Ninja Grief strikes again.

This time, the door was left wide open for an attack from visiting with Ray and Hsiao-yen who were in town from Hawaii last night.

Ray and Hsiao-yen go back a long way with my parents.  Ray and my dad went to college and grad school together.  Naturally, when my mom came over with my dad during graduate school, the wives were buddies as well.  I knew them my whole life even though we were living in different countries.  And of course, my recent visit to Hawaii to attend Ray’s daughter’s wedding has strengthen this lifelong bond.

Last night after dinner, Brandon drove me out to La Mirada where they were staying last night to drop some stuff off.  We didn’t expect them to be home already but they were.  So we went in for a visit. We talked about our families, work, and politics.  And of course, the subject of mom came up.We recounted our last time we saw her alive.  Ray saw her when we was still talking.  I saw her not long before she passed.  I didn’t want to go there, but we sort of ended up there anyway.  How could you hang out with your family friends and not go there?

Telling someone new that my mom passed away, I expect that to hurt and it does.  But I never quite expect that remembering my mom with friends of the family would be equally painful.

Being with Ray and Hsiao-yen last night was like being in the living room with my dad and my mom again.  They are one of the closest people I have to my family.  Being there with them brought me great joy and at the same time great longing to have my family put back the way we were before.

I want my mommy and daddy, dammit.

I guess I have been trying to put everything about my mom’s passing away.  You know, I’m trying to get on with my life.  Most days I can do that successfully, but of course the feelings do surface occasionally.

Once in a while, this grief would pop up and swing that 3×4 of Pain and Sadness quite literally right in my chest.  Sometimes I deflect the blow and walk away with a few tears in my eyes.  And sometimes, like today, I get knocked off my feet and reduced into a puddle of tears, especially when the 3×4 is wrapped in barb wire of Homesickness.

Like today.

I cried while getting ready for work, and it just didn’t want to stop.  I had to call in sick.

Maybe it is because I didn’t grief properly like Olaina once wrote about Justin’s way of dealing with his mom’s death.  But then like Celeste told me, these sad days are going to continue for quite a while.

Things happen for a reason though.  I mean, this entire chapter started with a chance meeting two days ago.

On Monday, Nhien asked me to help her bring up a few boxes of stationery from our messenger waiting curbside.  As we rolled our dollies out of our building, I spotted a guy that looked remarkably like Ray.  It couldn’t be Ray…could it?

He swung around again, and now I saw that it was indeed Ray.  I called out to him.

Ray was out of context to me at first glance.  I too was out of context for him, he said.  So out of context that it took him a few more seconds to realize who I was.

“What are you doing here!?” I asked as I hugged him.

“Actually, I’m lost,” he said.

“Where were you going to?”

“XXX Flower Street.”

“You’re in front of it!”

“Seriously?”

“Yes!  THIS is my building too!”

Serendipity is the word Ray used.

I was meant to go downstairs to run into Ray and effectively help to find where he was going. I was meant to get to Ray’s place late last night so we could visit instead of just dropping off stuff.  I was meant to be with my “family”.  I was meant to remember my mom.

Buddha/God/Gods/My karma/The Universe wants me to deal with my grief and to remember what it is like to have a family, to be with the parent figures.  It was a round and about way of doing it but He/She/They/It makes damn sure I get there.

Now, if He/She/They/It could turn down the volume knob on my crying, that would be awesome.