Alan loved Korean cinema. Uncle Steve had given me and Mom books on Korean films years earlier, but for Alan, the interest grew in the last few years. He took a course on violence in Korean film, and was excited to be in this class because the professor had an interest in phenomenology. There was a focus on the movies of Park Chan-wook.
I had wanted to see Snowpiercer with him, but he backed out and said he would watch it with a friend instead. I don't know if he ever made it to the movie while it was playing here. I still haven't seen it, but I think it's on Netflix now.
His movies spanned genres, and while always somewhat dark, were not all ultra-violent. His biggest success was with his Vengeance trilogy, of which Oldboy was the middle. This trilogy would stretch almost anyone's tolerance for violence, both physical and emotional. I wonder if this was the scale of emotion that ran behind Alan's quiet exterior. He was so hard to read.
College afforded Alan the possibility of being the one who knew more about a topic when he talked with me. That didn't happen very often, given my breadth of trivial knowledge and our nearly 10 year age gap. When he talked about the use of color desaturation in these films, or the phenomenological themes, he was able to teach instead of be taught. This knowledge added a new and stimulating dimension to our relationship.
Hidden in all the tough conversations about his troubles, in all the silly conversations, the mundane comments made as we passed each other in the house, was this new, more adult character to our brotherhood. I mourn the loss of his future, and selfishly what I lost in our future together.
Alan liked the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Karen O, the lead singer, is mixed Korean-American. She had a way of looking very uncomfortable, but being comfortable with that, if that makes any sense. There's an awkward charm there, an anti-charisma.
The band's sound is unique, too, with no bassist. They make it work.
We used to try to teach Alan to be proud of his heritage, and equally proud of being Korean and white, exploring his Danish heritage (and German and English and a smattering of other stuff), the Iowa in him. When he was little, the school district would only let him put one ethnicity on their demographic forms. One year, they listed, "Other -- Alan." I told them to put "(Cauc)asian." I called him our little rice cracker.
And I think Alan was proud of his heritage. His friends would sometimes call him "aran," lightheartedly poking at stereotypes. He ate ebleskiver and kimchi. He was a carnivorous emo panda.
Once upon a time, we had a white station wagon we had gotten from the son of a neighbor. It was not without flaws. The front seat rocked on its hinges whenever Dad got in the driver's seat. There were a variety of other problems, too. But one thing it had was a seat that folded up out of the back hatch area. This seat only fit two people, and it faced backwards. Alan used to call this seat the "way way back," a term later used for the backmost row of seats in the van.
When Alan sat in the way way back, he and I would get to goof around even more than usual. Sometimes, we would sing goofy songs.
The more annoying and repetitive, the better!
The way way back has a special place in my heart, and I sometimes wish I could go there now.
As I mentioned in an earlier entry, Alan and I were always sharing internet memes and YouTube videos with each other. I talked about the last one he shared with me. This is one of the first I shared with him -- the literal music video for Total Eclipse of the Heart.
One of the first videos he shared with me was this one (warning: a bit disturbing):
This video actually predates YouTube. He showed it to me on an earlier video sharing site, the name of which I have totally forgotten. You may recognize the animation, by Don Hertzfeldt. He does the Pop Tarts "crazy good" commercials now. And the music, by Beethoven.
Now, these videos make me remember good times with him goofing off. They make me happy, but not quite like they used to. With the passing weeks, I see a bit more fondness in reminiscence, a bit less sadness in loss. I am hopeful that this trend will continue.
Have you heard the one about the guy who wanted to name his dog America? Then if it ran away, he could say he's gone to look for America...
Alan didn't just listen to music in the car with me. Most of the time, he forced all of us to listen to his music. Among other things, this did allow him to bond with Dad about a lot of the old music he used to listen to. Old albums, famous live performances, trivia about groups from back then, this was one thing that he truly loved to talk about with Dad.
Sometimes, people would ask me how Alan and I were brothers, perhaps not noticing the Asian in him. Or they would ask if Dad was my real dad. And I would explain that Dad raised both of us, and that even though they were technically my stepfather and half-brother, they were as real a family as any.
Our relationships underwent many permutations over the years. Before Alan was in the picture, Dad was working out of the home, and Mom was at work in the office. He and I spent the summers together, and he was the one I wanted to tuck me in at night. He was my Suzuki "mom" and my companion, and he was so patient with me and my endless inquisitiveness.
When Alan came along, Dad was still the parent at home more, but they seemed to have more traditional parental roles with him. Dad would sometimes take Alan on his team when we played games, and we would compete "brown hairs versus black hairs." Other times, it was parents versus kids.
When Alan started pulling away hard, Mom was working in New York. In many ways, it was Dad who was most immediately affected by it. He was the one back in Appleton with Alan, trying so hard to connect with him, try so hard to keep him out of trouble. The stress of this clearly took a toll on Dad. I remember Dad counting down the days until Alan turned 18 so that he wouldn't be legally responsible for him and his escapades any more.
So, when Alan lived with them in the Madison area after they all regrouped down there, it was touching to see them connect over music again. It gave them something to talk about other than Alan's struggles.
I know it's not yet Thanksgiving, but this is about Christmas. If the retail stores and TV shows can do it, so can I.
Christmas was always a special time for our family. We always spent it together, almost always in Sioux City. We had a tradition of opening one present on Christmas Eve, and saving the rest for Christmas morning. The year Alan's Christmas Eve present was a sweater did NOT go well.
Alan and I ended up together on a hide-a-bed in the den or the basement. When he was little, he used to ask me questions about Santa. One year, he started to question whether Santa was real, and I convinced him to let it go. By the next year, he had it figured out.
This was the most consistent time we got to spend with Great-Grandma Bailey, and it was a big day for her because it was her birthday. When I was little, she was a stern and silent woman who seemed to spend more time harumphing than talking with us. But by the time Alan came along, she had mellowed. She started to joke around with us, and she and Alan definitely had a special relationship. Grandma used to have to separate them because they were poking each other under the dinner table too much.
