Notes from on board KE86

According to the in-flight map, we are some where over Siberia with about 3 1/2 hours left to go. Really kind of an amazing thing to consider. Only a few hours ago I was finishing Shabbat dinner in Park Slope and now I'm 38,000 feet abve the ground and almost halfway around the world hurtling forward at almost 600 miles per hour - all information given to me at my finger tips from the back of the seat in front of me.

The flight has been nothing but enjoyable. Unlike domestic flights I've been on where every inch seems to be taken up by a seat and every seat filled, Korea Air has spacious accommodations even in their economy class and I haven't noticed a single row completely filled, except for those with a family. And while meals on US flights have been relegated to snacks, if not entirely phased out or provided for purchase only, we were given the choice between a chicken entree or a traditionally bowl of bibimbop. Which do you think I chose? The funny thing was that when I asked for the bibimbop the flight attendant asked if I had it before. I guess the common choice for non-Koreans is to go with the western style chicken. Not me. And while not served in a hot clay bowl (I suppose there would be some weight and safety issues about that), it was fresh, with all the items one would expect to see. The individual package of rice - well cooked, I'd add - accompanied it along with a lightly pickled kimchi and small tube of Korean chili paste. I think that later I will have to stock up some extra tubes of it because it travels easily and provides a nice, spicy kick to any food.

Another interesting aspect of the flight is that because we basically flew over the Arctic, if not the North Pole itself (it is a bit difficult to precisely track our route so high north on the Mecater Projection, we experienced a sun rise and sunset already. I'm guessing if we left in the day time we would have been flying in daylight the whole time. (Also on the topic of navigation, while the direct line of flight would have taken us over North Korea, for reasons that should be obvious - especially in recent days - the plane went wide to the west while we were over eastern China to avoid the north completely and approach Incheon from the south. An extra few minutes in the plane but certainly worth it.)

A final observation is that the movie selection, again shown on the individual screens at out seats, don't merely show recent films but many that are still in the theater now. I'm not sure if Avitar would be worth seeing on a 5x5 LCD screen, but the Blind Side was perfectly fit, no pun intended, for my post-dinner entertainment.
Well only a few more hours. I'm still excited for the trip but also experiencing that twinge of apprehension that comes when you go outside your comfort zone. But I've been there before on other trips and at other times in my life. I've no doubt that this is going to be a great experience.

That's all for now from KE86 (and uploaded from Incheon Airport). Next stop Kyoto.

Countdown to takeoff

This time two weeks from now I'll be siting on a Korean Air flight headed to Osaka, Japan via Incheon, South Korea. Perhaps it is the excitement of the trip that is keeping me up at the moment despite my body being quite tired.

My first stop is actually Kyoto, but the nearest international airport is in Osaka. It is actually built on a man-made island in the harbor and having watched a show on the National Geographic Channel several years ago, as well as my somewhat embarrassing fascination with most things aviation related, I am as excited to see it as I am for all the other places I'm planning to visit. But why Kyoto and why pass up seeing Tokyo. The simple answer is that while I'm sure there are interesting and exciting sites to see in Tokyo, the city has never been an attraction for me. Perhaps it is because I live in a large, bustling city so when I travel I like to stray away from similar places. But importantly than why I don't want to see Tokyo is that I've wanted to see Kyoto for a very long time.

Many people might only know of Kyoto as the city where eponymous protocols were adopted as part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1997. (They entered into force in 2005 and, to this day, the US has refused to become a signatory.) For me, however, I've known of Kyoto as being the former imperial capital of Japan. I've read of the imperial palace, many awe inspiring temples, tranquil bamboo forests, and twisting streets lined with traditional house. As I've been planning my visit, I've also been discovering a rich culinary world awaits me there and can't wait to sample my way through it.

