{"id":16971,"date":"2013-03-11T00:01:45","date_gmt":"2013-03-11T07:01:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dvan.org\/?p=16971"},"modified":"2018-10-14T22:00:43","modified_gmt":"2018-10-15T05:00:43","slug":"the-art-of-losing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dvan.org\/2013\/03\/the-art-of-losing\/","title":{"rendered":"Khanh Ho: On The Art of Losing"},"content":{"rendered":"

Khanh Ho<\/a> is writing the first Vietnamese American Detective Fiction ever.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because being the first is a power trip. \u00a0 In this essay, Khanh meditates on loss, pain and bereavement.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Please<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had to deal with three losses in my life\u2014all major.\u00a0 The first was the loss of the country I never knew:\u00a0 Vietnam.\u00a0 And that loss\u2014that emptiness\u2014sat at the center of my life.\u00a0 It was a loss I could never quite understand but it was present in unsuspected ways:\u00a0 the fact that I could never visit my grandparents who had been left behind and separated by an embargo\u2014that was one aspect of losing.\u00a0 Such loss, it is accepted as a matter of course when it occurs so young.\u00a0\u00a0This is exactly as it should be\u2026because that is how it has always been.<\/em>\u00a0 That\u2019s what is going on in a child\u2019s mind.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"Asian<\/a><\/p>\n

The second major loss in my life came in the suicide of my little sister.\u00a0 She hung herself with a telephone cord and I cut her down from the staircase railing.\u00a0 It occurred at the end of my time in grad school.\u00a0 Lucy was a beautiful girl:\u00a0 a broadcast journalist.\u00a0 She had just been diagnosed with bipolar disorder\u2014a psychological condition that makes you feel extremely manic and, later, morbidly depressed.\u00a0 I took her in. But even before she killed herself, I was dealing with a great loss:\u00a0 she was disappearing before my eyes.\u00a0 She was not the little sister that I had known.<\/p>\n

The final loss came only a few years ago.\u00a0 I was writing a great book\u2014an academic tome\u2014and had even secured funding to finish it.\u00a0 This book was going to revolutionize the way we think about everything\u2026in my humble opinion.\u00a0 But when I was away doing research in wonderful Seattle, someone broke into my corner office in Iowa and threw away all my papers.\u00a0 Years of research:\u00a0 down the tubes.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not sharing this to make you feel sorry for me.\u00a0 I\u2019m sharing this with you because I have been thinking much about loss lately\u2014how it gives you fortitude, tensile strength, humanity.\u00a0 And I\u2019m realizing that all the characters I write\u2014all the characters that mean anything to me\u2014suffer loss on some level.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is a game that kids used to play growing up.\u00a0 It was a party game based on this premise:\u00a0\u00a0if your house is burning down, what do you grab?\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Kids often offered up ideas that ranged from the practical to sentimental:\u00a0 photo albums, dolls, jewelry, cash.\u00a0 It was clear to me, though, that my peers had never experienced a catastrophic event like a fire.\u00a0 If your house is burning down, you should take nothing.\u00a0 Absolutely nothing.<\/p>\n

\"locket\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I knew that by instinct.<\/p>\n

Once, while walking to high school, a woman almost ran me over.\u00a0\u00a0 I was jaywalking:\u00a0 it was totally my fault.\u00a0 This occurred right in front of my high school.\u00a0 When the woman pulled into the student parking lot and got out of her car, I thought she was going to confront me.\u00a0 She had grey frizzy hair and wore a suit jacket, slacks and heels\u2014the uniform of authority.\u00a0 But she said, \u201cAren\u2019t you Khanh Ho?\u201d\u00a0 It turned out she had taught me how to read English in first grade.\u00a0 She was a student teacher then.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The woman told me that I had drawn a picture of my house burning down.\u00a0 I was sticking my crayon head out of the second story window.\u00a0 It was a moving picture for her\u2014a defining moment for a student teacher.\u00a0 And she carried the memory of it as if it were a cherished object:\u00a0 a locket on a delicate chain, connecting her to a sense of purpose that got her into the classroom every morning.\u00a0 She was now teaching at my high school.\u00a0 \u201cI always think of you,\u201d she said.\u00a0 And it must be true:\u00a0 how else would she remember my face after all these years?<\/span><\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t have the heart to tell her that I was skeptical.\u00a0 I couldn\u2019t recall having experienced such a great and terrible loss.\u00a0 Memory is tricky:\u00a0 I didn\u2019t actually believe that she was remembering me at all\u2014that perhaps she had gotten me mixed up with some other Vietnamese kid at the school. \u00a0\u00a0I was raised to be polite, so I let her blabber on.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

But now, after so many years becoming expert at loss, I wonder if I was not merely adept;\u00a0 I wonder if I was born with a prodigious talent, like those piano geniuses whose feet barely reach the pedals but, nonetheless, bang away at a glistening Steinway.\u00a0 Perhaps I was destined to grow into an expert\u2014an expert of loss.\u00a0 Perhaps that is why I even managed to lose, at such a tender age, something that another human being found unforgettable.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Khanh Ho is a writer, critic and scholar who backpacked around the world for three years and had a heck of a lot of adventures along the way. \u00a0Follow him on twitter @LAMysteryWriter. \u00a0To read more of his work, check out his website:\u00a0<\/span>www.losangelesmysterwriter.com<\/a><\/p>\n

________________________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

Do you enjoy reading diaCRITICS? Then please consider subscribing!\u00a0<\/em>Please take the time to rate this post (above) and share it (below). Ratings for top posts are listed on the sidebar. Sharing (on email, Facebook, etc.) helps spread the word about diaCRITICS. Join the conversation and leave a comment!\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0Did you like this? Make Khanh\u2019s day:\u00a0 Share on Facebook.\u00a0 Tweet your friends.\u00a0 Leave a comment. \u00a0Here’s something to get your started: \u00a0what is your biggest loss?<\/em><\/p>\n

________________________________________________________________<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Khanh Ho is writing the first Vietnamese American Detective Fiction ever.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because being the first is a power trip. \u00a0 In this essay, Khanh meditates on loss, pain and bereavement. I\u2019ve had to deal with three losses in my life\u2014all major.\u00a0 The first was the loss of the country I never knew:\u00a0 Vietnam.\u00a0 And […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":52,"featured_media":17280,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_vp_format_video_url":"","_vp_image_focal_point":[]},"categories":[62],"tags":[1592],"yoast_head":"\nKhanh Ho: On the Art of Losing<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Khanh Ho: On the Art of Losing\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/dvan.org\/2013\/03\/the-art-of-losing\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Khanh Ho: On the Art of Losing\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Khanh Ho: On the 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