Though I won't share her name, one of my Mom's friends, a CHamoru famalao'an, has always given me space to exist as Queer and CHamoru. She has always offered me a place of refuge in her heart. After my most recent breakup I asked her if my mom would have been disappointed in me. I told her I wanted to break up with him because I was unhappy and wanted to make space in my heart to heal from my grief. In that moment I held on tight to him because he was the last love of my life who would get to meet her. She told me that my mom would have just wanted me to be the happiest I could be. That I should find someone who makes me happy and thinks about my feelings first, and someone who I want to do that for as well. She paused and said "I can't say there is healing. Losing your mom will forever be painful but "talk to her" everyday in your heart. She's a great listener". In this moment I understood the advice she was giving me. I am slowly coming to learn that perhaps healing isn't necessarily needed from grief and but perhaps a lifelong responsibility. Maybe it is a transformation of self. A way to understand how to move through a world both in the past and in the future. In grief we can remember. We can generate new worlds. We make possibility for love and intimacy in our lives. We make space to allow us to heal old wounds, wounds that aren't always necessarily ours. Wounds that are passed through our roots and connection to our ancestors. There is nothing necessarily traditionally CHamoru about the ways I talk about grief in the collection of work these love letters are a part of. This is my act of defiance to the ways that colonization has sought to bind and box our culture and Indigineity. In this first piece I take my aunt's advice and talk to my mom from a place deep within my heart. I share everything that I did not have the words to share with her as she was passing.
Happy Birthday Mom, (お) 誕生日 おめでとう!
I know this is going to seem early, but I couldn’t help but think of my mom as I enter my first Birthday without her. I was reminded by my dear che‘lu Lourdez that your birthday is not just your birthday. It is your mom’s birthday too. Your mom is the person who gifts you life, the one who brings you into the world in a hurculean act of love. As I reflect on the last 28 years of life; I will always cherish the memories I have made with my mom. I remember introducing her to lovers, friends, dreams, and parts of my life that required me to be vulnerable. I remember everything she taught me as a child and the seemingly endless amounts of strength she attempted to imbue onto me. I remember caring for her through her battle with stage 4 colon cancer and in her final days I was at a loss of words. I couldn’t tell her all the things I needed to tell her. I remember all the really challenging times, the times when I wished I’d rather be with my ancestors amongst the stars than on the earth we stand as you read this story. I remember the good times we had together, and that her love was complex, but always present. I know I still have this love today. But no matter the challenges we had in our relationship, she loved me nonetheless. This is a short story and my love letter to her. I think she will be able to hear all of the things I carry in my heart that I was unable to say to her before she made her final journey.
Dear Mom,
I remember now, when I was 14 years old I tried to tell you that I was bi. I was frozen with fear, but felt torn since you were my closest friend and family member. I had that fear. You know, that fear that many queer CHamoru children have. The fear that is rooted in growing up in a conservative CHamoru Catholic household. The fear of rejection. The fear of losing the love of a parent. The fear of losing your home. The fear of losing your friends and your community. The fear of disconnection. For me the fear of losing you worried me the most. Because you held me so close when you were still among the living.
Who could blame me, the church deemed us sinful from birth. They deemed our version of love and our versions of intimacy something to be exorcised out of the CHamoru fabric of life. I thought you would understand, because though you were adopted into dad’s CHamoru family through marriage, you had gay friends in Japan who you still sent you letters, who sent you and Dad gifts. You held community with Queer friends on island. I remember when you passed, I found a picture of you and your Queer friends in Tokyo. One of them was dressed in gold with stunning eyeliner and a beautiful pink lip. I only wish I could be that fabulous. I wonder how you learned he was gay? I never heard many stories about him, other than how he had a huge crush on dad when you started dating (and perhaps even still to this day).
You were the first person in our family I tried to come out to and to share my most intimate secret with. With pen and paper I wrote you a letter like this one. Do you remember it? I folded it up and parsed the message out so that it unfolded into a big reveal. The note read “Mom, I’m bi”. I remember you coming to me after finding the note. Out of your love (and maybe your fear) you told me that it was "just a phase". I was devastated so I retreated into my heart until it was safe to try to tell you again.