After several days in Kyoto I will spend an evening and most of a day seeing a bit of Osaka before flying to Hanoi, Vietnam - again via Incheon airport. I will have two days in Hanoi before meeting up with a group from Intrepid Travel. This is the same tour company that Karen traveled to Turkey and Morocco with in 2008 and she enjoyed both those trips immensely. The itinerary for my trip, Indochina Adventure, takes me from Hanoi to Vinh, a city about 200 miles to the south. From Vinh we will head west into Laos, visiting the cities of Vientiane, Vang Vieng, and Luang Prabang before boarding a boat for a two day trip down the Mekong River into Thailand. In Thailand we will spend some time in Chiang Mai before hiking into the rural villages of the northern hilltribes for three days. While my organized tour will conclude in Bangkok, I plan to stay in Thailand for about a week longer and then spend some time enjoying the southern islands and taking in some diving.

For the final stop on my trip, I will be returning to Korea for the first time (not including my two layovers) in about 37 years. My family was living there in 1971 when I was born and I spent the first year and a half or so of my life in Seoul. This chubby little kid, unable to properly use the telephone is me at my dol (돌) or first anniversary of birth:



The odd thing is that while I've always felt a connection to Korea - beyond my love of its cuisine, especially kimchi - it is a country I actually know little about beyond the obvious things. I am finding myself reading through the many tour books trying to decide what to see, but worried that I will overlook something that shouldn't be missed. I suppose that is the problem with just visiting places: you never have enough time to see it all.

So that's the thumbnail sketch of my itinerary. According to Great Circle Mapper (one of my favorite websites, which I'll readily admit is also rather nerdy) I will travel nearly 19,000 air miles and fly over the north pole, a first for me. This isn't the longest itinerary I've had (that would be a trip I took as part of an internship in college when I logged nearly 29,000) but I will certainly eat my fair share of in-flight meals. Depending on internet availability, I will try to post updates from the road -- and not just the flights and airports.

As the days tick by leading to my departure my excitement continues to grow. I absolutely love to travel and experience new places, meet new people, and (you guessed it) eat new things. It has been a long time since I've traveled like this and this is a trip I've been wanting to make for a while. It is also, as I mentioned in my last post, one that Karen and I spent many hours talking about doing with James. This is a trip I need to take...this is a trip I'm eager to take...this is a trip I can't wait to take...for so many reasons.

The truth in clichés

"Time heals all wounds." It was a comment made to me many times by friends and family (and strangers) in the days and months following Karen's death. It is not surprising or unexpected for even the most eloquent and well-meaning of people to fall back on such a cliché when confronted with such an unnatural and devastating event. Indeed I'm sure that were I the one struggling to give comfort at a time of unimaginable heartbreak, I too would invariably utter such a sentiment. I think it is a natural crutch on which the mind relies when trying to understand the incomprehensible.

There were times I wanted to shout back my objections when people said this to me. What happened wasn't something that upset me, or put me in a bad mood, or bummed me out. This was utter devastation. How could time heal this wound I thought. How could ANYTHING heal it? But I held back my words. I knew, even then while I was in the closets thing to hell that I have experienced in my lifetime, that no good could come by lashing out at those people who were only trying to express their sympathies in one of the ways that came natural in an unnatural situation.

Now, some sixteen months later, I am in awe at the restorative power that time actually does possess. While not a day - or, at times, an hour - goes by that I don't miss Karen and reflect on what happened, I am able to experience life in a way that was inconceivable in those dark days. Where before I was unable to be in our apartment, I now find myself to enjoy it as the home it was for us and for me now. Streets I couldn't walk on for fear of the bitter memories they evoked, now remind me of the happy times we shared. True there are still a couple places I have not been able to enter and certain songs that I turn off upon hearing the first few chords, but these are far fewer in number than they were. Similarly, instead of avoiding newborns and pregnant women, as was what I did for so long, I now find myself sharing in the joy my many friends are experiencing recently. This does, however, come with a melancholy twinge that I keep to myself and that I'm sure will remain with me forever.

