Journal Entry #2
A Mourning Diary
Roland Barthes kept a diary covering nearly two years after his mother’s death. My own entries will cover a two week period, beginning from the 1 month anniversary of my grandfather’s death.
Friday 15 May
Is this an attempt to make up for the guilt of not thinking about him enough during lockdown? During that first month?
When we (me, my father and mother) visit his grave in the morning, I stifle the desire to let out any strange sounds (I suppose it would sound like a sob but that doesn’t quite do it justice) or ask any questions. I want to speak to the dead but I’m far too self-conscious to have these conversations among the company of the living. I think about how I should probably come back to visit some time alone. But I also know that this is an unlikely gesture.
My last words to him before his stroke: I’ll see you soon.
We referred to him as Arthur Gung Gung.
Technically, he was my step-grandfather from my dad’s side of the family.
This technicality is something of a sore subject in some ways. Or simply too tender. Associated with too many family traumas, perhaps.
I have a distinct memory of my aunty scolding me for referring to him as my step grandfather at one point growing up. Upset on his behalf, ensuring i would never use that term again. Especially not around him. I had no idea - at the time - semantics could open up wounds like that. But most children don’t understand the sharp edges of language.
This technicality - at least now - is not an attempt to reduce his importance - but merely to acknowledge the full complexity of where he is situated in the family tree. His history in relation to mine.
Chinese families are especially precious about blood relations.
I’ve barely begun these entries - only just begun - and it already feels self-indulgent. But I’ve always been bad at grief-talk. Stifled ums and ahs, mumbling incoherencies stuck in my throat, punctuated by a stammer or stutter.
Is there something tacky about making an exhibition of grief? Is it grossly performative?
I’m not sure my family would approve. And if I’m not sure - is that not in some ways a sort of betrayal?
I’m paranoid enough that I make sure to close this document on the family desktop computer.
Saturday 16 May
In a review [1] of Roland Barthes’ Mourning Diary, Roxane Gay simply describes what makes grief and writing such a double-edged sword: “For writers grief is either a blessing or a curse because they are able to articulate with exacting detail, the nature of their sorrow.”
The more I think about grief. The more things unfurl.
Grief unlocks a complex matrix of emotions and memories. Exploring one thing leads to a hall of mirrors, knocking over dominoes, and opening up a pandora’s box. I’m mixing metaphors, the closet bursts wide open. Grief has a tendency to make me mix my metaphors. Once I start writing, it becomes difficult to stop. It becomes addictive, wanting to dig deeper and deeper into something I normally distance myself from. I have to pull myself away from the screen, lest it become a tool of self-harm.
Other writings become contaminated by grief.
Comparing grief. An exercise in masochistic guilt. I am an exceptional self-flagellator.
I became acutely aware - stiflingly so - that without the prompt to write this entry, I may not have thought of my Grandfather at all today. Not even the most fleeting thought. That there are days where grief has no hold on us - and that absence of grief - the act of forgetting - is a sort of loss. And the act of remembering is a sort of tribute - no matter how painful or strained.
Sunday 17 May
Inspired by a discussion with some friends - other fellow artists: the divide between our practice and our life. The need to put a project in front of ourselves to provide a framework for our practice (our life). Every project simply being the act of putting one foot in front of another.
This project seems to blur the divide between my life and my practice immeasurably. More so than anything else.
I am trying to reckon with this - and to sit with it - and not let it be a bad thing.
I find it so difficult to express myself outside my practice.
My grandfather’s death during the lockdown period meant that we didn’t get to hold a “proper” service for him.
What service we did get to hold was still something we were very thankful for.
But the service was stifled. The opportunity for his family to speak about him - to air their grief in front of a listening crowd. A gathering. Taken (torn?) away from us. Him being memorialised (paid tribute to) also torn away.
I am not entirely sure I would have spoken. I like the idea that I would have. That I would have been able to articulate something in front of many people. I’m not so sure that’s really honest though.
So I’m glad I have this. This method of paying some sort of tribute. To talk about him. Around him. To him. In the only way I suppose I know how. With my practice.
Is it sad that this is the only way I can find space to do that?
Or perhaps it is beautiful that my practice allows me the space to do that.
I don’t know.
Monday 18 May
I spent most of my childhood under the care of my Grandfather. He was, for all intents and purposes, my babysitter while mum and dad worked at the fish and chip shop.
He often took me to the movies. My earliest memory of moviegoing is related to my Grandfather. The Lion King. Apparently I cried. I’ve been told this story many times, to the point I am unsure if I have a memory of it, or it merely has taken root as a memory, implanted via suggestion.
I was known for frequently jumping around on the couches of his lounge, playing make believe. My earliest acts of theatre-making.
In recent years, Gung Gung tended to loop and loop over the same questions. His short term memory an unfortunate casualty to dementia. The same questions: how am I doing? How long have i been back in Christchurch? What is my sister upto? I answered with slight variations each time, hoping to break the cycle.