I remember your warm embrace as we sat by the ocean after I came out to Dad for the first time and to you for the second time. This time I came out as gay. Let’s keep the finer details between us, but if you recall, my coming out was a mistake. You see it was a technological error. A flip phone that had buttons too small for my giant hands and a contact book with names way too close together. One of the biggest accidents of my life. Remember the heated debate Dad and I had after my first therapy session. My therapist said “don’t talk about it” and I followed her instructions for a couple of days. But Dad’s initial response made me feel terrible. He took time off work. He stayed in bed. To this day I can’t tell if it was because I felt better off as an ancestor, in the stars, away from this planet, or if it was because the futurity he envisioned for me was shattered and he felt the ripples of its destruction through time-space. Either way, he needed time to see what a futurity looked like that didn’t fit his own dreams and desires for me, even though they were never his to have. I am grateful that we are in a much different spot today.
We shouted at each other. He told me I’d never bring “that” into his house. In the midst of darkness so blue and cold like the depths of the Mariana’s trench I fell. Onto the cold tiles of the patio behind Grandpa’s house. Running towards the ocean always felt right. After all the ocean is where Fo'na shed her tears after her brother had passed and she had finished creating the world. Some say her tears became the stars above. Perhaps as CHamorus the ocean holds our grief but also our pasts, presents, and futures. Maybe in it a a reflection of the cosmos our first ancestors created the world from. It was from its deepest depths of her tears that I could not pull myself out of.
I remember seeing your face and then your hands. You pulled me up and held me. Soaked in tears and barely able to breath you started to say “breath with me”. Fo'na breathed her life into the land and from her body came the CHamoru people. You always shared your bits of your life with me to get me out of these spaces. Sometimes I wonder if I had taken too much of yours. Maybe that’s why you had to leave so early. Singing soft songs into my ear, telling me stories of your childhood to soothe me as I cried through the night. In that moment you stood firmly between dad’s fear and my almost lifeless body to protect both of us.
父の愛山よりたかく、 母の愛海よりもふかし。
To be clear to any one else reading this letter, I hold no resentment towards either of you. I know you both love me, but I now know you just couldn't love me the way that I needed back then. But I slowly had to grow into my queerness, and it would happen with or without that love that I needed from the two of you.
In college you used to call me to check up on me. There was a time I was scolded by Joey. He called me when I had posted a picture of me and my boyfriend at the time kissing on Facebook. Neither you nor Dad could talk to me directly for some reason. Somehow seeing your son happy with a boy brought you discomfort and silence. But maybe you didn’t see that. Maybe you had fears about how your friends or others would react, or how they would treat me if they found out. I could never really tell if it was for my protection or your protection. Regardless this experience was painful and filled me with rage.
I was angry because I thought enough time had passed. Five years seemed like enough time of hiding myself away from you and Dad. Enough time for you to grow into parenthood. Enough time for you to figure out how to transform your love for me. But that was a fantasy driven by my desire and silenced by mt fears. The silence my therapist told me to have. The silence that did not allow healing to flourish between us. Silence only kept our collective pain and suffering inside instead of allowing us to mend the sails on our canoes so that we could be with each-other again. To sail the chasm of oceans between us. The storm had already passed and set us off course. The silent ocean afterwards should have been opportunity for us to weave and prepare for our journey to find each other again.
I remember calling you to make a stand, I told yoou that I wasn’t going to hide myself to ease that discomfort anymore. In my rage I fought back. I wasn’t going to let anyone shove me back into hiding. I was ready to be seen. I hung up the phone in frustration and cried deep in pain. I knew I had hurt you with my words, but somehow, I think you needed to hear me say “next time, say it to my face”. Silence was not going to heal our wounds. Now that you're gone, it feels like so much time was waisted sitting alone in silence.
