe this fear of being decimated has passed down the generations. My parents feared the extermination of their own existence, as it happened to their grandparents, and as Armenian-Americans, my sisters and I feared annihilation too. Unconsciously we feared death if we didn't grow up and prosper as Armenian-Americans, and raise Armenian-American children too.

Which leads to the idea that Alice got annihilated. Not by the Turks, yet killed nonetheless. She was supposed to make it well into old age, as our ancestors desperately willed for all of us. And I've been blindsided by the horror. To the extent that I'm still writing about living without her almost five years later.

The term "rest in peace" comes to mind. Alice rests, and what I'm working to do is lay to rest my loss of her.

Soon.

Image via

On Alice's 41st Birthday

We kind of force ourselves to "celebrate" Alice's birthday every year on March 26th, even though I'm still very sad. I can't help that. I have a new thought about that, and will write about it in another post.

This year we went to the park with the butterfly kite we purchased back in 2007 for her birthday. For some reason I'm not able to
[left unfinished]

Visceral Memories

Alice would have turned 41 this Saturday, March 26, and we're planning to fly the butterfly kite in commemoration of her birthday. In the meantime, I'm feeling like writing, so I'm going with it, gratefully.

So much happened during our recent visit to Los Angeles, I'm still struggling to organize it all.

One moment remains with me more than others, and of course it has to do with Alice. Upstairs in my mom's home, L was headed to the "girls' bathroom," then stepped in. I followed after her as she was closing the door. I still tried to walk in, regardless of her effort to slam the door, and in a flash I was 8 and Alice was 9, on the other side of the door, keeping me out.

Except it was 2011, and L was pushing the door closed, on my face. I accepted it, and walked away, sulking, as I typically did back then.

While I miss Alice incredibly, I don't miss the frequent scuffles we had, where I was usually blocked out. My recollection is that Sophie or Alice forever excluded me from their activities, as was their prerogative.

And now L reminds me what it felt like, with one swift shutting of a door.

Surprise at the Cemetery

During my recent sojourn in California, I was intent on visiting Alice's gravesite. Wow, it sucked hard to write that, "Alice's gravesite." When again did that happen? And what the f`ck happened, exactly? Also, why? In some ways I'm still beside myself in shock, and yet this trip to Rose Hills didn't feel the same as past visits.

Exiting the 605 freeway, I saw a couple of flower peddlers along the road, and through the passenger window I looked carefully at their bouquets. I wanted to buy one, but they had carnations among the flora, and Alice didn't like carnations. They were too pedestrian, not special enough. She inherited this sentiment from our mom. So instead I went to the shop outside the cemetery gates, selected a diverse assortment of stems, and asked for an arrangement to be made. It turned out pretty.

I was going to commune with Alice, solitarily, and try to feel her presence. When I arrived in the general vicinity of her burial site, it took me several minutes to locate her tombstone. What relief I felt when I finally found it. In a true surprise, there were fresh flowers already in the container at the foot of her grave. I took a picture, above. I thought of a couple of people who may have been there the week of March 7, but I couldn't be sure. I was touched that someone was thinking of Alice, right alongside me.

In terms of communicating with her, vocally all I could muster was "oh, Alice." I reflected on how life has changed since September 2006, and imagined beaming these thoughts up to the heavens so she could hear me.

I thought I would cry, but I didn't. Over time I've come to know Alice as not being alive, and that thought is rather matter of fact inside me, it can't be argued. It's been there for four and a half years now.

So I sat on the grass for 20 minutes or so, and took in the blue sky, the rolling hills, and the lush grass all around. It was almost pleasant, I hadn't had this kind of warm solitude for many months. I reflected on how I had Alice to thank for this moment. Which is totally tragic, and I'm back to how f`cked up her death is in the world.

Later that weekend, I videotaped a short interview with my mom about her upbringing, for posterity. During the conversation she referenced Alice, and how nobody ever thinks of her. I asked how she knew this? She said if whoever is thinking of Alice doesn't tell my mom, then they're not thinking of her. How plainly ridiculous, I thought. People can think personal thoughts and not share them with anybody; this doesn't mean their thoughts don't exist.

And still, I knew well my mom's wish to know the comfort of other people's memories of Alice. I suggested we had to look harder to know that people still remember Alice.

The flowers at Rose Hills are a perfect example.

A picture of both bouquets side by side, as I left the grassy knoll, above left.

Free Ways

Driving in Los Angeles on a recent visit to California, I was struck by how much life there is on the freeway. When I lived there, I took it for granted--along with everybody else--that the freeways were actually free, meaning you don't have to pay a toll to get on or off them.

On these roads was where Alice felt the most free.  In whatever cute car she drove, she would freely crank up the volume on her stereo, force her foot onto the accelerator and speed through the state's arteries to her destination.

And while most people drive in solitude like Alice often did, I saw an inter-connectedness among drivers on the highway that I never felt before this visit. Every person at the wheel is aware of her place in the lane, and must pay close attention to the location of other vehicles around her, to the extent that everybody is doing this dance of merging into different lanes, changing speed, accommodating others while moving closer to where they're headed. Driving can actually feel social in this way. 

So I'm struck, so to speak, that Alice died on the freeway, amidst so much life on the roads. She was a social California girl, so it's poignant that way.

This post is feeling kind of heady to me, a little less heartrending, going on 5 years of her physical absence in my life. So moves my grief, upward through my body.

I was talking with my father at one point during this visit, and he said, "She crashed two cars." I was reminded that Alice did crash my father's beloved 1974 beige Dodge Colt, right outside of our high school circa 1988. Plus the totaling of her damn Jeep makes two wrecks. We then talked about what a terrible driver she was.

"I miss her," he concluded.

Image of the Los Angeles freeway via

It's true in real life too.

I had a dream last night. It was winter and really cold, which is true in real life, and I was completely down about it. See, dreams can totally come true.

I was in a bleak room, with crumbling walls painted muted yellow, and I was working at a concrete table, while really missing Alice. I was yearning for her, feeling her absence, and having difficulty once again tolerating my loss, when she made herself present to me. I couldn't see her, or actually hear her voice, yet from inside my mind, like to my soul, she said "I promise to be with you for the rest of your life."

How relieved and heartened I was to hear this statement! It was new, and profound, that she was expending energy to push this message to me. Since her death, our communication has really been one-sided, as in I reach out to her. This time, she totally reached out to me, made herself known, and expressed the fact that she will always be with me. I took it somewhat literally, that she will fade once I perish. Yet thinking about it now, I believe she will continue to live on in the people whose lives I will have touched. True?

When I awoke, my eyes were soaking wet, and my heart ached from crying. It was also buoyed a little, having been in touch with Alice overnight. In real life.

Hooray! The Return of S.A.D.

The sun rose this morning at 7:18am, and will set (not much) later at 4:52pm. It's 30 degrees outside, and the weather report says it feels like 19. Tonight's expected to be -1 degree. Yesterday I didn't step outside once. Friday I woke up at 7:30am, still tired after after having gone to bed the night before at 7:30pm. So this California boy is feeling cold, and ravaged by Seasonal Affective Disorder (S.A.D.).

And this is all good news! I haven't really felt the impact of S.A.D. since Alice died, so all the fatigue and doldrums suggest I'm no longer grieving for Alice. Rather, I have the wherewithal lately to be beaten down by nature's wintertime darkness. Terrific, no?

This is how life goes on after the death of my sister. If I were to call her today, I imagine she'd admonish me for living in such a harsh environment, impatiently wondering why I would ever do such a thing.

Then she'd encourage us to come visit her in California.  That's what we're planning to do in February, Alice.