You, the living

For as long as I can remember I’ve always resented New Year. It’s not that I have a cynical view of all the celebrations, resolutions, or the mundane change of the Gregorian calendar — I should clarify that I hold the same notion for Lunar New Year as well. There’s just something about the positive energy exuded by the collective human society that never sits right with me. The more we try to project good vibes on one another the more I’m reminded of the world we’re living in.

This is obviously personal, and it goes way back. Every Chinese New Year of my childhood, my mom would haul the three of us onto a train from a sunny small town in the middle of Taiwan three hours north to Taipei to visit my father’s family. The fun ends when the train stops. The capital of Taiwan is always wet and damp earlier in the year. My mom gets tense the moment we step into my grandfather’s apartment. Everything was white, squeaky clean, and not to be played with. Adults are busy making the biggest feast of the year while secretly (and openly) compare each others’ kids. Aunties, uncles, cousins were all there. My dad would show up in the middle of the day, crack a few jokes, buried himself in his study, consuming cigarettes and books. I remember taking a copy of Moby Dick from his shelf that’s stained with mold and cigarette smells.

The closer we get to the big meal the more nervous everyone gets. Some adults would get shouty — mostly my dad — actually, always my dad — and it would end in tears and heartbreak while everyone pretend to carry on the next day. 

To me, what’s meant to be new is always centered around death. One year after the  New Year dinner my grandfather suffered a stroke. He passed away the summer after. My mother’s mother — my Christian grandmother, often told me the story of my eldest uncle — the eldest son of a pastor, how he divorced, remarried, and got into a terrible accident days before Chinese New Year. My mother was pregnant at the time and about to go into labour. My grandmother held my uncle’s hand in the hospital, praying for his life until his death was declared, and then began to pray that her daughter who’s in labour, would not give birth on the same day. The Lord answered her prayer, My uncle passed away on the 9th, I was born on the 10th. 

That’s why besides New Year, I also don’t like birthdays. No one remembers mine because of all the New Year prep, and frankly I didn’t care. I even told the church calendar organizer not to put my birthday in it. How can anyone celebrate life in the midst of freezing winter? Years later my grandmother herself would pass away during Chinese New Year, AND when we couldn’t reach my father last year, we knew immediately something had gone terribly wrong. The police confirmed our theory on the third day of the New Year. 

So for me this has always been a season of deep reflections. What we call “new” is always build on top of death. I couldn’t possibly do any chest thumping about the new year when I don’t even know what’s on the other end of this grueling winter, couldn’t declare victory over the sorrow all the deaths have brought, but have to learn to live with it. All of it. Only thing I ever told myself to do is to be real. Think about the dead, and remember the living. Think about how in a complete gruesome and devastating way our Lord sacrificed himself — it is out of His death can anyone find life. And how it still reign true today - We proclaim his death until he comes.

Until then, we won’t really know what the true meaning of the new year is despite our best efforts year after year. Yet I have no doubt one day we shall experience it together, the old and the new, the dead and the living, when our Lord returns. 

On that day I’ll be dancing with joy with the saints that’ve gone before us and all my resolutions, but for now I’ll just keep New Year and birthday celebrations to myself. 

I hope that’s okay with you.