Grandma had an organ, and would often start it up and play some hymns. As he got older, Alan would try to sight-read some of them, but then eventually ended up playing All Along the Watchtower instead. Alan was never really as into Christmas music as I was when I was little, but there was a special bond over Silent Night. This was Great-Grandma's favorite.
Still, Christmas makes me think of Great-Grandma, and the things she liked remind me of Christmas. She loved owls and cardinals. She loved ebleskiver. She and Alan were never big eaters, but they could both pack away those little pancake UFOs like nobody's business.
When she was dying at 99 years old, Alan was right there for her. He held her hand, rubbed her back. At the funeral, he fainted. Mary and I took him on a drive to find a bathroom and to have some time to recover.
Theirs was a beautiful relationship. Christmas felt so different after she was gone. And now, with Alan gone, too, it will surely change again. Maybe they're together again, poking each other under some table far away.
Like most people, I guess, Alan and I both liked the Beatles. We had the Beatles Rock Band game, we had debates about the relative talents and attributes of each member, and talked about which songs were our favorite.
While we both like the classics like A Day in the LifeandWhile My Guitar Gently Weeps, we each had other songs that we particularly liked. For Alan, the obvious one was Let it Be. one of his theme songs. However, it was actually a post-Beatles Lennon song that Alan probably listened to the most.
That idealistic spirit, that hope for the world to be a better place, it fit him.
For me, it was In My Life.
There was something about the piano bridge. It reminded of a piece Alan played way back when:
The words sound like they are to a lover, but for me, that person that meant more than anyone else was always Alan. When we were both young, Dad used to tell me not to parent him because he would resent it some day. He never did. As I got older, I learned how to guide him, teach him, raise him, without being seen as "one of the parents." Over the years, I have planned my vacations, my work schedule, and where I worked around him. He was a big part of why I went to school where I did, my decision to take my fellowship offer, and my decision to buy a house. When I bought my car, I made sure he would get my old one. Now that he is gone, there is a strange sense of freedom, but not in a good way. I feel like I am floundering, rebuilding what my purpose in life is.
The truth is, though, that most of what I did in my life did not relate to him. My decision to be a physician, to research the brain, to take care of patients, none of this really had anything to do with him. I didn't do it to provide for him; he had Mom and Dad for that. I didn't do it to set a good example or make him proud, though of course I always hoped to. Reminding myself of this, that I have a life of my own, that Alan was really only one part of it, is hard. Figuring out how to focus on myself again is tough. How did I do it before? How was I able to get all my work done and take care of myself and spend time with Isabelle, and still have time to take care of him when things went wrong? I never thought I would miss the 2 a.m. calls, but that's exactly what I find myself doing now.
I think in the end, one thing that keeps me going is knowing that the world is a better place for having had Alan in it. And that we can continue to make it a better place by honoring his memory, not just by doing things that were meaningful to him, but by keeping going, doing our own things, enriched by our years with him in our lives, fondly remembering that brilliant light he shone wherever he went, shadows and all.
Alan's Korean was pretty limited. He could ask for grilled meat, water, money, and cigarettes. When he tried to ask where the bathroom was (hwajangshil), he accidentally asked where to find a famous battlefield from the year 660 (Hwangsanbeol).
But when he was little, he did learn a single children's song in Korean.
Little things like this remind me of how Korean we grew up. As American as our household was, we had kimchi at almost every meal. Some of Alan's favorite snacks as a baby were from the Korean grocery store (those little pancakes with red bean paste in the middle, for instance). He loved tteokbokki, soft rice cakes in a spicy chili sauce. He was equally as likely to make Korean ramen noodles with mandu thrown in as he was to make Easy Mac.
In the song, the mountain rabbit's response is that he is going to the mountaintop to get chestnuts to share. It's still hard to believe he's not coming back sometimes.
One day, almost exactly 4 years ago, Alan did one of those Facebook things where you hit shuffle on your playlist and post what songs come up. I present his playlist below, with our comments from Facebook, but no other commentary.
1. It Aint' Me Babe (Dylan)
2. Street Walkin' (Auerbach)
3. I Can't Help It (Williams)
4. Shitbox (Noisia)
5. Chain That Door (Mudhoney)
6. Queen Jane Approximately (Dylan)
7. The Last Time (Cash)
8. Spaceships (Jeremiah Nelson and The Achilles Heel)
9. Little Red-Haired Girl (Ezra Furman and The Harpoons)
10. If Not For You (Dylan)
11. Pour Me Another (Atmosphere)
12. Crumb Begging Baghead (Babyshambles)
13. Most Likely You Go Your Way (Dylan)
14. Sky Pager (A Tribe Called Quest)
15. Attention (The Raconteurs)
Me: So, I decided to do this, and discovered some artists I had forgotten about. Just to give you an idea, 5 classical, 5 jazz, 4 contemporary, 1 video game music.
By the end of the Harry Potter movie craze, Alan was too old to care. In fact, by the time the last book came out, I don't think he read it. But he was totally into the early books. Once, he went to a Harry Potter event at Barnes and Noble, and won some Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans by answering correctly that the original name of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone was Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. He did have trouble pronouncing "philosopher," which came out more like "fill-officer."
Little Alan was so cute and so smart. He used to come home with flawless speed math worksheets. He was often one of the top two in his class. He was meticulously organized. He was pleasant and polite with everyone. While I had a meltdown at most of my birthday parties, he was the consummate host, making sure everyone knew how much he liked their present.
He was rigid about what was just and what was right. He got upset when that was messed with. When his friend was careless and broke the egg Alan was taking care of for an extended school assignment, he was devastated. When he caught a friend lying to him, he was ready to call off the friendship.
There were the foundations of the wall he built later in his life. Even as a toddler, he could shut out other people if he was focused on something else. When he came home from school, we never got more than a word or two about what happened that day.
