Say It While You Still Can
"Better out than in, I always say." -- Shrek
TL;DR Better out than in. Be bold. Tell people you love them while you still can. No regrets. 💌 ✍️
Dear Wonderful Readers,
My grandmother is not getting out of bed. I can't help but think of what she's leaving behind: the things, the people, and the world outside her room. She spent all of COVID alone in her apartment on the second floor of a crumbling stucco building in Koreatown, Los Angeles. She was happy living there until she had to be taken to hospital when she fell over and broke her pelvis two years ago. She hasn't stood up unassisted since. When she moved, my aunt came and packed up everything that she owned and put it in a storage unit.
When I tell people my grandmother lives in Los Angeles, it sounds incredibly glamorous. Their eyes open wide. But they don’t know that she misplaced her divorce settlement money in the 80s on a hotel in Palm Springs. Then she didn’t want to look after Aunt Mildred, which at least would have left her with the three-story house in the Castro, San Francisco—a house that her granddaughter, paying astronomical rent in the same city some fifteen years later, would quite like to have had.
Still, I love my grandmother. She balks at the MAGA, conspiracy-theory-inclined, insecure man in my family and our circles. She pesters them, expecting better. She calls me up to remind me that I should subscribe to Heather Cox Richardson, the esteemed historian from Harvard. She listens to my podcast. She says I have a talent for interviewing people. She tells me of the love she feels towards one of the carers at her nursing home, blurring tender affection with attraction. I read between the lines.
My grandmother tells me getting old sucks. Half the time she calls me, it’s because she can't figure out how to do something on her iPad. The other half of the times she calls me, it’s to remind me of the things she has selected for me to have after she dies, the few treasures amongst the multiple boxes of rotten, rat, pee-and-poop-infested books that I’ve already hauled out of her storage unit on Pico.
That freaking storage unit. It's like a hospital for people’s dying memories of their old selves. Yet, unlike bodies, which you can put in the ground, you can’t get rid of the things in there. There’s too much “value”. Nostalgiafied, imagined value. These embodied artifacts of your soul make it impossible for any future person to get rid of them.
I've already siphoned off the treasures I wanted as payment for my time cleaning out the crap. The two ceramic Mexican masks and the two pieces of Huichol (Wixárika) felt art that I found in a trunk. A trunk that was buried deep in the bowels of my grandmother’s storage unit and which, I kid you not, also contained her mother’s, my great grandmother's, ashes. Thankfully, the soul of my great-grandmother has since been laid to rest. Her ashes scattered by my sister, my great-aunt, and my cousin at Stinson Beach.
My grandmother tells me she wants to walk, but she always said that exercising hurt her. One time, I dragged her, rushing, from Southwark tube station in London to the Tate Modern to see a Lichtenstein exhibition, which I didn’t even like. That was the closest I ever saw her to running; for a timed entry to a museum, which we simply could not miss.
My grandmother might never run again, or maybe even stand up unassisted again, but her saving grace is that she can still make art. My grandmother has painted all her life and recently started doing art again in her nursing home, even though she struggles to see and move her hands. I am glad for her, finally having fun and challenging her inner perfectionist. But she told me most of what she creates is a charcoaled blob. It’s to represent the darkness of the now-charred neighborhood, Pacific Palisades, which she used to call home, where she raised her children.
My grandmother's memories live in a version of Pacific Palisades that no longer exists. One of my grandmother's proudest, most cherished memories was starting Art Alley at Marquez, the elementary school in the Palisades, where she painted a series of murals with the kids. I don't know what the murals looked like, people in the "Pacific Palisades - Remember When" Facebook group definitely do. I once asked some famous YouTubers who grew up in the Palisades. They remember it also. My grandmother was very pleased when I told her that. For better or worse, of course, she had sold the two houses she once owned in the Palisades and the condo on the beach in Malibu long ago. No surprises there. In the wake of the fires, it’s hard to know whether this was a blessing or a curse.
We joke that my grandmother is a witch. Once, when my mother was a teenager and her boyfriend broke up with her, my grandmother made her a voodoo "Aidan doll" and pins to go with it. Aidan died a few years later. Smoking weed and a brain hemorrhage, they said. I warn my grandmother to be careful. She tells me she's working on our current president, but he's a tough one.
I take screenshots when I talk with my grandmother on FaceTime. It’s strange to have a relationship with someone where there’s always that thought in the front of your mind that this could be the last time you talk to them. I learned years ago now to always say, “I love you,” just before we hang up. The Englishness in me resents this and feels embarrassed. But, perhaps shaped by the beauty of Mexico, I'm learning to express that. Perhaps not all feelings are meant to be swept under the rug. Maybe it's like the characters in the staple movie from my childhood, Shrek, belching as he says, “Better out than in, I always say.”
The thought of expressing these feelings is bringing up a lot of emotion for me. Maybe that’s what I wanted to say here, and part of what this newsletter is about. While I was basically told to keep sweet my entire childhood, as an adult, I prefer to use my words. Say what I really feel. Leave no stone unturned. What’s the point of being alive if the closest people to us are left guessing whether or not we ever truly cared for them? If we ever truly loved them? If they ever meant anything to us?
Maybe it wasn't a mistake to tell two grown men last summer that I loved them. One of them was my old boss, another was an old friend. Both of them had been huge supporters of my work, which I later discovered is my Achilles heel when it comes to men. There’s nothing that turns me on quite like a man calling me a prolific artist. Unfortunately, neither of them has talked to me since. It seems neither of them could handle it. I have been feeling some shame about that. Still, it's not up to me to make them believe they're lovable.
That is why we must say what we feel. Be bold. Express what we feel we must say. No regrets. It’s mostly just to sense check with ourselves. To reconfirm with ourselves that we are truly alive.
Is there someone you say “I love you” to every time you hang up the phone?
Is there someone you wish you could say it to?
Or something you've been meaning to say but haven't?
I dare you to say it while you still can. If you feel like sharing, I’d love to hear it.
Lots of love, and have a great rest of your week,
Tash
💌 ✍️
I soooo needed this rn. Great, heartfelt piece, Tash.
Especially love this line:
It's like a hospital for people’s dying memories of their old selves.
Very resonant!
This was so sweet and vulnerable. I always tell mi dad I love him, I know it’s challenging him sometimes to say it back, but cheers to breaking that cycle.
Also, the “it's not up to me to make them believe they're lovable” wow! 👏