I remember all of the times you’ve been there to pick up the pieces of my broken heart. Though you never really acknowledged my partners in a way that felt validating, even before you started treatment for cancer, I knew your love for me was deep. Perhaps you were never satiated by the love you saw I had when I was with each lover. Maybe you knew I deserved more than what they gave me. Maybe you knew I needed happiness and saw me unhappy. Maybe you saw something greater ahead for me.
Gaige i poniten nana.
I remember the day I introduced you to him. “He was the one”, I said to myself. He was a mosaic of sea glass that mirrored mine. I remember when I first told you about him, you told me not to date him.But I couldn’t resist his charm. When we first danced that night in San Jose, it was magical. We stumbled to his house from Splash after a night drunk of the love we felt for each other. When we kissed it felt like the world around us melted away. I remember him falling asleep in my arms after he did a rendition of Magic Mike to Genuwine’s “Pony”. It was silly and goofy, but that’s what drew me towards him. In a drunken stupor, we shared a passion that grew into love. I truly loved this boy, but we were never right for each other. It was doomed from the start. Maybe because I was still healing. Maybe because you and I hadn’t really talked about it. Maybe because you disapproved of us dating. Maybe you were still uncomfortable with the fact that I was with a boy. Maybe it was because he was my coworker, and you knew it would be messy. Needless to say my defiance brought me a deep and passionate love with him, but we were never meant to last. But this was the point where we started to heal our wounds.
Remember that year we spent together after I graduated from college. I got the call when you were diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer while I was in Aotearoa where I studied with Māori and Pacific scholars. I felt the earth shatter beneath me. I remember sinking back into darkness that day, but being held by my Takatāpui kin and my Fakafifine auntie who had poksai(d) me while I was there. During the pandemic one of them became an ancestor. He was young and had cancer as well. I never got the opportunity to keep my promise to visit him in person again. Shaun was his name. I met him in a dance studio where he spun poi to the beat of his ancestors. I remember his ferocity serving Charisma, Uniqueness, Nerve, and Talent. I remember his tenderness to teach me with Whati and Tangaroa the ways they were taught to love and honor their ancestors. Even those who had at some point been forgotten. I imagine you two hanging out in the celestial bodies above. Perhaps having a drink together, dancing the night away to disco music at an intergalactic nightclub where Donna Summers and Whitney Houston frequent. Shimmering, spinning, and twirling on the stage performing “Last Dance” and “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”. Maybe there is even a drag queen spinning poi on stage to the beat of “Poi E” by the Pātea Māori Club.
The days were long when you went into treatment. I stayed with you for a year until you could return home to Guåhan. I remember after your treatment the doctors said you were going to live for a long time. You would often fly back and forth to follow up with your oncologist and visit me on your trips. Remember the next boy you met? He was more timid than the last boy I introduced you to. He was fun loving and aspired to do great things with his life. It was on that trip where you passed through Seattle on your way back home from your oncologist appointment. I introduced you to him over dinner. When we got home you didn’t look very happy. You had a scowl on your face that I couldn’t figure out. Maybe you were still uncomfortable with the fact that I was queer (This label finally fit, to this day I just want be fluid and love who I want to love freely). Maybe it was because you were tired from the traveling. Maybe you had a sixth sense for what was about to happen, that we would be in a global pandemic. Maybe you knew you were going to travel to the stars soon and were preparing for that journey. You kept it a secret like when you kept how ill you were feeling secret. Maybe I just needed to stop thinking so hard about it. You verbalized that you were happy for me. But, maybe you could see how unhappy I actually was, something I couldn’t see because I was blinded by love.
I did love him. I thought he was “the one” but he turned out to just be the “the next one”. He fell out of love with me. I don’t know what it was that went wrong between us. I guess the absence of closure is in some ways closure. Maybe there is a comfort in the discomfort of not knowing. I know it is a space for healing and reflection. That there is, perhaps, healing in the midst of pain. We try to avoid our processes of grief, but ultimately we have to face grief to find closure. This I know now, but at the time I was naive. What was clearest to me then was that I was experiencing one of the deepest heartbreaks I have ever felt. I was ready to give him all of my love and plan for our our future. But he had other plans. Perhaps he fell in love with someone else when we decided to open our relationship. Perhaps it was his best friend, but none of this is my business. I wish him the best and all of the love in the world.