All these changes are palpable and fall in the realm of things I never imagined could happen. So now when I consider the cliché so often said to me (and others suffering similar experiences) I understand its validity but also its incompleteness. Back then, when people uttered those words, what I heard them saying to me was that time will put things back as they were or that the pain will fade as all memories of her slipped further behind me. The first idea being, of course, utterly impossible and the second being scary because I feared the prospect of loosing the happy memories along with the painful ones. Hence, I rankled at such expressions of support and comfort. What I didn't comprehend until recently is that the true, complete comment should be: "Time heals all wounds, but the scars remain forever." The addition of the added portion is important to me because it changes the implication - offensive at times - that time will make you forget as a means of allowing one to go on with their lives to something that embraces what was while allowing for the progression to another phase of life.

And going on to another phase of life, while NEVER forgetting what once was, is what I am doing now. This progression is marked by several changes and decisions I made recently, all of which were made after much contemplation and introspection. The first, as I mentioned in an earlier posting, is that I've left the practice of law. I am still in the process of finding what my new career will be, but the decision has been a positive one already and I have been in investigating a variety of options.

The other big decision is that I am preparing for a trip to Korea, Japan and Southeast Asia. This is a journey that in may ways has been thirty-six years in the making for me and, perhaps more importantly, one that Karen and I intended to undertake with James. I depart on April 10 and will give more details in a future post as well as providing updates periodically (dependant on Internet availability, of course) from the road.

So today I feel as if I have journeyed to hell and back. And while I bear the scars of the experience, I also retain the joyful memories of the life snatched from me, which will guide me as I press forward. I was asked recently whether I would trade the time I had with Karen in order to have avoided the heartache and misery I suffered from her death. I needed no time to think about the answer because just as there is truth in the cliché about time, equally true for me (if not more so) is that it is far better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. With Karen this was absolute and I count myself beyond lucky to have had the time with her I did and to have known the person she was.

Orchids

I'm not much a flower person. It isn't that I don't like flowers, that is not the case at all. Rather, I enjoy them as something to brighten and bring beauty to the world but not something I spend too much time thinking about and even less time learning about. One of the exceptions to this is orchids. Maybe it is because of their exotic look or tropical nature, but whatever the reason I've always been intrigued and drawn to them. They were also integral in my time with Karen and continue to be so now.

I bought Karen an orchid at the end of the evening on what became our first date. We were walking up Carroll Street and passed Key Food, which has a flower merchant in front of it. So, just before hailing a cab to send her back to her apartment in Brooklyn Heights, I bought a purple and while orchid for her to remember the evening. Some months later, when the pregnancy was confirmed by her doctor, I stopped at a flower shop on Seventh Avenue and bought her another orchid. This one was potted and a bit more exotic looking than the first one. We even talked about using orchids in the wedding, but opted to not because they were excessively expensive.

But if orchids factored significantly during our time together, they have become even more so since she's been gone...

Almost a year ago, I went to Florida to visit with Karen's family. It was the first time I was seeing them since they were back in New York for the funeral and only my second time with them in Florida. While I was there, Diane, Karen's mother, told me about the orchid plant in their front yard that had recently, and somewhat out of season, bloomed with several new flowers. She took me outside and showed me the tree on which the plant clung. They were a gorgeous shade of purple, close to the color of Karen's bouquet. I took this picture of them.



As remarkable and inspirational as that was, recently another blossoming has occurred that I wanted to talk about.

While it is not a Jewish tradition to send flowers to mourners (it has to do with Judaism's disfavor of beautifying or adorning death), I nevertheless received many lovely arrangements - to be clear, I appreciated them all very much notwithstanding the tradition. One friend of my family's sent a lovely potted orchid, which stayed in my mother's apartment. The flowers lasted for months, well into the summer. As the blossoms shriveled, they fell off one-by-one over time. The last one, remarkably, dropped from the plant almost one year after the funeral.

My mother kept the plant in her apartment even after all the flowers were gone and it was merely a stem with two leaves at its base. And there it sat, all but unremarkable, in her apartment for the past few months. I suppose she didn't get rid of it for the very same reason that I keep certain things exactly as they were before Karen died. But unlike the inanimate objects around my apartment, the orchid refused to remain as is. Recently, my mother noticed a few new buds on the ends of the bare stem. These have now opened to reveal several radiant blossoms.



