Goodbye, Eric

Yesterday, MeiLi held a small gathering at her house in memory of Eric, who passed away two weeks ago today from a heart attack.

It was entirely unexpected. We'd seen them two months ago, and Eric looked healthier than he'd ever been. He was his usual self, chatting knowledgeably about his current hobby, making stringed instruments. He showed us the guitar he'd been making for Anan, his younger daughter. It was almost finished then, and in fact he finished it and gave it to her a few weeks before he died. We'd run into him quite serendipitously, at a performance at Gryphon where Allie's guitar teacher was one of the performers. He had so changed from his earlier yangzi that I didn't recognize him at first, and Lillian didn't recognize him for several minutes. He'd invited us over to his house, a few blocks from Gryphon, and after the performance we went over and hung out with him and MeiLi. They were quite content— Anan had recently gone off to college, Ping was about to graduate, and Eric was about to start working again after an enjoyable three-year hiatus. I was reminded then, as I had been when we'd seen him in the past, just how intelligent, friendly, interesting, and knowledgeable Eric was. When he developed a passion for something, he became an expert in it, and his joy in learning every small detail about things was always evident. He'd recommended an author he'd been reading, and had loaned me a book about a famous folk-singing family (part of learning about making stringed instruments, for Eric, was learning about the history of folk music in the U.S). I'd been meaning to return it, and off and on over the intervening weeks had been musing about seeing them again over the holidays, and how nice it would be to reconnect with them, especially since our own children were about to leave home. And suddenly, he was gone.

It's clear that MeiLi is still in shock. She hadn't been able to reach us for several days, since our land-line connection has been having problems and she didn't have any of our cell phone numbers. We went over as soon as we heard to keep her company; their daughters had returned early from school. MeiLi is so used to being firm and in control, and it's difficult for her to handle the sudden, extreme pain and helplessness. She apologizes for asking for help, is concerned about being a burden to her friends. She'd taking medicine for sleep, but is still having trouble, and there's much to take care of, financial issues, funeral arrangements, daily routines like paying bills that Eric used to handle. The stress suffocates her, it covers her face, weakens her posture, tightens in her hands, and I feel very sorry for her.

I'd known Eric since I met him in Taiwan almost 30 years ago. I'd met MeiLi there too. Afterwards, when we continued our college careers, I met my future wife Lillian when the three of us were in a small seminar class in Chinese Literature class together. I went with Eric to the airport to greet MeiLi when she arrived in the states to study. After graduation we held a Chinese book reading club for a few years, the "Xin BiHu SheHui" a fondly grandiose Chinese title for ourselves that Eric enjoyed. We looked for houses with them, and later on they suggested houses for us to look at. We baby sat their eldest daughter a few times, kept some of their belongings for them during the five (?) years they were overseas when Eric was working in China, put up MeiLi once or twice when she was here alone. But in more recent years our contacts had grown fewer and further between. Eric was always a rather private person, and we rarely saw him in the company of his other friends. Yet he was always friendly, and seemed easy-going and content.

Yesterday, at Mei Li's house, eight of us buried Eric's ashes under the various fruit trees he'd planted around his yard when they first bought the house 25 years ago. We brought shovels (those of us who had them handy). I took a handful of his ashes and threw them in the small hole I had dug— not everyone handled the ashes, they were gritty and real, and the touch was probably too much for some— and then pushed the dirt over the top with my hands, trying to make sure the hole was deep enough and tamped down enough that it wouldn't be dug up again by animals. It felt right to get my hands dirty— Mr. Toad said he felt same thing— and seemed like the kind of low-key ceremony Eric would want and approve of. Like everything he did, Eric had selected and tended the fruit trees with great care and after significant research, choosing them for their novelty, appropriateness for the climate, and the size of his yard. He'd appreciate the value to the plants of adding bone meal to the soil.

It's tough, growing old. People your age, even those younger than you, start dying because their bodies just wear out. We'd lost an earlier acquaintance, Al Garber, earlier in the year, and Lillian just lost someone she'd worked with to complications from a stroke. Our parents are dying too. One of Eric's friends had just lost his father in the past few months, another's mother was back in the hospital attempting to recover from an unsuccessful hip surgery, and it wasn't clear how good that was going. Lillian has lost both her parents, and in the next decade, if not sooner, I'll lose mine. Your memories and experiences get riddled with holes— you see a place, or a thing, and remember a person dear to you— then realize they're gone. There's an emptiness there— the memories patch it over, but they're thin, translucent, not quite substantial, and they don't hide it. And over time, more and more of your world fills with such holes, so that what was once a whole cloth of experience becomes a skein of weakened threads.

I find it difficult to comprehend, emotionally. Eric was there, and I'd imagined a future with him there, and was looking forward to that future. Now I'm sad for the loss of a future with Eric that is not to be. I can reconcile myself to that loss, because it was more abstract than real, and I wonder about that. Mine is a small loss compared to MeiLi's, and it is so much easier to bear, I feel guilty about it at the same time that I feel it. But there it is. Last week while walking back from lunch at work, the grass was covered with crumpled, fresh-fallen leaves, and all I saw was the ground covered with dozens of Eric's, struck down by a sudden blast at 49, waiting for the wind and rain to grind them back into the soil. As with us all.

Goodbye, Eric. I miss you.