distance sucks

As much as I love to travel and live abroad, occasionally I get reminders of how much a life like this can also suck.  Separation.  Distance.  Heavy heavy things...
As much as new technology kids us into feeling connected, it also just reaffirms how far away we are.  How disconnected we become.   We're mammals.  Face it, without contact, without presence, what are we to each other?

Today I found out my grandma died through facebook.  Thank you technology, for keeping me so well informed.  I actually missed the first clue of a status update from my aunt, announcing the news.  I actually sent her a wonderfully supportive condolence message, thinking I was referring to her mother-in-law.  I actually still didn't make the connection that it was, indeed, her mother, my grandmother, she was talking about even after the "call me asap" urgent email from my mother.  All this distance has made me dense.  Well, international dialing failure and poor cross-hemisphere timing resulted in me getting the news through a facebook chat with my little brother.  Having this news broken in blunt text in a little box under pictures of the last makeoli night is a bit surreal.  Nice poetic juxtaposition with the abandoned revelry we're having over here.  Indulgence vs. loss...god did I feel like an asshole.  Okay, not yet.  I felt a bit shocked.  Then quite heartbroken.  Then blubbery.  Then like an asshole for being clear across the world wanting nothing more than to give my dad a hug.

After a bit of confusion with my boss who apparently saw my tears, and thought my request to go home was to return to America, I finally made it home for a skype with my parents.   Suddenly I am no longer in the future.  Suddenly I am the one listening for the news.  Skype with tears and broken silence.  Strange.  And still, no touch.  No way to reach out.  Strange how these losses can even bring us together in the digital age, but still keep us so so so far apart.  Man.

I'm not the first of my friends over here to experience this.  But wow, did not expect it.  And when will it sink in fully?  When I return home and there's no Grammie Lou.  No house in Horton to visit?  No more sugar cookies and buckeyes at Christmas?  Usually it's her tears at the family get togethers, but now those will be transferred to everyone else's cheeks.

I'm pretty ok with death.  In fact, me and Grammie, we're cool.  We connected through the sunshine this afternoon, through warm feelings and wind and memory.  Her face is still sharp and lovely in my mind (I don't care how cheesy you think that sounds).  The heaviest part of all of this is being separate from everyone else.  I immediately think of my dad.  Of both my parents with all their kids now far away...man.  And my aunts and uncles and the holidays coming.  And how my generation, all of us cousins, really aren't as connected.  This too shall pass.  What glue is going to be there when we're the adults, scattered all over, communicating way less frequently despite the modern ease of it.  This kind of change is a heavy thing.

I'm crap at keeping up contact over distance.  I wrote her another letter a few weeks ago and I am lucky it arrived just in time.  Lucky me, she got to hear how much I missed her food.  How touching.  I last saw her on my way to the casino with Jason, to play in my first poker tournament (which I did quite well in, considering...).  That visit was a completely last minute event, and how wonderful those moments in the kitchen were.  And then I came to Korea.

But really, it's times like these that just reinforce the importance of connecting, making the most of every moment we're together.  The people I love are with me every day, and even if they only hear from me in the occasional letter, I just have to trust that they know how much I carry them with me.  Over distances like these, instead of feeling disconnected, I have to believe that we are strong forces in each others' lives--not just as memories, but as a constant presence, so we are never really alone, connected despite being worlds away.