He had an infectious smile, not that delayed slow to come on grin he later developed, but just an unbridled smile of pure joy. The excitement in his eyes to see me was enough to make me forget whatever other problems I had at the time. He was game for almost anything. When I was a freshman at Lawrence, he let me close him up into a large computer box and roll it around the floor. He used to beg to go back in the box when he came to visit me. Once, while I was pushing the box around, we ran into Lara Waters in the elevator -- her getting in, us getting out. Right as the doors to the elevator were closing, she heard a tiny voice say, "Can I get out of the box now?"
That Alan was gone a long time ago, but you could see how he grew up to be the man he was. Now, in missing him, I also miss all those other versions of him as he grew up, all the facets that made him a real human being.
Alan barely made it to college at all. With the exception of a few windows of motivation (the time he went on a tour of Columbia, for instance), he really just kind of shut down when college was brought up. Mom really pushed him to look into Beloit. It was in many ways similar to Lawrence, my alma mater. However, Alan felt that Lawrence had become somewhat uppity since I went there. It just didn't fit his persona. I also think he wanted to break free of Appleton. We both loved many things about the town, but Alan saw it as a reminder of the tough times he had there, the limits of small cities in the Midwest. These feelings were even more accentuated by his summers and Thanksgivings in New York, which gave such a stark contrast to the Fox Valley.
Beloit was in many ways not that different, and in many ways was more limiting than Appleton, but it had the vibe he was looking for. We first saw that vibe through Martina Pfefferle, who was graduating from Beloit when Alan was applying. Alan and my parents got to see a presentation she gave about music during times of oppression.
So, when a couple years later, I brought up the Shostakovich String Quartet #8 and played it in my car for him, he had already heard a lot about the situation.
In brief, Stalin had told Shostakovich he could only write happy music extolling the virtues of Communism. When he came up with this number, it must really have been a huge two-hands-waving-middle-fingers f--- you. He must have been willing to die for this music. Shostakovich dedicated the piece to "the victims of fascism and war," despite the clear references to Jewish folk music, the dark humor and parody that link the music not to abstract concepts from Western Europe, but to the concrete reality at home. Not only did he write this piece of vitriol in that political setting, but he signed it repeatedly with his name, the "DSCH" motif (D-Eb-C-B by their German denotations) that forms a main theme throughout.
Alan appreciated that passion, that pain, and that virtue. Maybe he understood the suicidality as well.
In filmmaking, I think he probably could have found a way to express himself in a way that would work through themes out in the open. He seemed so impatient to get to that stage. He wanted to do meaningful work, not class projects with classmates he didn't respect or give a damn about. He would have done anything to jump ship and start working in the industry if he could, if it got him a step closer to being able to make films that meant something to him. I wish he could have waited.
Alan and I played a fair deal of Rock Band, but it was usually me who wanted to play. In retrospect, it wasn't playing this game that brought us together. It was talking about the music. I heard so many stories about his life that I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have heard otherwise.
He told me about his friend who could, in full-out voice, sing this song.
He told me about seeing the Flaming Lips at Summerfest. He told other stories about Summerfest, things that were awesome, and things that were not so awesome, breathtaking performances, trouble he got in.
I guess it was just an opportunity to bond. Sometimes, I got the sense he was almost just doing it to humor me. Sometimes, I felt like he was testing me, seeing if he could divulge some bit of himself without my judging him. I think I usually passed the test, but other times, maybe not.
One of the shows that Alan and Isabelle and I all enjoyed was Futurama. It had just the right mix of Simpsons style and wit, and Family Guy edge.
When Mom and Dad lived in DeForest, we spent a lot of time in the basement watching episodes of Futurama and Star Trek. We watched weird movies. We discussed the weird little trivia about these shows, like the episode of Enterprise that seems to be ripped off from a Voyager episode. Concerning Futurama, two big things came up: that the theme song was from an old French piece from the early days of electronic music.
The other was that Leela's name was from the Turangalîla-Symphonie by Messiaen. It seems there were a lot of links to weird modern French music. When I looked more into this particular piece of music, I decided that it was one of my life goals to own an ondes Martenot.
This was a time of transition for Alan. He had really face-planted after dropping out of school at Beloit, but after a couple months of moping, he started to pull himself together. He was more goal-oriented than he had been in a long time academically. We only got little tastes of his struggles -- the injuries from jumping a fence impulsively one night, the occasional pulling away from our inquiries. We really had hope that things were going to continue to get better.
Who knew that Gangnam Style would take off like it did? Alan and I loved this song, going through the requisite stages of ironically liking, then ironically ironically liking, then just liking. It was our go-to song to play in the car to stay awake while driving. We learned the lyrics. We learned the horse dance. We talked about going as Psy and the guy in the yellow suit (see the 1:50 mark) for Halloween, but by Halloween, everyone was going as Psy, so we scrapped that idea.
Alan showed some Korean pride when Psy broke all the YouTube records, and when he broke the internet with his AMA on Reddit. He followed all the new songs, the new interviews. We had inside jokes about the song. We one-shotted coffee. No, wait, that was soju.
For those of you who aren't familiar with Korean culture, Gangnam is the fancy rich area of Seoul south of the Han River. Oppa is what a girl calls her big brother, but is also what many women call male friends. There's some subtlety here, though. If they see the male friend as much older, they may call him ajeossi, or uncle. Guys strive to be an oppa, not an uncle. This is a song about a funny looking dude explaining that he may not be sexy or popular, but he's still an oppa, and he's got style. It's pretty tongue-in-cheek. The description of the Gangnam girl he's looking for is equally tongue-in-cheek, but essentially is about someone who is all business during the day, but knows how to cut loose at night.
Alan generally wasn't seen as an oppa or an uncle. I think most girls saw him as their adorable dongsaeng, or little brother. He left behind a trail of girls that wanted to take care of him, cared deeply about him, and tried to break through his shell to help him. Many of them remained his friends, even if he pushed them away.