Now, as I said, I'm not much of a flower person and it could very well be that this regeneration is perfect normal and natural. However, whatever the case may be, seeing these deep purple flowers (again, similar to the color of her wedding bouquet) appear once more on the otherwise bare stem is a fantastic reminder of not only her but of the resiliency of nature and the human spirit.

Another memorial

Last year, the director of the Alumni Office at Packer Collegiate Institute, Karen's and my alma mater, contacted me about putting a plaque up in the chapel. Packer, which was founded as an all women's school in 1845 and went coed in the early 1970s, uses the chapel for assemblies and other large gatherings. It is a fabulous, Gothic (I think, since I'm not so versed in architectural styles) space with wonderful Tiffany stained glass windows and I was touched by the school's desire to put a remembrance of Karen in it.

It was installed some time ago but until yesterday I had not been back to the school since our 19th reunion weekend, when we got engaged, and had not seen it. Initially, I thought it was merely going to be her name included on a larger plaque of other alumni who had passed away. As it turns out, however, it is a plaque unto itself mounted on one of the southern facing walls next to the stained glass windows. I was quite moved to see it.


(Unfortunately not the best picture, but all I had was my iPhone and it was a bit dark - as usual - in the chapel.)

A trip across the country and (in some ways) back across time

I recently returned from a trip that took me from Brooklyn to south Florida and onward to southern California. The trip was intended to be a break from the cold northeast and a chance to visit with some family and old friends. Unfortunately the former plan fell through since unseasonably cold and wet weather seemed to follow me to both locations. As for the latter, the trip was a success beyond my most optimistic of expectations.

Before Karen died, I'd only met her parents a few times but got along with them very well because in so many ways they remind me of my own parents. In fact I joked, after meeting her mom for the first time, that when our mothers finally meet they would either instantly bond as friends or the combination of their presences and personalities could very well threaten the very fabric of the world we know it -- similar to the near catastrophe caused by bringing together the Key Master and the Gate Keeper in Ghostbusters. Thankfully, proton packs weren't necessary and they became, and remain, close friends. But because we'd only met a couple times, much of our getting to know each other was done in parallel with our mourning. This is, of course, far from the ideal manner to develop bonds and there were a few times where our shared grief was so overpowering as to overshadow the foundations of family we share. These moments, perhaps difficult and uncomfortable at the time, were passing and we nevertheless grew closer and I felt myself becoming more a part of Karen's family, which was an wonderful feeling.

I've been down to visit Karen's parents and brother's family in Florida a few times in the past year and of course saw them when they were in New York during the summer. These were good visits, but the time we spent together on my past trip was different. Perhaps it is because we've had over a year to work through our grief and encounter so many difficult dates. But whatever the reason, the trip was more enjoyable and more helpful for my feelings about what has happened and where I am than any we've had before.

As I explained in my last post, I have been thinking about shaving for the first time since Karen died but I was feeling that there was something missing or needing to happen before I finally did. Well to give a sense of what effect the time I spent with Karen's family - my family - had on me, after my visit I decided the time had come for me to shave. I found a barber and for the first time in over fourteen months saw the skin of my cheeks revealed. I don't want to put too much emphasis on it or ascribe greater importance to the moment, but suddenly I found myself looking at a face I hadn't seen since November 16, 2008. It was the face Karen that feel in love with, said "I do" to in Prospect Park, kissed countless times, and last looked at on that most horrible of days in my life. It was this face...



The eyes are more weary and maybe without some of the youthful innocence that has hardened because of the things they've seen and felt, but the simple altering of my facial hair has made a palpable change in my overall demeanor and I feel as if I've taken a big step on my journey. It is a step I don't think I would have been able to take but for the time I just spent in Florida. It is also a step I feel confident will allow me to take yet others that I have been timidly considering.

415 days

One of the remarkable things about my relationship with Karen is that I can quantify to the day, if not to within an hour, the amount of time we had together. This is, as with so many other aspects of our relationship, both remarkable and painful.

