HeartBreak in the Heartland

As many of you know, I am back in the United States of America. It was a sudden, unplanned trip. I came to say good-bye to my mother. She died Saturday morning, September 9th, 2006. A little over a week after her 70th Birthday and her 50th anniversary. While she had been sick in the past; she had been in good health for more than a year. It came as a shock to me and the family. She will be greatly missed. Her life has had a hugh impact on so many and it will continue to impact the world into the future. She was the proud mother of 12 children and currently 20 grandchildren with one more arriving soon. We are all grateful for everything that she has done for us and the community. Now our thoughts our with our father. After 50 years of marriage, I know it will be harder for him then for any of us.

What follows below is some writing I did while in transit from Taipei to home. I spent over 30 hour in the air or in airports. The content of the following passage has not really been edited and may ramble on at times. It is a flow of thought that is as unclear as as my mind at the time. Maybe I will get around to clarifying it, but not any time soon. Sincerely....Daniel James


So I am back in the USA. I really expected this to be a thrill, but I need to take into account the situation. It would be so much different had things been different. If I had been here to see my mother alive; If I had come when I had planed, and not so abruptly in the wake of her death. If I could have sat down and talked with her, I could sit down and show her the pictures. It would have been better…..if… if I came when I had the time in July instead of going to Vietnam, but I wasn’t thinking like that then now was I. Then I had only wanted to get another stamp in the passport. I only wanted to see another country that I had not seen before. I wanted to see what I had read about in high school history books, to see what so many movies had been made about. I wanted to see more. I wanted to be able to show my mother more. I had planned on coming back for Christmas. But I don’t know now, seeing how an important member won’t be here. Also I plan to spend at around 3 weeks for this visit.
At the moment of my writing this, I sit in LAX. These 8 hours in L.A. (I did leave the Airport) have taken some of the thrill out of being in a country that is familiar. I really have no love for L.A. So many people do, but I don’t. This place doesn’t have any integrity. It feels as false as many of the breasts I have seen here. Its also tremendously overpriced. I spent $50USD with the help of a beautiful Chinese woman I had sat next to on my trip back from Taipei. We went to a restaurant and ordered a glass of wine 2 beers and 2 appetizers. The place was interesting but not worth $50 bucks. I was slightly upset by the $150NT ($4USD) I paid for a beer at the Taiwan Airport before I got on my flight.
But enough with my somewhat bias feeling toward L.A. This trip isn’t about get back in touch with the vast country of my birth, but more importantly to get in touch with the woman who gave birth to me, To the mother that raised and nurtured me and my siblings. I am here for one important reason.
When I heard the news that she was in the hospital I was alarmed, but not shocked. She had been in the hospital on numerous occasions and she had come out just as many times. The feeling of anguish grew and grew as the day went by. I was waiting until morning in America to call and check in on her condition. I knew that I was going home from the moment I had talked to my youngest sister. I was just waiting to make my decision definitively. I had discussed the problem with friends in Taipei, and I had come to the conclusion that I would return regardless of how serious the matter had become. One year plus… so far away from the place I call home was more then enough. With a mother in the hospital I knew that I was going back, but yet I waited for morning in America to check up one last time. Unfortunately before I made my call home I received a call from my next older sister. She gave me the bad news. I was on the second floor of my Taipei apartment and I went out to the roof to talk to her. I wept and wept as it started to rain in Taiwan. It was evening there and morning here in the U.S. I was frustrated and overwhelmed. I didn’t know where to start. I didn’t know what to do. I wanted to get on the very first plane I could. I called my school’s director, and I asked her to help me. I ran around frantic. I told my director I need to go. She kept telling me that I needed to wait over night. I kept telling her no, I need to go. I was going crazy. I found myself throwing things into my bag and at moments pressing myself up against walls and weeping. While looking for various things I kept finding notes or other things that would remind me of her and it would start all over again. There was a lump in my throat that would not subside. I couldn’t eat or sleep for a full day plus.