Alan did have his own style, and we saw it evolve over time. The first signs of sadness really came to the forefront when he started high school. He had this kind of emo thing going on. Mom called it kindergarten Goth. He let his hair grow swoopy (this was just a bit pre-Bieber). He made sure to look sufficiently puppy-dog-eyed and pathetic in all his photos. One year, he participated in his high school's haunted house. On one of the nights, Alan's makeup turned out a bit funny. Usually, thick black makeup was applied in hollows of his eye sockets following the bony ridges of his face, but that night, the black areas were made a bit too round. Instead of looking like some sort of ghoul with blood dripping out of his mouth, he looked more like a panda (with blood dripping out of his mouth). Hence, the nickname, "carnivorous emo panda."
That look required a lot of upkeep. He was showering and trimming his hair multiple times a day. As high school continued, there was a shift. He started becoming more and more hipster, but also struggled with things like sleeping and showering regularly. He wore skinny jeans and ironic plaid. He switched between Birkenstocks, Converses, and boat shoes. He wore sunglasses in all weather. But strangely, it seemed like there was still so much upkeep. How could he spend so much time primping and still look dirty and unkempt? Once, Uncle Steve told him that it looked like he couldn't decide if he wanted to look metro or homeless. He suggested that his style should be called, "hobosexual."
As time went by, being hipster was too in, so he went with a more authentic homeless look. He buzzed the side and back of his hair. He wore thrift store and toss-off jackets. He wore way too many layers. His pants were sometimes more hole than fabric. Is it any wonder he struggled to find a job at times?
Through it all, he was clearly Alan, through and through. And through it all, he was my dongsaeng.
I mentioned before that Alan was my movie buddy. The last two movies we saw were X-Men: Days of Future Past and Guardians of the Galaxy. I guess this makes sense; we both loved Marvel Comics growing up. In fact, I recently found a drawing he made me when I moved away for medical school that included the things we shared, which apparently were: Marvel Comics, music, Great America. I guess this is what was important to 10 year old Alan.
For Alan, it was usually Spider-Man. I guess that makes sense. He was a loner who was misunderstood and under-appreciated, driven by a deep need to be good. He was haunted by the consequences of failing to do so. He was pensive, and had a constant inner dialog.
For me, it was the X-Men. Also misunderstood and under-appreciated, they banded together to make the world a better place.
Neither of us had read the relatively obscure comics that led to the Guardians of the Galaxy movie, but we both looked forward to it. Here's the trailer -- the most iconic part at 1:51, if you want to skip ahead.
As you can see, the soundtrack was big on oldies.
Anyway, I guess we both outgrew comic books, but this was still something we shared. It's funny, the more I think about it, Alan was always the person I wanted to spend the most time with. He wasn't sociable or pleasant all the time, and he clearly didn't always want to be around me. We each had our own lives with our own friends as well. As much as I know he cared about me, it's clear I always cared more about him. Ours was a difficult relationship to describe. We were clearly brothers, but we were truly friends as well. He saw me as another parental figure, but not exactly as a parent. He was able to tell me things he wouldn't tell Mom or Dad. He would come to me for help when he didn't want to go to someone else.
Part of this was because he seemed to want to compartmentalize his problems -- to split them up into ones he could tell me, tell them, tell his friends. Each of us got a different little part of the picture. Maybe he did it to prevent any of us from seeing to whole thing, his pain in its entirety. Maybe he was afraid of what we would do to try to help him. Regardless the reason, it's made for a complicated task now that he is gone to figure out exactly who he was. I was poised in a position to see more of the picture than most, but of course, my view, and this blog as its outgrowth, is so limited -- such a small fragment of Alan.
Alan often watched shows that I had watched when I was younger. When I got Netflix, the whole family started mooching off my account. Alan went through a lot of the old X-Files episodes, and it was great to be able to share this with him.
He was far too young when the show was on, but he seemed so interested in what I was into back in the day. My favorite story about this theme song is a story told by David Duchovny on some talk show. Apparently, Mark Snow, the composer, told him that there are lyrics to this song:
" The X-Files is a show
With music by Mark Snow...."
I find myself wanting to believe things about Alan -- to assign significance to every little thing. But the Scully in me shuts it all down. One thing I have learned in this time of grief and recovery is that it's okay to be a bit out there. If it gets you through the day, go with it.
One of the first bands that I listened to, and got Alan into, was a group called Jim's Big Ego. I had heard them at NACA (the same place we booked Retta), and the mix of self-deprecating humor and wit just struck me as cool.
They have never been a huge mainstream hit, but NPR kind of adopted them for a while. Alan and I loved some of their sillier songs. This was the first song...
Alan and I had matching Jim's Big Ego tee-shirts. Alan's was a medium, and he still had it all these years later. He could still fit into those shirts from when he was 9. I found it in his dresser last week. Another example:
Despite our very different styles, there was a surprising
large segment of the Venn diagram in the middle -- the stuff we both
liked. Of course, the classical, the cartoons, the jazz, the dorky
stuff, but also this stuff -- the random, goofy stuff that managed to be
both happy-go-lucky and dark.
Our last big road trip was to New Orleans this May. Alan invited Laura to come along as well. We took two cars, and drove all the way from Iowa City, stopping in Memphis on the way down, and in Little Rock on the way back up.
On the way down, Mom rode with us for much of the way, and I helped her edit some translations she was working on. Having a blog entry about New Orleans and Memphis without any jazz or blues seems like kind of a travesty, but there really wasn't that much on our trip. There was this, which you could argue fills the role, kind of.
We spent quite a bit of time trying to teach Mom the acceptable pronunciations of the name of the city, New Orleans. We discussed that most northerners used the acceptable "new ORlins" pronunciation, but that "NAWlins" was the local pronunciation, especially casually. We discussed the much debated "new orLEENZ" as likely not acceptable. And that "new OH-lee-ins" was definitely wrong.