After more than eighteen years since we graduated from Packer, we met again - and, in many ways, for the first time - on September 27, 2008. It was 415 days later, on November 16, 2008, that our time together came to a sudden and tragic conclusion. It was only 415 days, or one year, one month, and nineteen days, that we had with each other. (Because I remember the approximate time that we met, 8:30 PM, and that she collapsed, 3:30 PM, it is possible to estimate that we were together for 9979 hours.) This is a stunningly brief time to have been together, especially when one considers how much we did in that time. It would not be hyperbole to say that we lived a lifetime in those 415 days.

The reason I am mentioning this now is that today represents a strange milestone: today, January 5, 2010, marks 415 days since Karen died. What this means is that I have now been without Karen for longer than the time we had together and every day hence will tilt the scale of time further. How can this be? Could our time together truly have been so short that, in what feels like a blink of the eyes, I am now beyond the time we were a couple? It is difficult to contemplate and wrap my head around this.

Time is indeed an odd thing. On the one hand the past 415 days seem to have flown by in the blink of an eye. When I think about that tragic and horrible moment, as I invariably do so many times a day, I feel like it just happened. That the details and my feelings are as clear as the computer screen I'm looking at now. Other times, however, the time Karen and I shared together feels like a lifetime and a millions years ago. Almost imperceptible and existing as an ethereal memory which I struggle to recapture. How can it be that these seemingly conflicting realities exist contemporaneously with each other? I suppose that is just one more facet of the new world, and life, in which I exist.

The marking of this day has greater significance than others that have come recently. Unlike anniversaries or birthdays, which will repeat for years onward, this is a singular moment that I will face. This marks a boundary that I will never cross again, and of course from which I can never cross back. This does not diminish the importance of things like the first anniversary of her death or her uncelebrated birthdays, but today represents something else entirely than those dates.

In some ways, as this milestone is passed, I feel the icy grip of my grief relax slightly. Since her death, I have not shaved - the tradition in Judaism is that mourners do not shave for a specified amount, typically thirty days but it can be as long as one year depending on your beliefs - but now find myself a step closer to doing so in a way I could not even consider only a few weeks ago. Similarly, while I left so much of our apartment the way it was on the morning of November 16, 2008, I am beginning to feel the moment for me to change that may be approaching. I know it will be a difficult and long process, but whereas I couldn't even contemplate any of it before now I can.

While these are subtle shifts and I still have a long, long way to go with so many things in my life, they are things that I could not have even imagined only a few short months ago. I don't know when I will actually undertake these changes, but that I can even contemplate making them is, for me, an enormous step in my grieving process.

So now as I prepare to count day number 416, and onward, I feel myself starting to look forward a little more each day. Of course I will never, and can never, stop looking back at what was as well.

Tears

I just watched the end of The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King and was struck by one of the final lines in the movie. As Frodo announced to his friends that he was leaving Middle Earth, Gandolf says: "I will not say: 'do not weep', for not all tears are an evil." This led me to thinking about the power and effect of tears.

I have shed so many tears of sorrow over the past months, but while many of those tears have come from the pain of my loss, many of those same tears have sustained my memories of Karen. Yet while tears may nourish the tree of memory, what happens when the tears no longer come or come less frequently? What happens to the memories? They don't go away. They don't wither. They remain. Perhaps not as vibrant as they once were, but remain they do. Forever. Like the rising of the sun or the movement of the tide, an ever-present part of life.

So it is as time passes by. That while things that were once as clear in my mind may still remain, they are no longer exist with such lucidity. Memories, like her smell, the sound of her voice, and the feeling of her skin are forever in my mind and heart, yet just a little less vivid than they were the day before. How I wish I could freeze in time every memory like it once was, but I know that is as impossible as it is to bring her back to me.

