Love, 2024

Mao-Lin’s mother, Kitty, passed away early in the morning of January 1st, 2024. 

I’ve experienced a lot of significant trauma in my life. I was abused by my mother; I ran away from home to escape the abuse; I was homeless a few times growing up. Those seven days from December 25th, 2024 to January 1st 2025 are amongst the seven most traumatic of my entire life. I gave every ounce of my soul in Kitty’s final days. The whole family did. 

Not since I ran away from home in 2001 at the age of ten had so much of my life changed in such a short period of time. What followed her passing has been nothing short of a fundamental reordering of my life that will shape the next decade and beyond. We, as individuals and as a family unit, will never be the same. We can’t be the same.I closed my eyes. 

I imagined time swirling in all directions. Light becomes dark, dark become obscured, the nothingness of voids creates their own reality. You cease as it was and exist in what is. Is this what they meant by everything, everywhere, all at once?

“Have you ever questioned the nature of your reality?” “What do you mean, Delores?” 

“Come with me.”

“I’m not sure I can do this much longer.”  

“You need to man the fuck up.” 

 “Are you quoting Veep to me, Delores?”  

“It’s called cross promotional synergy. I thought you worked in advertising.”

 “Be nice, Delores.” 

 “I am being nice. The last guy I didn’t like, I killed. You’re getting off easy.” 

We started to walk. 

“I brought some friends, hope you don’t mind.” Delores was with Liz lemon, Jack Donahue, and Ron Swanson. “They let you all hang out together? When the network execs aren’t looking.”

“You just need to crush this with your mind vice Kevin,” Jack barks towards me. “What’s up with him, Liz?” I ask. “He’s reaganing.” 

We stepped onto a vast plateau. “What is this place?” I asked. Delores replied “You said the void between here and there is the human imagination, look behind you.” Behind me was the live I had lived, in front of me was a vast expanse of white, like what Harry sees when Voldemort kills him. “Look below you,” Delores says, pointing at the ground.  Below me, the ground was moving. With each moment, more of the blank expanse became filled with more lived moments. “I hate art,” Ron grunts. 

“Why is in front blank, Delores?”  “It’s written in the stars.” “I used to love that song growing up.”  “I know, sing the chorus, I know you remember it.”

Oh, written in the stars

A million miles away

A message to the main, oh

Seasons come and go

But I will never change

And I'm on my way

“You’ve lived that whole life behind you and you have this blank canvas in front of you,” Delores stated with a crisp clarity. She continued,  “What are you afraid of? Your strength comes from your resilience. What did you keep saying to yourself in January?” 

“I’m not ok but I know I’m going to be ok and I just need to figure out how to get from here to there. I didn’t know what else to do.” “I know, Kevin. And in that moment, you still found hope.”

Evelyn Wang appears. “Hi Kevin.” “You’re here too?”  “You can’t reference my movie not expect me not to show up.”  “You’re full of surprises, Delores. “

Evelyn looks at me.  “Your conscience is burdened by what has been, Kevin, when it should be focused on what could be.”  “I’m not prepared to let it rest.”  “I know, the pain is substantial and real. But you can still find your path forward.”

“Hey Delores - can I ask you one more question.” 

 “Sure.”  

 “What’s going to happen to me?”

“In life as in death, in death as in life. We are beholden to the stars of our mortality, clutched in their gravitational aura. It’s written in the stars, Kevin.” 

“Delores - promise me you won’t give up on me.”  

“I’ll only give up on you when you’ve given up on yourself.“

It’s sometime in late January and I’m back in New York. It’s been a few weeks since Kitty passed away in the early hours of New Year’s Day. I was sitting on the kitchen floor, eating a bowl of cereal, alternating between laughing hysterically at instagram reels and crying/scream wailing hysterically about Kitty’s passing. Mao-Lin walks in the door.

“Baebae, what’s going on?” I begin laughing and crying even more manically. Cheerios begin spilling on the floor. “Come on, get up” he says to me with tender patience. 

“I sorta fell apart.” 

“I can see that. It’s ok, let’s clean up. I fell in love with a boy from Maine who makes a mess sometimes.”

“Only sometimes?”

“OK always.”

Soon after, I was on one of my first work calls after taking bereavement leave. It was a call around lunch time and I 

The next two months are a blur. Everything was numb. Nothing mattered. Or maybe everything matters so much that nothing matters? If everything is important, then nothing is important. Remember when homeland security used to have that color coded alert system and we were always on yellow so it only made news when things moved to red or whatever? It’s like that. 

In mid-March, I was in a dark place and looking for some sort of hope. I had been meaning, since forever really, to do one of those DNA tests that tells you where you’re from. I mean, I’m a white boy from Plymouth, Massachusetts. Do you remember learning about the pilgrims in school? Same town. I was raised an irish catholic as a white boy in a town 40 minutes south of Boston. I was expecting 47 shades of white, you know what I mean? It’s like, what flavor of saltine crackers would you like?

The results came back as I expected: 25% Irish, 20% Scottish, 17% English, 13% German, 12% Ashkenzai Jew, 10% Spanish.