Other than that, and a few street performers, the closest we got to jazz and blues was when I was whistling this little tune I had stuck in my head. Alan thought it was an old blues classic, and tried really hard to place it, but in truth, it was just from the intro to something very different:
(radio-safe version)
The trip was a blur of activity. We ate Memphis barbecue, boudin, boudin balls, jambalaya, fried chicken, po'boys, and drank hurricanes, even Grandma (especially Grandma?). I bought pralines for Isabelle. We saw alligators on the bayou, visited the pharmacy museum, went on a cemetery tour, and went to a crawfish boil. For Grandpa's birthday, we got chocolate cake.
One day, I ventured off on my own and went to not one, but two different hot sauce bars. These places had counters full of hot sauces to sample, including ones that required signing waivers. I made a horrible mistake at these hot sauce bars: I tried the waiver-signing hot sauces on an empty stomach. I left to join the rest of the family, and suddenly, a couple minutes after walking out of the store, the mix of habanero, red savina, Carolina Reaper, scorpion pepper, capsaicin aquaresin, capsaicin oleoresin, and ghost pepper made its way from my well-lined stomach to my not-so-well-lined duodenum. I decided to sit town on the curb outside Jackson Square to let it pass, and it did. So, I got back up and joined Mom and the grandparents at a bar. As they finished and we went to leave, the next batch of hellfire hit my small intestine, and I felt myself being turned inside out from within again. This time, I was afraid I was actually going to pass out from the pain, so I sat down again, and then had to lie down on the sidewalk. Now, the police are pretty used to seeing people lying on the sidewalk in the French Quarter, so they were immediately at my side asking my family if I had been drinking. Mom had to explain that I was a doctor, that I was fine, and that it was hot sauce-related. I got up, and met the rest of the family at the restaurant where I slammed a glass of milk and ate some food. The family asked if I had learned my lesson, and I said I had. I would make sure there was food in my stomach before trying the hot sauces again. I'm not sure if that's the lesson they were talking about.
Alan started his search for tarot cards, but couldn't find what he wanted. He ended up ordering some online, and did many a reading this summer for himself and his friends.
One night, we went swimming. Alan had been a competitive swimmer as a kid, but Laura didn't know how to swim, so she waded with us. On the way back up to the hotel rooms, I saw myself in the mirror, and was kind of horrified. My hair had become a stringy wavy mess, my eyes were bloodshot from the chlorine, and I reminded myself of something I had seen before, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Then I remembered.
At 2:09. Yeah, not good.
I had to leave early, so Mom stayed in New Orleans with Grandma and Grandpa, and I left with Alan and Laura. On the drive back, we read stories, entries on this weird website about strange monsters and phenomena, and talked. In Little Rock, we went to the Clinton Presidential Library and Museum.
This trip was an island of getting along in a time of a lot of tension. Alan and Laura, my parents and me, there were lots of things going on. That's not to say that we got along perfectly all the time, but it was nice. We truly got to connect and mend. But, again, it was an island. Afterwards, real life returned, and things fell apart.
I'm slowly learning to be thankful for the good times we had instead of focusing on the fact that they will never happen again. In dreams where I catch glimpses of Alan, he's always having fun, and we're never serious. It's never about him being dead. As much as I long to have another serious conversation with him, maybe these dreams are the universe's way of showing me that he's okay. Or his way of giving me another little good time, even now that he is gone.
Alan and I loved watching the anime work of Shinichiro Watanabe. He usually stumbled across them on adult swim on Cartoon Network, and I on the internet or through my nerdy med school friends (shout out to Linda!). The two we bonded over were Cowboy Bebop and Samurai Champloo. Both were just as much about the soundtrack as they were about the story and visuals, Bebop with its jazz and Champloo with its hip hop.
Memories include:
-- watching part of an episode in Steve and Twyla's basement on one of our solo trips to Minneapolis without Mom and Dad
-- watching Bebop sitting on the couch in the living room in Appleton, trying to explain the concept to Dad, with limited success
-- watching Champloo in Galena with the cousin when we had a mini family reunion there. That was same trip where Anna said her head looked too big in a photo because she was "more fronter," and where I won Hide and Seek by hiding in the cabinet under the counter in the kitchen.
-- Debating with Alan that Bebop was one of the few anime where the English dub was better than the original Japanese voices (which I still believe)
-- Debating which series was better. Alan originally thought Champloo, but I think he came around to my view on that one eventually.
-- Listening to the opening theme to Bebop in Alan's room in my house, reminiscing about the old times.
-- Discovering the music on his favorites playlist in preparing this blog.
Looking back at the themes of the series, Cowboy Bebop is about loneliness, betrayal and loyalty, and love gone wrong. Samurai Champloo is about quests for the unattainable, persecution, and the meaning of dignity. We watched them before these concepts would have much real-life meaning to Alan. It's almost as if they presaged the struggles in his life. Or maybe the seeds were already there, the roots starting to make their way into his heart.
As Alan got more and more into film, he started to go through all the classic directors and tried to watch their most iconic films. In fact, going through Alan's old things, I stumbled across a piece of paper that he and Uncle Steve had written all over on one of our family Fountain City excursions. Under the name of each of several dozen directors was each of their most important films, like a checklist or a syllabus.
When Mom and Dad still lived in Waunakee, we sat down one afternoon to watch Once Upon a Time in the West, the Sergio Leone classic.
Watching it, you could totally see both sides of the perennial argument about this film: it is one of the greatest films ever made, and it is totally cheeseball. The music is clearly a part of making it both of those things.
The haunting sound of the harmonica in the movie represents the search for vengeance for the loss of a beloved brother against the man who caused his death. It's easy to see how, in times of great loss, anger can develop naturally out of the pain. Sometimes, it helps assuage guilt, another by-product of the loss of a loved one. Sometimes, in the case of suicide, blaming something or someone else allows you to be angry, but not angry at the one you lost. And sometimes, there are places those pointing fingers land that are justified, legitimate and productive.