Do you remember when he broke up with me over the phone the day after Dad’s cousin had passed away and we had held his family in grief and mourning the day before. There is never a really good time to breakup with someone. Maybe I made him feel trapped. I was in bed for days. Tears flowed faster out of me than I could put water in. This was the first time I saw Dad’s fear expressed as worry about me. It was the first time since we had started to talk again, after we promised agreed work and mend our relationship. It was after he told me he had no problems with me being gay. I say this knowing we had to pause this healing to help you heal. You got sick almost immediately after that trip. You used to tell me how hard he was working towards it, but he never really showed me until after you passed. We could not focus on healing our på’a because we had to focus on helping you heal. I need him to fill your shoes now, but they are still such big shoes to fill. He is trying. He is healing. Maybe he told me that because he loves me, I do believe it still took him years and will take him more time after this moment to settle into it. But I couldn’t tell you for sure. That’s his story to tell. But it feels that we can now navigate together after being apart for so long.
Conversations he and I had shifted to be about you, your treatment, and our responsibilities for caring for and supporting you in your healing. Our entire family grieved the you prior to you being sick. The happy woman who was described by your sister’s daughter, as the luckiest women alive. A woman that survived a building fire. Narrowly escaping after you were forgotten as people evacuated in a panic at Great Grandpa’s Yakinku restaurant in Tokyo. You narrowly escaped as he ran in heroically, wrapped you in a blanket, and carried you out to safety. In many ways you were a lady of luck. You were given the worst prognosis possible and survived 5 years after that. You got to meet 6 of your grandchildren. You got to return home and pass peacefully in your bed with all of your children surrounding you. You got to pass beside Dad whose love for you is as deep as the ocean. It was by the ocean that your love with him flourished. Though he couldn’t always be there physically, he was always by your side as you made your journey to the stars.
I sacrificed a lot of myself to care for you. But it gave me more time to spend with you that I will cherish. Hours and opportunities to share my life experiences with you that were lost in that long period of silence. People keep telling me “losing your mother at 27 is one of the hardest challenges you’ll experience in your adult life”. To experience it so early in life feels as if the wind was taken out of my sails. I can rest easy knowing that I made those sacrifices. In many ways your battle with cancer was like the category 4 super typhoon Pongsonga we lived through when I was 7. Grandma and Grandpa’s house was flooded with ocean water and sand after a gas tank from the hotel next door broke through their windows and sent ocean water gushing inside. It was a day where you, Dad, Josh, and I spent hours holding up doors with our bodies pushing to withstand the gale force winds threatening to blow our house doors in. It was the night where Dad had to walk through the storm to get Grandpa, Grandma, and Joey so that they could escape the Ocean and Sky’s quarrel, their intimate relationship. We were all exhausted after, but I remember how our family held each other so tightly after seeing our place of gathering destroyed, our family home. What do you do when home is no longer present?
I’ve experienced this twice in my life. The first time when Grandma died and our extended family grew distant. Where did the inafa'maolek go that held us together for so long, through that typhoon. The care we provided for each other amidst the damage and repairs of Grandpa and Grandma's house. The days where we had no power, the days where water was limited, and where gas was scarce. Our people have survived genocide and as Billy-Ray Belcourt has said we as Natives have already lived through apocalypse. We did so because we relied on each other. We trusted in inafa’maolek. We stopped seeing each other after Grandma passed. I was close to her too. I was her Kiridu, and I miss her everyday. But to know I spent that time with her and that she was slowly making her transition to the stars made me happy. Maybe she’s dancing with you and Shaun at that nightclub, wearing a gown stitched with stardust and glistening with starlight. She was the second person I came out to. She wasn’t completely present all the time after her stroke, but in that moment I sensed the love I had longed to sense from her for so long after she got sick. I knew it would be challenging to care for you amidst your storm, and that it would feel like an ocean flooded my home. I know now, because you cannot be there for me for my big moments.
