Posts Tagged ‘death’

A Traveler’s Farewell

September 16th, 2010

I haven’t posted anything here for more than a month, due to a really jarring loss in my family and in my life: that of my father, Jules Loh.

For those of you who don’t know him, this Associated Press obituary will tell you quite a bit about Dad and his remarkable life. It’s a lovely article that focuses on my dad’s influence in his field of journalism. I am privileged to have had his lifelong influence as a father.

Growing up, I thought Dad had the coolest job in the world, traveling nonstop and writing colorful prose about what he found. It didn’t occur to me to dislike his frequent absences from home, because he always came back with interesting stories, artifacts and influences from the places he’d seen and the people he’d met. And even though he’d hint about long, decidedly non-glamorous hours spent in airports, on planes, driving rental cars and staying in hotels  — that down side of constant travel didn’t seem all that bad to me, and I guess it never has.

Dad said you could often figure out everything you needed to know about a person or place simply by noticing the details. His favorite example of this was a sign he saw once in a North Dakota hotel lobby: DON’T GUT YOUR DEER IN THE BATHTUB.

My resulting over-attention to detail has probably made me too observant for my own good at times, but when faced with strangers in a strange land, it has never failed me.

That’s just one of the countless things he’s taught me, and it has helped me so much in my life. I’m going to miss him always.

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Cry for the Cajuns

June 11th, 2010

I haven’t been writing lately, aside from some rather soulless sales and PR gigs. Really I’ve been too sad about the Gulf of Mexico horror and other personal shiz to say much of anything fun and travelly, so I just post pictures and wait for things to change.

Today I read that the BP oil spill has claimed P&J Oyster Co. in New Orleans, the country’s oldest oyster supplier, which had to shut down after 134 years because most of the oyster beds that had been supplying it for generations are dead. The rest are being killed by fresh water being diverted from the Mississippi River in a desperate bid to flush some of the oil away from the shorelines.

This is just one story, one company. Before too long there will be thousands more like it.

Those families down in south Louisiana are among the most decent and wonderful people I’ve ever met: hardworking, tough, fun, smart, creative and expressive. Everything about them is rich and full and lively: their music, their food, their language, their art. And while there are people on earth who probably deserve to be driven into hardship and see their homes turned into a toxic graveyard, it sure as hell isn’t them. Nobody deserves to have one’s heritage taken away, relegated to museums, not died out over time but killed.

That south Louisiana way of life, woven into those marshes and bayous teeming with life — it’s being irretrievably changed, and possibly destroyed forever. As resilient as those Cajuns are, how can they survive a death blow like this? How do you put a price tag on an entire culture? And why, for the love of God, do they keep getting screwed?

See, this is why I don’t write much these days, because I can’t think far beyond this. Next week I leave the country. Maybe I’ll write more then.

~
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Posted in Pontifications, USA: Louisiana

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Death in the Gulf

May 4th, 2010

I’d love to post something fun from this sunny weekend in California, but I’m too saddened and sickened by the oil slick the size of Delaware that’s threatening to destroy the Gulf of Mexico, as BP’s oil well continues to spew 5,000 barrels of crude per day, unchecked, into the water.

As a scuba diver, beach lover, nature enthusiast, environmentalist and person who will always consider Louisiana her home, no matter where in the world she is — I am at a loss. These photos were taken on the beach at Waveland, Mississippi, this weekend by resident Jenny Lindsay Bell. The rest of her photo series is on Facebook.

You may or may not know that Waveland was one of the towns most severely destroyed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005; after the storm I wrote an article about Waveland as a freelance journalist for the Jackson Free Press (sorry bout the janky character problems in the story; hope it’s readable). The people of Waveland went through horrors that you and I can’t imagine … and now this.

It’s not just the gruesome and massive loss of life that’s occurring in the Gulf of Mexico right now as I type this; it’s the unprecedented losses to the fishing/shrimping industry that is the backbone of that region’s culture and economy. It’s the toxic fumes and seepage that will surely displace people yet again from their homes and businesses and daily lives. It’s the fact that these middle-class, average people are five years into an agonizingly slow recovery from being hammered down by Katrina and now there’s this looming threat that could make the aftereffects of that storm seem like nothing.

This is a slow-moving, relentless toxic hurricane barreling into an already pummeled land and people and wildlife. Its effects will be felt for years, perhaps generations, to come.

Drill, baby, drill … Where are all the Teabaggers who chanted that lovely mantra like drones? Are they volunteering for cleanup duty?

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Posted in USA: Louisiana

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“Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant.”

March 23rd, 2010

I wish I could describe my mood of today as “morbidly fascinated,” because I’ve been preoccupied with death, but I’m aware enough to know that “glum and teetering on depression” is more like it.

Part of this is the effect of reading Joan Didion’s The Year of Magical Thinking, a memoir about her husband’s sudden death in the midst of their daughter’s serious, and also sudden, health crisis. I’m reading this as guidance for my own book in progress, which also covers the themes of loss and grief. Didion’s “magical thinking” refers to her admittedly irrational belief that her late husband would somehow come back.

This is a characteristic shared by many people in grief, apparently, though I don’t remember feeling this way after life-changing losses of my own. What gets me is Didion’s preoccupation with the days, the hours, the minutes just before her husband’s fatal heart attack. It’s something I’ve dwelled on too: those innocuous moments leading up to the instant in which one’s life is separated into “before” and “after.” These are the mundane details that, when viewed from the other side of the tragedy, seem almost cruel in their normalcy, luring us blithely up to the instant that our lives change forever, not announcing themselves or granting us the courtesy of a little preparation. The way you turned up the radio volume before merging onto the freeway. The newspapers you just gathered and stuffed into the recycle bin when the phone rang. The pot of coffee you put on before sitting down to the computer you share with your spouse.

I’ve been thinking acutely about these moments because a good friend of mine knows this boy, Gunnar Sandberg:

High School Pitcher Critically Injured By Line Drive

He was hit in the head by a fastball traveling 100+ mph, and remains in extremely grave condition. Everyone who knows him — hell, even those of us who don’t — are hoping and praying for his recovery, while acknowledging that any recovery will likely be slow and difficult. And I think about this boy, a great kid by all accounts, going through his regular Thursday. Junior Prom in a week. Classes, locker, lunch. Baseball game after school. First inning. Second inning. And then, with the crack of a bat, life as he knows it has changed irrevocably. His parents, living through an ordeal of proportions I can’t even guess, surely must also be haunted by vivid memories of the last moments of their own lives as they knew it, the very last moments when everything was fine.

These are the first words Joan Didion wrote after her husband died, and the opening to her book: Life changes fast. Life changes in an instant.

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