Hold up. Did that say Ashkenazi Jew? I read the results again. It sure did. I was confused. Not because I have any problem with being Jewish, but why the hell was I raised Catholic? I was very confused. My dad had previously done a DNA test and I managed to cajole the results out of him. It wasn’t from his side. I texted my mom.  

“Oh yeah. My dad was Jewish and converted to Catholicism to be with my mom.”

After a few moments, I had a startling realization. My grandfather converted to Catholicism to be with my grandmother and they had my mother. They abused her in the name of the Catholic faith, believing that the only way my mother would receive the care and protection of Jesus Christ was to kneel before him in pain so he could heal and protect her. My mother did the same to me.

Given this, I decided I would convert to Judaism as a way of reverting my family’s bloodline to what it would have been had a violent form of Catholicism not been introduced. I begin the conversion process in January, 2025 and expect it to take 12-18 months. 

A few days after finding out I was Jewish, I decided to apply to a masters program in data science at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, which I was accepted to. 2024 has been an eventful year, to say the least. 

Everything goes white again.

A rumble of thunder shakes the sky. 

“Delores?” I scream, begging for a response. “Delores? What’s going on? Delores?”

Silence. Then:

“Well, well, well. Mister Kirby, we meet again.”

I turn to see Agent Smith, whose voice had pieced through the air. 

“Agent Smith. It’s been a while. When was the last time I saw you?”

“It’s been twenty years, Mister Kirby.” Agent Smith steps closer, the darkness stalking his every step. 

“Who let you in?” I asked, knowing the answer. 

Agent Smith tilts his head, almost amused. “You see, Mister Kirby, I never left. I’ve been watching you everyday since you ran away. Sure, your defenses became stronger as time went on, making it harder to find a way in. But I waited. I’m patient, you see. And I knew you’d slip… eventually.”

The sky comes to life with a flash of light. Two figures emerge and lock eyes with Agent Smith 

“Wanda and Vision,” I whisper. 

“The ‘90s are over, Agent Smith,” Wanda’s voice cuts in sharply. “Shouldn’t you go back to Blockbuster?”

Smith’s smile is thin, a blade of inevitability. “You think it ends so easily?” His voice thunders as he turns towards me.  “It may be goodbye for now but I’ll be back sooner than you think.  Do you hear that, Mister Kirby? That is the sound of inevitability.”

Wanda turns towards me, her gaze softening as we make eye contact. “You’ve been thinking about us a lot, haven’t you?” Her words carry a weight, but there’s no accusation in them. “You don’t write.”

“Vision’s love for you—it was so profound and meaningful. And yet, I don’t discuss it. Just another echo in the forest.”

Wanda’s eyes narrow as she assesses the situation. “You’ve done some serious damage here, Kevin.” “I know, how long can you hold him off?” I ask nervously. 

“The hex was never meant to be permanent and it’s been stretched too thin. It was only a matter of time.” Wanda replies 

“He’s gone for now,” Vision interjects, “but Agent Smith knows is going to find any new cracks.”

Wanda steps forward, her voice steady. “We can patch it, but you know it’s temporary. The Hex won’t hold forever.”

“I know,” I say quietly. “The Hex must be dismantled. But Agent Smith must be vanquished as well.”

Wanda and Vision exchange a look, knowing what’s to come.

“Then we do what must be done,” Wanda and Vision say in unison. “The war to come that you think about a lot is now here, Kevin. Don’t give up.”

“I won’t, just try and hold it up a bit longer. I won’t give up.”

It’s mid September and I’m sitting in my psychiatrist’s waiting room. He opened the door to his office and I walked in. I paused for a moment, looking around and processing what I saw. It was fairly large and reminded me of a library den. “This is like something I used to see in the movies.” “Well, here you are,” he says. He’s staring me down like you might stare down a toddler who was convinced they didn’t make the mess they definitely did make and you know it because you watched it happen.

I gave him a summary tour of the life I’ve lived and why I was now in front of him. He dutifully took notes, sitting there quietly as I talked about my eventful life. He then read me for filth. “I think you’re suffering from severe depression and post traumatic stress disorder from one of the most traumatic childhoods I’ve ever seen. Your situation serious but not as bad as it could have been, given what you’ve been through. You have to give yourself credit for how far you’ve come. You said it yourself, look at where you’re sitting. Not everyone with your kind of story makes it this far. In fact, very few do.”

It’s now December 20th and I must begin to wrap up this letter. There’s more I could write, more I could think, more I could dream or ruminate. The year is almost over but it feels like it never really started. The mementos from this year are fragments that have been smashed into infinity. If the echoes of the forest aren’t real, then why do I feel like I’m chasing ghosts? 

In previous years, I paused for a moment and then decided to let it all rest. However, I cannot do that this year. 2024 will go down as one of the most consequential of my entire life, a year that will shape the next decade and beyond. Mao-Lin and I have been tried as individuals and as a family unit. The institution of family must always win out.

As I head into 2025, I retain a tremendous amount of hope about my life to come. I’ve been wounded this year in ways that will take many years to fully understand but I’m also charting a path forward. 

In the name of the House of Kirby, the House of Shen, and the House we are building together, may these thoughts be conveyed and understood. Amen.

Love,

–Kevin