For Alan, I find myself not pointing fingers at people. But here are the things I would go after with my harmonica.
Mental healthcare barriers
Alan had full access to mental healthcare. He was lucky to be insured and to have a family that encouraged him strongly to seek it out. He had counselors and psychiatrists who worked with him hard to keep his anxiety and depression at bay.
So then, why is this on my list -- when he didn't seem to have barriers to care? The situation is so much more complicated than that. When Alan was younger, it was tough to recognize that he was depressed. He probably went much longer than he should have before getting treatment. He must have known that what he was going through was not right, but maybe he didn't realize it was not normal. And when he did, he had to convince everyone of it.
When Alan did start taking antidepressants, he did not react well to them. Most made him so sleepy, he could not function. Some made him feel so numb, he blamed them for making things worse because he would be getting yelled at, and not even be able to care about the argument going on. He felt that they made some of the worst arguments in his life worse. He had such a hard time figuring out how to adjust them, and his personality and the depression itself made it hard for him to communicate with a doctor what was working or not. Even with a seemingly long list of medications to choose from, there are really only a few classes of medications available. While many people respond well to one of the first couple they try, this is not the case for everyone.
It was even harder to get Alan to a good counselor. Talk therapy is tough business, and very individual. It can be very tricky to find the right person to work with, and for them to find the right strategy to work with the patient. He saw some that were fluffy and bubbly, not a fit for him. He saw some that were so easily intimidated by the situation that they didn't stick with him. They may have been great therapists for others, but not for Alan.
Getting good mental healthcare doesn't just mean having access to one person. It means getting hooked up to a system. Even for Alan, with the privileges he had, this was a struggle. What about for the many people out there who don't have those privileges? Or don't know in the new insurance landscape what is available to them? What about people that are so scared by the stigma of mental illness that they don't get help when they know they need it? Or that don't know enough about mental illness to know that they have it?
In other words, this is a societal problem. When having the access Alan had is not enough, it speaks to a much larger problem in the community.
I hope you will all consider taking some action here. Whether it means opening your mind to education about mental illness and healthcare, donating to good causes such as the National Alliance on Mental Illness or to smaller local causes such as this one.
Consider raising your voice politically to help protect mental healthcare parity, the idea that these illnesses should be treated, covered, and thought of like physical ailments, not as some special lesser class. Sign petitions. Go to events to show your support. Help fund research to find better treatments, to provide more resources.
Reach out to friends and loved ones that you see struggling with mental illness. As a society, we need to break the stigma. And while not everyone will want to talk about it, we can start slowly working on breaking down those barriers.
These websites work by posting your mug shot, and then a sister website will offer to remove it, for a fee. At least six states have taken action against these operations, but Iowa and Wisconsin are not among them. I know I haven't shied away from Alan's legal issues, and that's mostly because I personally do not find shame in them. Alan was a good person, and his digressions were relatively minor. But a mug shot does not tell that story.
I don't know what legal or political action can be taken to do something about this, but this is an industry that should not exist, and should be taken down.
Bullying
We make such a big deal out of bullying in grade schools nowadays. And we should. It's totally not appropriate, and for so many kids, they don't know how to get help when it happens to them. I remember growing up, and when I was bullied, I somehow ended up being the one who got in trouble. Reporting it was called tattling. Defending yourself physically was seen as unacceptable -- zero tolerance.
I remember seeing a video of a nerdy kid getting picked on by a classmate outside. When he feels physically threatened, the nerd lashes out, seriously injuring the bully. He was severely punished for this, and told that he had used excessive force. Pardon me, but that kid is not trained in self defense. He is not a professional law enforcement officer or soldier. In today's zero tolerance world, it's probably safer for bullied kids to go all out and do as much damage as possible since they will face the same punishment for lesser damage. The clear problem here is that the nerdy kid had no way of knowing how to get help. He had no way of knowing how to get the pain to stop.
Alan confided many years later that he had been bullied as a little kid. He never told us about it. Those little things -- having his backpack taken away, comments about looking funny because he was half Asian or because he was skinny, he stored all of them away until they resurfaced years later.
But it wasn't just in grade school. He stood up for his friends who got bullied on the street for being different. He was bullied by administrators at his school who, having legal degrees, you would think would know better than to casually throw around hurtful words that were not legally justified.
Frankly, I don't see a day any time soon when these issues are gone. But that doesn't mean we can't try to make the world a better place by fighting them. In the movie, the man with the harmonica gets his revenge, and shoves his harmonica in the mouth of the man who killed his brother as he lies there dying. I will never get that satisfaction, but I won't back down.
We were on opposite ends of the age spectrum for the Strong Bad emails, but we both watched them. I remember a trip to High Cliff with one of his grade school friends, debating the pronunciation of "fhqwhgads". Those were the days...
Once, back then, he showed up outside my dorm with Mom and Dad, and was so excited to see me that he ran right into me. I didn't budge, but he went flying off me and landed on his butt on the ground. He got right back up, and hugged me. I hugged back. I used to hug him so tight that he would lift off the ground and complain that it hurt. While our height difference disappeared, our weight difference never went away. We used to joke around that we looked like the number 10.
When Mom wanted to know about a suit I had bought (which was gray), I told her I would send her a picture. I sent this instead:
Years later, when Alan started to listen to more rap and techno, I used to tease him by rapping this song on top of his music. Most of it was musically simplistic enough that it overlaid just fine. That or the Kirby music.
What I would give for another, "Oh, God. Stop it, Hyung." What I would give for another chance to hug him, to hold onto him. But every day, I strive to move on, to make Alan proud of me like I was of him.
Looking through Alan's Youtube favorites playlist is pretty strange. It's a record of what he was listening to, marked loosely by dates like "2 months ago" or "1 year ago."