I ruminate in my head. “She won’t be there when/if I get married. She won’t be there for when/if I have kids. She won’t be there for when I walk across the stage with my doctorate. She won’t be here to see this letter in the gallery it now sits in. She’s not here for the little things too. She’s not here to hold me when days are hard. She’s not here to tell me to stay mentally strong when I feel like I’m spiraling out of control. She’s not here to gossip with me about everyone in my family. She’s not here to send me care packages when I’m sick. She’s not here to call me when I don’t call home. She’s not here to rush me off the phone to talk to her grandchildren. She’s not here to talk to when I don’t know what to do. She’s not here to cook meals that felt warm with the love that emanated from her hands.” But I know you’re here in my heart. I know you are up in the stars watching over me. I know because I see you in my dreams. You show me the future. You show me a path forward when I am at my lowest.
You are here to walk through parts of my collective grief that I cannot walk alone and that others cannot walk with me. I feel your spirit when I am visited by a hummingbird on occasion. Our Indigenous kin here believe hummingbirds are symbols of luck and good news. I feel it when I see a rainbow on days I am so deep in my grief. They fill the sky where darkness and sunlight meet. They are a symbol of hope and place of refuge for many Queer people, even those who live on Guåhan. Though it’s symbology has changed, it still brings us a sense of community. Something that has been ripped from us then burned to ash through colonization. Connections to loved ones lost. But burning has the potential to create life. It can fertilize the soil for something new and stronger to grow. It’s these little signs that you and Grandpa taught me to listen and be attentive to. I was told that Grandma used to have premonitions, but perhaps she was more attuned to communicating with our ancestors, all of our human and more than human relations.
Now I know I’ve said this a lot but… I really thought he was “the one”. The last boy you ever got to meet. Maybe the one just doesn’t exist. Maybe there are many? Whose to say I have not traveled to that island on my journey yet, and who knows if I will ever make it there.
I admit that a part of me misses him everyday, or the memories that we made together that I cherish. Somedays it feels like my heart is split open as I mourn the loss of you and the loss of him. But I knew I wasn’t happy, and maybe you knew too. Loving across a continent is almost as hard as loving across the Ocean. I knew that pain because being away from you when you were home filled me with grief. It made me long for home, for your warm embracing love, for your spirit to guard and protect me from the challenges I experienced here on Turtle Island. You were my heart, and home is where the heart is. Maybe you knew when I saw that same scowl on your face as you returned to bed when I woke up to make you breakfast the day after he had visited. I wrote it off as you still not being ready even though you invited him to stay with us in Santa Monica while you got treatment for the second time. Maybe you knew, and you smiled at the small things I cherished about him. Or maybe you knew that it wouldn’t last forever. It was hard letting him go because it felt like letting those memories go. But, I was reminded by my friend Marie that the love you shared with me will forever be in me and that my future partners would connect with you through the love I share with them. Because you taught me how to love.
Carrying on without you is hard. But it’s something I have done before. For all of those that had passed before you. Sumikobachan, Grandma, Uncle Mitsu, Uncle Ed. I remember when I left home to move to Seattle. It took time to pack and prepare for my new journey. I had to ensure I was ready and that you were also ready for me to depart. Perhaps that is what I am doing now. Preparing, getting ready to move towards a new adventure and parting ways with you on this Island. It doesn't mean we will never see each other again, but that you must now go. As Dr. Maya Angelou once said “love liberates, it doesn't bind”. And it wasn’t until I left your side to rest, to take a short nap, that you made the decision to leave the shore. To take your final journey to the stars.
Those last days were the most challenging. Seeing you go from smiling and alert to unconscious tore my heart out of my chest. I remember my last deep conversation I had with you while you were still here. It was while you rested your eyes because you had no more energy to keep them open. When you were no longer able to speak. With tears rushing down my face I asked you what I would do without you. How would I float on? How would I be able to move forward? You let out three sounds. At the moment my heart heard a faint remanence. “I Love You”.
