Raise the Red Lantern

Nine years ago on November 6th, my father passed away from colon cancer. I was rather young at the time and it took me a long time to figure out how I would process his death. A flurry of well meaning friends and therapists encouraged me to use words to express my feelings, but I had little to say. Even highly inappropriate compliments admiring my austere black funeral garb from my bewildered classmates failed to elicit much response from me at the time.

Death changes life in such a sudden fashion that sometimes all one can do is keep going through the motions of daily life in order to eventually find a place to start comprehending what happened. I insisted on going back to school the weekend after the funeral. After a few months, I stopped seeing the flame headed therapist who nodded and smiled at my words. I seemed to have moved on.

Paper thin walls of even the most well built dormitories betray the sounds of our most private moments. The sweet soprano of a girl singing happy birthday to her father settled heavily on my shoulders one night, waiting for me to shake it off and continue writing an essay. It wasn't until years later I realized that there was no way right way to grieve over the death of a loved one. I would never have the opportunity to sing happy birthday to my father ever again but that did not mean I could not actively celebrate the positive impact my father had on my life. So last year while I was in China, I started a tradition of releasing a paper lantern into the winds on my father's birthday which is during the winter and on the anniversary of his death. My father loved exploring the vastness of the universe through our battered but beloved telescope and somehow I think he would approve of watching a lantern floating out into the night sky. Last year's lantern was blue with the character "福" written on it with red paint. This year's lantern was red like the ones I've seen in Nanjing.