Oftentimes, I can find a piece of music we listened to together that soon after made it onto the list.
For instance, on the way back from Sioux City from Christmas last year, I played several pieces that we had played in the faculty-staff orchestra. I gave him commentary on what I thought about each one. We listened to Mendelssohn's first piano concerto, and I told him how I liked the slow movement's beautiful viola/cello parts better than any of the piano parts (6:56).
We listened to the Largo movement from the New World Symphony, and discussed how Dvořák was in Iowa when he was inspired to write it.
He had the whole symphony on his playlist.
The conversations we had, the pieces we shared, the Ravel, the Schubert, the pieces from my concerts -- his playlist is like a recorded echo of his life (and our time together) bounced off, and into the aether of the internet. Now, I find myself trying to hold onto that echo, straining my ears for any sound of him.
Comfort has been something hard to come by since Alan died. I have found myself talking to him, begging him for some sign that I can understand, to know that he is at peace, to know how to move forward. But the few islands of comfort I have found have been in unlikely places, and not where or how I asked for them.
The first was at his funeral. It was the first time I had seen his body since the night of his death. The funeral home did a decent job of presenting the body, but it was so obvious that he was gone -- that the body was not him. It was like looking at an oyster shell, the oyster gone, and the luminous pearl that was once within shining on our souls from some unseen place. It was so strangely comforting to see this empty vessel, free from a life of pain and anxiety, free from a mind that just couldn't hold onto happiness. Somehow, I knew for that one precious day that he wasn't suffering. I was filled with a peace that I hadn't known in a long time.
I wish that feeling could have lasted forever, but of course, it did not. I sought it out again, and asked Alan just to give me, or Mom, or someone, a sign that I could understand that he was okay. I looked forward at every little thing -- was that a sign? But what gave me that sense of peace again wasn't forward; it was from the past.
After an especially hard evening, I went to bed, practically having given up. Upon awaking in the morning, I had the strangest memory pop up, of a cat Dad owned when I was little. This cat, Dakota, was in many ways a typical cat. It hid a lot. It would show up when it wanted something. And if you were doing something it didn't like, it wasn't afraid to draw blood.
But also, Dakota was strangely patient with me, a four year old kid, letting me pet a bit too hard, even pulling its tail. If the cat fell off a table, it would land any which way, even on its back. It didn't use a litter box -- it went outside like a dog.
Dakota disappeared one day. I was too young, and not really attached enough to the cat to really have any sort of meaningful emotional reaction, but I still remember riding in the car, and Dad telling me that Dakota had gotten run over and was dead. This funny little cat was gone too soon.
I had this realization that morning. Yes, Alan was gone. And there is nobody in the world that is exactly like Alan was, especially not some silly cat from before he was even born. But somehow there were enough parallels to get me to see that some part of that pattern, some part of the quirkiness that was Alan in this life, was eternal, part of the fabric of being, and we would certainly see those funny little threads again.
It reminds me of a piece of music I introduced to Alan this spring. After I showed it to him, he put it on his Youtube favorites playlist -- a record of his listening, a ghost of his life that remains.
I had been listening to it for a lecture I was writing, where I had discussed the cases of Ann Adams and Maurice Ravel. There is a good Radiolab podcast on it. Ravel, some postulate, may have written Boléro under the influence of the early stages of a degenerative brain disease, primary progressive aphasia.
In the piece, the same snippet of melody is played again and again, but each time different, changing timbre, adding or losing overtones, all the while escalating. Alan was like one of these variations, so unique, and yet linked by a strange melody to the whole.
This thought did not take away the pain of losing him, the longing to be with him, to share with him, to help him. But somehow, it put a smile on my face, and a bit of hope in my heart.
It's about choices we made, and things we didn't get to decide.
1991
When Alan was born, I was anxiously awaiting his arrival. I remember getting woken up early to go to the hospital. Mom and Dad hadn't yet picked a name for the baby. All morning, we waited for things to kick in and get going. It was as if this baby wasn't sure if it wanted to come. In fact, when he did, it was a struggle, having to be induced at nearly 10 pounds, a difficult delivery.
As a 9 year old kid, I was not allowed in the delivery room. I was initially sat down in a seating area down the hall, but I couldn't wait. I went up to the door, and listened to everything until they let me in.
Alan's life didn't start with a soundtrack, at least not music. Like the majority of people who enter the world in a labor and delivery unit, there was the sound of beeping machines, printing rolls of paper, the hustle and bustle of nursing staff, and the OB pronouncing orders -- to my parents to push or pull or hold or breathe, to the nurses to get this or that.
I waited outside that door, and as soon as they let me in, I saw his face, not yet cute like a baby, but the wrinkly red little monkey face cute of a newborn. I knew my life had changed forever.
2000
In the spring, I tried contact lenses. I started to notice increasing problems with the vision in my left eye, which I thought was related to the contacts, but it wouldn't go away. In the summer, I finally saw my ophthalmologist, Dr Vogel. She immediately knew something was wrong, and ordered visual fields and an MRI. At 17, sitting alone at the front desk of Sage Hall working as a desk clerk, I got a call from Dad that I should call Dr Vogel on her home phone and talk to her about the scan.
I had a tumor pushing on my optic chiasm. This was the cause of the visual loss. And I would probably need surgery.
My eighteenth birthday -- it fell right in the middle of the workup leading to surgery. I invited my friends from college who were in town over the summer. Lynne stopped by with a cookie cake pointing out that I still didn't have a driver's license.
For Alan and me, there was music. It seems goofy now, not what I would pick if given another chance. Alan and I would both talk for Kirby, the stuffed doll Mom made for him (twice). I decided he should be able to sing a song, and for whatever reason, chose Absolutely by Nine Days.
(In a high pitched Kirby voice) "This is the story of a girl..."