I remember when we lit candles to float alongside you and to guide your canoe on its final journey to the cosmos. I pulled out my guitar and sang to you one last time, just like I had sang to you every day in your final months. Just like when I had Anthony bring me an ukulele so that I could sing to you everyday when we were in Santa Monica when the doctors told us they couldn't do anymore. I was unsure if I was going to see you again after I went back to Seattle to prepare for my long journey to meet you at home. I wonder if this is what it was like when our ancestors departed into the horizon. Could you hear them mom? Could you hear them signing along with me.
Lumuhu
It’s been nearly 10 months since you’ve passed. The last time I wrote you a letter, it was on my birthday on the night of pulan guålafon, a full moon so bright with your love. It was as if you built a bridge so you could hug me once again. I felt your warm embrace when Lourdez wrapped their arms around me tenderly and lovingly said "happy birthday my love". I nearly broke into tears in front of all of my friends because I could feel you once again. I felt your love when my chosen family showered me with gifts made from their own hands. It felt like you were sitting there around the table with us laughing eating pizza. It felt like you were still here. In Aquarius, in the time of Umayanggan, the season of being unsettled. It marked the end of a deep intense stage of my grief and a new beginning.
We are now at the end of Taurus’s constellation in the time of Lumuhu. Since Umayanggan you’ve visited me as hummingbirds, rainbows, gentle winds behind me as I sat at Jose Rizal Park looking out at the city skyline, songs I hear that we would sing together come up on my music queue, conversations and meals shared in your memory with friends and chosen family, you've even guided me to a lover born from the stars in this constellation. A lover who I share the love you shared with me. Someone I cherish because when we are together I feel your presence. I know you are with me i mas takhalom gi kurason hu, within the deepest parts of my heart. You visit me in my dreams when I am at my lowest. You’ve shown me potential futures ahead of me, something I could not say I could see without you in Umayanggan. I’ve opened my heart back up to love because you slowly filled my cup up with puti’on glowing bright. A cup left empty when you left this shore, love you've rained onto me as your make your journey to the cosmos above.
Thank you for showing me how to love, for sharing all that you could with me, for teaching me how to navigate the world. I promise I will continue to share what you’ve taught me with all of the people I care so deeply about. With kin, with my chosen family, with my new lover whose canoe now sails alongside mine. It’s now time for me to begin a new voyage. Lumuhu is a time to return, a time to voyage and I think the worst of this typhoon has passed. I’ll continue to talk to you in my heart everyday. I will blow the Kulo’ loud so that you can hear me as your canoe traverses into the constellations above.
I can see your canoe disappear into the horizon as the sun sets on Tamuneng bay, it slowly ascends downward into the ocean. I see the constellations rise from the cliffs behind me. On the shore of our family home. On the beach you held me in your embrace. On the land you raised me with dad. I see puti’on tåsi like tiny Guasåli lighting up the night skies. The waters are clear and it’s time for me to leave this island too. Onto my next journey. I will float on knowing parts of you will always be with me deep in my kurason and and in the highest parts of my mind in my memories. The parts that communicate with the spiritual world. I only ask that you continue to shine bright onto me , like puti’on tasi. To guide my canoe as it moves away from yours into a new horizon.
Ma'lak na puti'on tåsi chachalåni batkoko
su'on mo'na gi tano'-ta u fåtto lalakse
Li'e' guini O Saina i piligru na senlåhyan
Ya un tailaye i sahyan yanggen ti un gigiha.
This final piece in this first piece I created for this the collection. It is a digital drawing that I sketched when I first started asking where do our ancestors go after they pass from this realm. I imagine that they journey into the horizon traversing celestial bodies above us. I used pointillism and other textures and shapes to create this shape, if you are in the exhibit now and look closely at parts of the image you can see even the moon and the sakman (voyaging canoe) are made of stars. I drew inspiration for this idea from Japan & Guåhan's star sand beaches.
Title: Celestial Journeys: Voyage to the Afterworld
Medium: Digital, Pointillism, Mixed Style