A question that disrupts this: do you remember me taking you to the movies when you were younger? It’s a question I’m taken aback by. It’s as if he’s worried I’m forgetting him as much as he’s forgetting me.
Tuesday 19 May
I have nothing to write today.
Any attempt to tap into my grief reserves feels more forced than ever.
Francis Weber describes grief as an apprenticeship with sorrow. He states that “one of the most essential skills we need to develop in our apprenticeship is our ability to stay present in our adult selves when grief arises.”
I’m trying.
Wednesday 20 May
And what about the others you’ve left behind? How do they mourn you? Especially your wife and your daughters who now live in the gaps your death has left behind.
Thursday 21 May
The films of Yasujiro Ozu often centre around familiar concerns, the everyday comings and goings of life, characters entering and leaving. I remember crying uncontrollably after watching his film Tokyo Story. The death of one’s parents tinged with regret over how we could have treated them better.
Films allow us to trace the outlines of our feelings without having to articulate them clearly with the precision of accurate language.
I wonder what film I can find to trace your outline.
I watched Alan Ball’s funeral home family drama, Six Feet Under, when I was in my late teens, long before anyone close to me had died. Death, back then, was something I experienced as a narrative abstraction, like dragons or space battles. It was simply an element of plot, a decoration, rather than something connected to my worldview of the human condition.
Friday 22 May
Helped my parents out at the fish and chip shop tonight. I never really - until now - right now - realised how working there is directly tied to my grandfather. To you. I mean, it so obviously, so clearly is, yet… It’s strange to think I would not have been standing there tonight, serving customers, ringing up the till, if not for my grandfather.
Because of my ability to speak English fluently, I was always placed behind the till. You spoke English well too.
Strange to become sentimental, so sentimental, and, in fact, deeply moved by something I absolutely abhorred growing up. Resented, in fact. The children of immigrant parents know well of enforced familial labour. And, yet, when you trace the roots of this labour back to the source, it all comes back to family and, I suppose, hope for a better tomorrow. Generational trauma and labour blossoming into something bearing fruit. I wouldn’t be writing this right now if not for him and his fish and chip shop.
Saturday 23 May
I wonder what family secrets you took to the grave.
Is that morbid?
I mean, this is all morbid.
Sunday 24 May
I mention this - my mourning diary - to a friend. She’s the first person I tell. At this point it still feels like a strange little secret, like a series of letters between my grandfather and I. And now that intimacy has been breached. Exposed.
It’s not that I’m tentative mentioning it, necessarily. I suppose I’m merely wary of how it is perceived. She understands though. Reassures me. We speak of the privilege in being even able to write about such things. It’s a luxury (a privilege) to be able to articulate things others aren’t able to.
We talk about grief culture. Being rushed to mourn. When people can’t help compare their grief to yours - compassion twisted into competition.
A mourning diary, she thinks, allows one to appreciate the fonder memories. It’s too easy to get wrapped up in anger.
Grief is fertile soil for many different emotions.
Monday 25 May
My childhood memories are so faint. So distant. But my grandfather is a fixed point on the horizon in that distance.
A mourning diary gives grief dimensions where it would otherwise lie flat
Rilke says: Does the person who passes away not leave all the things he had begun in hundreds of ways to be continued by those who outlive him, if they had shared any kind of inner bond at all?
It’s a thought that should inspire some positive reflection - some inspiration - something. But instead it leaves me with a feeling of deep disconnect. As if to say, You didn’t truly share any real bond with your grandfather. It was incidental. The bond of blood and nothing else.
I would like to know the deep passions and dreams he had, unfinished business I could tend to. But his death feels so… definitive.
Some men leave behind no legacy other than family.
Tuesday 26 May
In the past I have attempted to adapt Sopchocles’ Antigone (I failed). But I realised what interested me in Antigone wasn’t even really Antigone herself. It was the death of her brother and her response to it. But that all gets overshadowed by the action of the play. Antigone versus Creon. I wanted Antigone mourning her brother, which is simply pushed to the margins of the story - becoming what I thought was simply a device.
I found it tedious and boring.
Now I realise, Antigone is about a girl who is not given permission to grieve. Grief, interrupted. So she turns to action. Civil disobedience is the only tool she has.
Wednesday 27 May
What would I do if I couldn’t grieve?
Thursday 28 May
(Note: I forgot to write an entry today.)
Friday 29 May
The need to grieve slips further and further away.
Forgetting is a double-edged sword - relief and sorrow.
Grief is also a double-edged sword - remembrance and sorrow.
Which is worse: grieving or forgetting?
Surely forgetting.
I had forgotten today would be the last entry until now. The fact this marks the end of this process feels strange. It feels almost planned.
I thought I would come to some great revelation in keeping this diary.