Preparing for surgery, I remember being afraid -- not for me -- I figured if I died I just wouldn't wake up from surgery and wouldn't know any different. I was afraid for Alan. What if I did die? What would Alan's life be like, losing a brother at the age of 8? I didn't want him to suffer like that.
2013
I had moved back to Iowa City from Chicago to work at the University the year before. Isabelle and I had been dating since September, and we were talking about next steps. The condo I was renting downtown was too expensive for the space you got, and I was considering buying a house. Isabelle had shown me houses she thought I would like all winter when I reluctantly went to an open house for a place close to work. Despite the Scandinavian elderly "charm" imparted by the owners at the time, there was a breathtaking mid-century modern mystique to the place. Immediately, I knew at some level this was the house.
Alan was deciding on where to go back to school. Comparing film programs in Minneapolis, Madison and Iowa City, he chose Iowa City. I guess you could say he chose me.
I bought the house, knowing that if I stayed in my condo there would be no room for him. I did this, and agreed to let Alan live with me indefinitely despite my plans with Isabelle to move forward in our relationship. Alan was wary of this, and even promised to find a place of his own eventually, but I told him he could stay as long as he needed. And so, I chose Alan.
The soundtrack -- this was the summer of Lorde.
I thought this was too pop for Alan when I showed it to him, but then I heard him listening to it. A lot.
2014 (part one)
House renovations were nothing short of catastrophic -- hidden expenses, an incompetent contractor, frozen pipes, a leaking roof, tensions all around, a mountain of debt, lawsuits, and Alan living on friends' couches between nights in his squalid dust pit of a basement room in my house.
Alan's legal problems started in early June. We had been trying to make sure he would see a mental health professional, and were busy setting things up, when suddenly the OWI happened, changing everything.
As Alan needed more support, Mom moved into my house, and I moved out to make room.
In Mom, Alan had the most intense support that anyone could ever have. She was there for him in ways nobody else could be. She would cook for him, keep track of appointments for him, and see him through any trouble. She hunkered down for the long haul, but it was tough losing so much control in the house. Tensions ran high.
Alan must have known what Mom could do for him that I couldn't, but in the end, he still begged Mom to go back to Wisconsin. I guess you could say he chose me again.
Our parents left right before my thirty-second birthday. That weekend, Isabelle and I took Alan to Solon Beef Days. The soundtrack to that weekend was provided by that event, definitely not what we would have chosen.
We stood outside an old stone building that had been converted to event space, waiting for Isabelle, listening to the speakers blare this song, and Alan looked at me incredulously. Was this song for real?
Late that night, in the daze of recovering from the fighting, Alan couldn't find a bike rack, and left my bike unlocked outside of a Walgreen's. It was promptly stolen. Against my advice to let it go, find the serial number at the bike store, and report it to the police, Isabelle and Alan spent hours that night driving and walking around the not-so-nice areas of town with flashlights looking to see if they could find it.
Monday was my birthday, and Isabelle and I invited Alan with us for my birthday dinner. He almost bailed at the last minute, but she convinced him it was important to me. The restaurant we were going to go to was closed, so we ended up eating at the buffet in the casino. Afterwards, Isabelle would play the 2 cent slots and Alan electronic blackjack. It was a quiet birthday, and only Isabelle and Alan made it not feel lonely.
2014 (part two)
That last day started like any other. I woke up that Sunday morning, not knowing if Alan had made his way back to the house or if he had stayed downtown. I prepared for the Alzheimer's walk where I was giving a little talk to kick off the event. Alan and I saw each other in passing as he came home to start working on editing footage for class. The shoot was "shitty" according to him. He complained about the finicky internet. I told him it only seemed to be finicky when he was on it.
After the walk, I drove to Isabelle's. We decided to go to Cedar Rapids to look at a chair she wanted to buy for me. As we were shopping, I got a text from Alan about dinner.
Piecing things together, it would have been in a flurry of activity for him that afternoon. He had called and texted friends, asking if they could be with him. He had snapchatted a picture of himself with a tear drawn on his contorted face complaining about the footage he was editing.
I called him, and we talked about Isabelle and me bringing food to the house, if he could wait an hour for us to drive back down.
I guess we'll never know what he was listening to at the time, but in the very end, there was no soundtrack. His computer wasn't on. The radio wasn't playing. The only sounds would have been the hum of cars on the street down the hill, the chirping of birds, and the rustling of leaves. He would leave the world in that near-silence. Unlike his hesitant entrance, he must have been resolute, ready to go. There were no signs otherwise.
When I opened the door, the first thing I saw was his face. It would take me a while to process, step-wise, what I was seeing, what had happened, and that life had changed again, forever.
When I started medical school, it was the first time living more than a mile from Alan. This was in the days before everyone was on facebook, so it was hard for me. He gave me a paper cutout of Kirby he had made, and I had a few other things to remember him by. We would talk occasionally (mostly on land lines -- we shared one cell phone.), and would chat on instant messenger.
Every summer, we would try to go as many times as possible to Six Flags Great America. He would come down for long weekends, and I would come up. He met my med school friends, and we would even share CDs of episodes that he or Linda had burned of anime episodes.
If you're not familiar with J-pop and K-pop, you're not missing out too much. But all these shows had starting and ending credits with songs, oftentimes with broken English lyrics, or with silliness that totally didn't match the content of the show.
"Oh no! Kikyo just fell off a cliff into a raging river!"
[translation: playful/mischievous kiss]
When I started med school, Alan and Linda were the same height (four eleven and three quarters?). He was a little kid. When I graduated, he was still the shortest person in the family, but he had started to shoot up. The first hints of the darkness had set in, but really hadn't established themselves firmly yet. By the time I had reached residency, things were clearly different. We couldn't go to Great America because he couldn't get his sleep schedule straight. He had migraines all the time. He was missing school for them. He never really seemed excited to go.
I would never have guessed that his slide would just keep going down, deeper and deeper into this dysphoric pit. Cue the silly pop music.
