The Learning That Comes Through Grief

I often thought of this LinkedIn platform as a sort of broad “marketplace” of people and ideas, yet distant and irrelevant from the ways we traditionally network within our communities face-to-face and through social connections here in Hawaiʻi. We often joke that everyone here is 2 degrees separated. Why would you need a social media platform for that?

And so to that end, I didn’t think it an appropriate place necessarily to post about my personal life. But I’ve realized over the past week that I’ve made so many friends here, or have connected both in “real” life and on LinkedIn, and so it is an extension of my personal network. It felt awkward for folks who know me not to have any clue about what’s been happening with me. And so Iʻll share what’s otherwise a very personal story – because if you know me, I am always an open book.

Last Sunday, my father passed away. I got the call at midnight, and I just so happened to be at my desk working on some client proposals since I could not sleep. I quickly got dressed and rushed to the hospital to see him; when I got there though, he had already gone. He had not raised me as a child, but we reconnected when I was 18 and we had built a relationship over the past 18 years getting to know each other as father and daughter. We met up for meals together. He shared journals from his father with me. We exchanged jokes and wrote letters to each other on Facebook. He was a great writer.

That night, as I faced his lifeless body, I felt a deep sense of sorrow come over me. I bowed my head low and sobbed, thinking of how our time together had been cut so short. That that was it; it was finished.

The last week has been an emotional roller coaster. Some days, I feel bored and ready to dive back into work. Yet, other days like today, I can’t move out of bed. I’ve grieved deeply before, like in 2015 when my grandmother, the woman who helped my mom raise me and who was basically my best friend, passed. I know what it’s like to want to shield yourself from the world, shaking your fists at God, angry at life for still going on, when for you it has come crashing down.

But this, somehow, is different. The sting that lingers is not just of grieving his loss, but grieving what could have been. Stories untold and memories unmade. And in this case, a part of my identity – who I am, where I come from, who my family was – is still left unanswered.

My father was African American and Japanese, the son of a US Navyman and a military veteran himself. Having not grown up with him or among his family, I didn’t know much except the bits and pieces of stories I heard or pictures I came across. I took my Ancestry.com DNA test, which confirmed my connections to various geographies within Africa and Japan, showing family ties in California and New Orleans Louisiana, and I tried desperately to try and piece puzzles together to better understand him and the family’s legacy.

I could go on, and perhaps this turns into a book someday, who knows! But for now, the grief has sparked in me a renewed desire to know and understand his life, who my family was, and through that process, who I am.

I turned 36 on Friday, and if this experience has taught me anything, it’s that it’s never too late to dig deeper into who you are and to learn everything you can about your identity and what makes you you. And that from the depths of grief can come beautiful learning, if you listen in closely.

Rest In Peace, Edward Anthony Cross III. August 11, 1958 – October 19, 2020