Untitled 07
I remember the first time we met.
It was a warm night in Tonsai, and I was chugging along on my one-girl drunk train, watching another cheesy comedy in Andaman’s.
A character in the movie made a pun.
I laughed aloud.
Alone.
None of the other 50 dirtbag climbers lounging about thought the joke had been funny. Which is impressive, considering the fact that half of them were most likely either high and/or drunk.
And then, from behind me, a few seconds later, I heard a laugh.
In retrospect, the person had probably been laughing at the fact that I had laughed, but in my drunken state, I assumed this person must have a sense of humor similar to my own and therefore we must be kindred spirits and must become friends immediately.
I turned around in my seat and began making conversation with the tall brunette and her friends.
I don’t even remember what I talked about, or why the brunette girl or you or your friends humored me, but you did. In my mind at least, we became fast friends. I invited your group to the party down at the beach, but everyone, including the brunette who had first laughed, turned me down—you all had just arrived in Tonsai that day, having completed the long multi-day bus trip from Laos, and so everyone was exhausted.
Everyone except you.
You were never too exhausted to hang out.
And just like that, we headed down to the beach to drink and kick it.
And just like that, we ended up climbing together the next day and the next day and for the next two months after that.
And just like that, when I came back to California later that year, we became housemates and told everyone that you had adopted me from the streets of Thailand.
And just like that, the seasons changed again and again and again, and suddenly we’d known each other for nearly 3 years since that first night in Tonsai.
And just like that, before I knew it, it ended.
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There are so many things I want to write about, but somehow I’m not ready to write them or they just come out somewhat awkward and distorted— like CGI from the early 2000’s, where characters didn’t blink quite often enough, had skin that wasn’t quite the right texture, and moved in not quite the right rhythm. Stuck in this uncanny valley that is just wrong enough to detract from reality rather than actually making anything good.
It’s painful, but I don’t know how to recreate you.
I don’t know how to put into words everything that made you amazing. I don’t know how to make someone understand how losing you could make so many people hurt so much.
And, at the same time, because of the passion and energy you burned with in life, how losing you could help so many people grow.
In the wake of your death, everyone who had met you felt immense grief over the loss of you in this world.
And, in the wake of your death, everyone who had met you wondered how they could better live in your honor and live with your philosophy of “Go big!”
Because you didn’t believe in “going home”. Just going big, all the time in everything you did.
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No matter how many times I turned you down, you always invited me to all your climbing trips.
In my defense, I worked a Monday-Friday, 9-5 job, and your climbing trips often extended way beyond the weekend.
Like when you invited me to go with you to Indian Creek (for 2 weeks).
Or to Cuba (for a month).
Or to Bishop (for the summer).
But there were many times when you invited me to smaller trips, just 3-4 days, or a week.
And even then, I’d turn you down.
Work, I said.
Couldn’t afford to take the time off.
In retrospect, I wonder, how much of that was me turning you down because I really couldn’t take the time off, and how much of that was me turning you down because it’s easier to go to work than it is to ask my manager for vacation days?
In these days following the accident, I’m trying hard to understand at what point am I doing something because I truly have to do it, and at what point am I doing something because it’s easy and expected?
I justify this by saying that I am saving up money for the future—future trips, future retirement, future accidents.
And I do think that working and saving money is important, exactly for these points.
But at what point am I using that as an excuse to live a safe, cookie-cutter life?
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There are so many thoughts and questions I have about you and your final moments, but I’ll never know the answers to most of them.
However, one thing I know is that in your 30 years, you gave and received multiple lifetimes’ worth of love and energy.
You loved and believed in everyone.
You understood better than anyone else that this was all most people wanted in their lives—validation and value.
And you gave both of those so easily and so completely.
If I could just be half as amazing as she thought I was…
Because you were completely convinced that every person was the best ever. And it wasn’t just empty words of encouragement. It was always evident in your eyes as you spoke with people—you were fully convinced they were really that great.
And in return, people loved you just as easily and just as completely.
Even if your life had been short in years, it had been overflowing with love and meaning the entire time.
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You always badgered me about my love life.
Or lack thereof.
“What about this boy? He’s pretty cute!”
I always grimaced. “No way!”
And you’d always exclaim, “Why not? Comoonnn just give him a shot!”
The honest truth is that I’m fairly terrified of actually getting close to people in any real sense. While outwardly extremely friendly, I rarely become close to people—quite the opposite from you who made best friends at every turn.
I wonder if your time working in the ER helped you understand the importance of loving without fear, without restraint. I wonder if it helped you understand that you didn’t have time to waste being limited.
But then I think, no, you must’ve been like this since long before working in the ER.
At the time, I dismissed your energy and friendliness as something that was a part of your personality and not for me.
But now, I wonder if you weren’t really on to something.
I wonder if I should also stop wasting time when it comes to loving others and loving life, without fear of failure or rejection.
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In the first hour after I heard about your death, I didn’t feel sad in a true sense. It was more like, I just heard some sad words (like war, inequality and sorry-we’re-all-out-of-mac-and-cheese-would-you-like-something-else-instead?) and therefore my body felt sad as a conditioned response. But I couldn’t be actually sad, because the words didn’t make sense.
How could you be gone?
But, as I called and messaged friends, I grew sadder and sadder.
At that time, I rarely saw you because you were spending most of your time in the Sierras climbing—so if I hadn’t known about your passing, I would have never guessed you were really gone. I would have assumed that you were just out climbing somewhere, and so in my mind, you could have continued to live for many more weeks and months .
The same was true for so many of our friends, who were living in other states or countries even. If they didn’t know, then as far as they were concerned, you’d still be alive.
And so, every time I broke the news to someone, it felt like I was killing you more and more.
Your smile, excited voice and happy laughter which once filled people’s memories now were replaced with images of your ending. The more people who knew, the more real death became.
And yet, is it horrible to say, that in many ways, now it feels like you’re more alive than ever before, at least in my mind?
These days, I find myself thinking through every action and choice by consulting the you that exists within me.
How can I do more for this person?
How can I love someone more?
How can I go even bigger?
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One day, as you and I walked across the beach in Tonsai, Ryan ran up to us laughing.
He’d been looking for us and had seen two people walking together. He thought—oh, maybe that’s Julia and Tammy! But then quickly realized that it was just some mother-daughter pair.
However, as he got closer, he realized the mother-daughter pair was really us!
You and I laughed, and took to it immediately. From then on, I regularly called you “mom” or “ma”, and you called me “kid” or “child” even though you were only 3 years older.
We continued that joke to the very end—when I finally met your climbing partner from your last day here, he mentioned that you’d told him about your adopted Asian daughter.
But you know, you really were my mom in many ways.
You taught me how to love the mountains and multipitch and crack climb because up to that point I’d mostly done single-pitch sport climbing.
You taught me how to car camp because in Asia none of the climbers had cars to carry around stoves or real cooking supplies.
You taught me how to make pasta-Braggs-and-yeast, your favorite meal.
How to boil artichokes because I’d never cooked artichokes in my entire life and how to eat it with butter and mayonnaise, but is that really a thing that everyone does or just you, because that still kinda weirds me out.
How to not sweat the small stuff like food and gas and splitting bills because the important stuff is being with friends and having a good time.
So many things, big and small.
And even now, I’m still learning so much from you.
These days, every morning, I wake up and I wonder if I actually need to get out of bed. I wonder if it actually matters if I go to work on time or go to work at all.
To be honest, working is kinda challenging right now.
But the you that exists within me refuses to let me wither away.
It tells me to get the fuck out there and get shit done.
There are best friends to be made, adventures to be had.
There’s a life out there that needs to be lived.