Hence, I cling to the pieces of her I have left. Those that are tangible for all to see and those that exist only where my mind's eye can view them. It is not enough, but it is all I have. She was a life force and a source of life. She brought me indescribable joy, happiness, and pleasure. And while no longer physically here, and drifting gently in the recesses of my life, she remains a part of me as she does for all those who knew her and so many who are only now discovering her in death.

How I wish everything were otherwise; that our expectations and dreams were fulfilled as planned. But that was not to be. Instead my life has become something else: a tribute to her and a passion to live not just for me but for her memory, regardless of its intensity.

To simply say I miss her would be to imply she, and everything she was, is gone. That is not the case. For even as turbidity invades my memories of her, they remain all the same and forever will. Just as she does.

Second birthday without celebration

Time marches inexorably on. Today would have been Karen's 38th birthday, but rather than celebrating with her - and James - I spent the day, as I have for so many others, alone and with sadness. This is a difficult time of the year for anyone who has suffered a loss like mine, but with her birthday falling during a season of joy and happiness centered on families only serves to compound the pain and sense of loss.

So today I did the thing that I thought would comfort me most, I drove out to New Jersey to visit her grave. What I forgot to take into account, however, was that our region recently received the first significant (and then some) snow fall of the winter. Normally this wouldn't have made a difference but, as anyone who has been to the cemetery or read my postings about it knows, Karen and James do not have a headstone. Rather, their grave is marked with a bronze plaque in the ground. This has made my prior visits a bit more calming by not standing among the rows and rows of granite stones, but this trip it made it impossible to locate the grave. Even with a map and directions provided by the cemetery staff, I spent about an hour plodding around Section 14 and digging repeatedly into calf-deep snow. All with no success. Instead, I sat for some time on a small stone bench.

Instead of the comfort I thought would come from visiting the cemetery, I felt sadness and a sense of failure for not being able to locate the plaque and grave. I could appreciate it wasn't necessarily a rational feeling - failure, that is - because even with a precise knowledge of the cemetery section, with so much snow it would still be exceedingly difficult to find it. But it was no less rational for me to think like this than it is for me to feel (as I do sometimes) that I in some way failed in my duties and responsibilities as a husband for not protecting her, even though there was nothing I could have done. So there I sat. In the cold. Alone.

When I got back in my car to leave, the radio station was in the middle of a block of Beatles music. Two songs came on back to back (I think, for I was in a bit of a trance), from which I found some of the sought after comfort. They were "In My Life," from Rubber Soul, followed by "The End," which closes Abbey Road. Both have lyrics that resonated very strongly in me and which were only accentuated by where I was and what I had just gone through searching for Karen's grave. Every lyric of "In My Life" struck a chord with me (pardon the pun), but most significant was:

But of all these friends and lovers
there is no one compares with you
And these memories lose their meaning
When I think of love as something new
Though I know I'll never lose affection
For people and things that went before
I know I'll often stop and think about them
In my life I love you more

And having the moment punctuated with "The End's" haunting and iconic words, And in the end / The love you take / Is equal to the love you make, nearly brought me to tears but with a slight smile on my face. Though these songs were written decades ago, I heard the words anew. We certainly gave and received equal amounts of love, but for far far to short of time.

So as this second birthday without celebration draws to a conclusion, and I look ahead to tackle tomorrow and the tomorrows to come, I smile knowing Karen is looking over me and that we truly had something special.

Happy Birthday Karen. In my life, I love you more.

Worldwide Candle Lighting 2009

A friend of mine recently emailed me to let me know that December 13 will be the 13th annual Worldwide Candle Lighting in memory of children who have died at any age and of any cause. The event is coordinated by The Compassionate Friends, an organization formed to help provide comfort and support to bereaved parents, siblings, grandparents, and other family members through the grieving process following the death of a child.

According to the press release, candles will be lit at 7 pm local time on Sunday, December 13, so that over the 24-hour period there will be a wave of light moving across the time zones. According to the organizer's site, no service is scheduled for Brooklyn (or anywhere in New York City) but I will be lighting two candles on my own - one in James' memory and another for all children who remain in their parents' hearts - and wanted to invite anyone else to join in the event from wherever you are.