I wrote this blog in memory of my cousin Ben, who I lost this month. It was really difficult putting words to this sort of experience, but I wanted to share.
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There’s a spot overlooking the city of Ulaanbaatar that pulls me to pause. It’s up on the 16th floor, on the balcony outside our apartment walls. In the distance, you see where the concrete and metal end and where the mountains begin. Up there, police sirens and car horns are the only sounds that touch you.
On days off we drive out to the countryside where golden hills and cerulean skies open wide, like the doors where I call home. It’s easier to breathe here. It’s easier to talk to God here. I can find the space to stand and admit my heartbreak. The looming heaviness. And God’s not the coldness of the wind that turns my cheeks pink but the sunlight that shines in my eyes through the bus window. I close my eyes in frustration and discomfort, forgetting that the very thing I push away and curse brings warmth back to my hands.
Sometimes the picturesque views seem to mock the dull ache of grief that follows me around. A stark contrast between the miracle of life and how fragile it truly is. Sometimes the beauty around you conflicts with the confusion in your heart. And you learn to bury your memories by yourself. To create closure in a world so foreign from the one I shared with you. The memories of you that haunt and bubble up to the surface keep me staring at the ceiling to 3am, wishing for a warm body next to me just to remind me where my feet stand. Nothing out the window looks familiar—not the mountains, not the high rises, not the shapes of their smiles, but you were real.
The problem with closure is it’s so rarely afforded to us. Sometimes we must find a way to create it for ourselves. And it can be a long, lonely, painful process. Sometimes you’re standing on the other side of the world, trying to figure out how to mourn the life of someone amongst a group of people who’ll never know the way you laugh.
If I could, I’d go back to the Texas lake house where we spent our summers together. I’d want everything to be exactly the same. It seems like the only way the pull of time could sink in—by standing in a house of ghosts. I can’t help but believe despite all that’s happened and all the loss, you’d still be there, in the kitchen eating watermelon or out on the boat. The last place I left you must surely be where you’ll always remain. I couldn’t even begin to wrap words around how to say goodbye. Let’s just jump off the dock one more time.