Sunday in Taipei was awful. It rained with intensity. The wind blew hard and it all seemed to echo the feelings inside my heart and head. Eventually I was able to get on to a flight. My director came and helped me get the ticket paid for. She called the cab and made sure that I got to the correct terminal. I was concerned, I couldn’t get the time zones straight. Its hard to understand when you leave one airport at 7pm on a Sunday, fly for 12 hours and land at the next airport at 3:30pm on Sunday.
Its Monday morning now and I am in Atlanta. It’s September 11, 2006 exactly 5 years after the terrorist attacks. There has been a lot of security, but no major delays yet. If I get onto this flight without issue then I can go back to worrying about the more important things.
It’s easy to beat myself up about being so far away. Its easy to say that I should not have gone so far from home, that I should have went home more often or called more often or have written more often. I have been looking at emails sent by my mother. I keep finding ones that have my replies attached. In many I start off by apologizing for taking so long to reply to a previous message. I must say that I did get better at responding in a timely manner, but still I feel guilt for all the times it took me 2 or 3 days to respond. Yes, I was busy. I was caught up in my life. While all of these things hurt me, I am trying hard to be logical. In the occasional rare moment of clarity between the bouts of grief, I think that I shouldn’t beat myself. It’s too easy to say, “should have.”
I want to speak more of my mother. My mother was an amazing woman. Every child believes that their parents could have handled this or that differently, in many ways I am no different. What I do know is that my mother did the best that she possibly could. She tried hard and she was always there for me. I remember many times when I was upset and she was there. I remember how much time I spent talking with her after I went crazy in Iowa City. After I had been run through the ringer by a girl I should have known was going to be trouble. She had me so confused about my value as a human and it manifested in strange ways. I was so tore up that I started to think that I had serious physical ailments and that I was dying, because I felt like I was. It was hard to tell my mom all the ways I had failed, to tell her all the things I didn’t think she wanted to here, but there seemed to be no other choice. I didn’t really feel I could talk to anyone else about matters so personal. She was there and she offered no-nonsense advice. At the time I never thought that I was going to be able to recover, and now I only look back on those days to remind me of her compassion. I can think of numerous times when she had done this. I remember how she took me out to eat after I had lost the conference diving competition my freshmen year of high school. She was there to support me. She is responsible for helping me find the scholarship that allowed me to go to college. She also had a vast realm of knowledge that she would depart to me on occasion. It helped with my understanding of language and built much of my vocabulary. The other thing that she instilled in me was a love for travel, and this is one reason why I was on the other side of the world when she passed away. All of us children were lucky for this. We all had a chance to see much of the United States from the back of a van. I learned to be resourceful in a way that many of my peers are unable to understand. Because I know what it is like to do great things with more determination then resources. I find that many of my peers in school, travel companion, or co-works complained to no end about the most trivial inconveniences. I always thought my stoic outlook on life came from my father, but now I am starting to see the role she played. One great thing about the few years before leaving for Asia was that I had an opportunity to spend a lot of time with her. I was often asked to help her drive from one place to another (because of her fear of flying). I had driven her to Florida twice and to Portland Oregon. These trips gave us time to talk and to develop a relationship unlike the mother and son one. I was finally treated like a grown even though I had, and maybe still have, a lot of growing up to do. Initially when asked to do the first trip like this I felt burdened, but I learned soon after embarking that I was given a gift. Outside of these road trips I spent my last 3 years before leaving the U.S. in Davenport. And the memories from this time period helps to relieve the guilt I have for being gone so long. I was there whenever I could be; I was able to help her and my father. She had thanked me for this in the past. It was hard to leave, but I also needed to live my life. In a way I feel selfish for thinking of life in this way, but she made it clear that I did need to set out on my own. She encouraged my move to Taipei and I overheard her defend my decision when my father questioned it. She told me to go out and see the world. Again I only wish she could have seen me. I wish I could have sat with her and related the stories in a way that phone calls, emails and web-logs could not.