A year or so ago, I started watching the Showtime TV series, Dead Like Me. I recently got the DVD set of the series. It is about Georgia, an eighteen year-old woman, who is killed by a falling piece of the Mir Space Station, and then becomes a grim reaper.
In the TV show, the grim reapers are undead, they appear to be alive, but are not…but since they have physical bodies, they have to eat, sleep, take showers, rent apartments, just like the living. Being a grim reaper doesn’t pay, so they also have to take on a day job so to speak. The show is pretty funny, given the strange premise of the show.
In one of the shows, one of Georgia’s co-workers, Betty, leaves. Georgia had looked up to Betty like an older sister. At the end of this episode, Georgia says,
“When you can’t make sense of someone leaving, you sometimes try to make sense of what they have left behind. And it makes it a whole lot easier when what they left you is beautiful.”
I think this quote applies to both Yoon and Gee. Both of them are gone from my life, and their leaving still makes no sense to me in many ways. What both of them have left behind is beautiful. The memories I have of my time with them both are among the happiest of my life.
Gee’s cancer—very unusual for someone her age—took her life, only twenty-three months and one day after we met… I sometimes wonder if it was there, growing inside her when we first met. Gee’s grace, her selflessness, and her amazing faith in the love we two shared still inspires me to be a better person than I would have been with out her.
With Yoon, it was her courage, her innocence, and her wanting to see me heal from the grief and pain I had experienced because of Gee’s death. Yoon also taught me that life does go on—even through the loss and pain I have seen—there is still life, hope and love. I think Yoon’s inexperience with the darker things in life badly handicapped her, and made it difficult to understand what I had been through. In some ways, she is a much braver person than I ever expected. My nephews still miss their aunt Yoon, and I hope she is well, wherever she may be.
Although neither Yoon, nor Gee are here, in my life… a part of each of them is here with me. There are many days, where I wish I could share what I see with these two amazing women.
That is a lovely quote indeed. Finding the beautiful things that people have left behind is like buried treasure
This is so very hard! Loving these women who aren’t here, and whom you can’t get together with, much as you long to. I admire your positive attitude, i.e. lack of telling your story as a victim, despite that. I know I’d do a heck of a lot more whining, complaining, and feeling sorry for myself than I see in your blog and comments, were it me.