Dr. Wendy Suzuki - The Eulogy

 

 

In my family, real emotions were something to be hidden, to be tamped down. I often like to say that you can think of my family like a Japanese-American version of Downton Abbey, without the money, the real estate or the service. [audience laughter] Growing up, showing emotion would call too much attention to yourself. It would embarrass the family. So, no emotions in public, good or bad. But as a neuroscientist, I've always been fascinated with the study of the neurobiology of emotion, even though, personally, my own personal relationship with emotions can be described as a struggle for control. 

 

So, growing up, this was always difficult. When I grew up, this was particularly difficult, because I've always been somebody that cried at weddings. Any and all weddings, even fake TV weddings, I would cry. And so, this struggle would happen all the time in growing up, but I would always try to avoid these situations. Weddings, graduations, eulogies, I couldn't even imagine having to give a eulogy. 

 

So, when my father passed away, I knew I couldn't participate in his eulogy. I remember being so grateful that my younger brother stepped up and he said, “No problem, I will do it.” He gave the most beautiful eulogy for our father. I was filming him as he was telling this beautiful story that I'd never heard before. I could see the emotion welling up, and I could see that struggle that was so familiar to me. I felt so uncomfortable, I had to stop filming. I couldn't put on film that that intimate moment. 

 

Well, about three months later, I was having breakfast. It was 06:30 in the morning, early in the morning in my Manhattan apartment. I wasn't having breakfast. I was actually doing something I do every single morning, which is a tea meditation, which is a meditation over the brewing and savoring of tea. I do this every morning. It grounds me. It opens me up. It sparks creativity. 

 

But that morning, the phone rang, first thing at 06:30 AM. But it was a number from Shanghai. My brother was living in Shanghai, so I picked it up. But it wasn't my brother. It was my brother's business partner who called to tell me that my younger brother had a massive heart attack, and he didn't make it. So, only three months after we lost my father, my younger brother was suddenly and irretrievably gone. Our original family of four were now down to only two. 

 

I remember hanging up that phone. And time stood still. I could feel my heart beating. I could feel the sweat on my palms. It got really quiet, so that all the thoughts in my head got 10 times louder. What do you do when you lose somebody that you thought was going to be there for the rest of your life? And then at some moment, I realized that the only one that didn't know the news was my mother. I couldn't call her to tell her. It was still early. So, I immediately booked a flight from New York to California. I managed to get the most uncomfortable middle seat that any airline had to offer. And not only that, the middle seat's video monitor was broken. [audience laughter]

 

So, I had six and a half hours there. All I had to do was think about what I was going to say to my mother. I was worried, because her hearing isn't great. I was really scared that I was going to scare her when I came into the house, because I hadn't told her I was coming. So, I get home, I knock really loud. I open the door and I say, “Mom, I'm home. It's Wendy. I'm home.” I scared her. She came down and. But we laughed about it. I'll never forget that that look she had on her face, smiling when she said, “What are you doing here?” I had to tell her that I had the most terrible news, that David was gone. 

 

We stood there and cried together. We sat down, we cried together some more. But that crying was such a relief, because it meant that I had done my job. I had one job to do that day, and only I could have done that job. That cry that we had meant that I fulfilled my job. I did it. But I also knew that there was nobody in the world that my mother needed more at that moment than me, and there was nobody that I needed more in the world than my mother. 

 

So, the next week, I stayed in California. We accepted all the condolence calls and visits. We never knew whether it was going to be crying or laughing and reminiscing. But I could tell you that our favorite visit was when my cousin came over. He walked right in, he opened his laptop, and immediately started showing my mother and I, the most extensive set of vacation photos from his last two trips to Germany and Japan.  [audience laughter]

 

My mom and I looked at each other and we said, “Show me more. What's the next beer stein? What other sushi did you eat?” Because we needed that relief so much. We didn't talk about my brother once, that afternoon. We didn't have to. We knew what we were feeling, and that was such a wonderful relief. So, after the end of that week, I flew back to New York. I felt like my life came to a screeching halt. There were these waves of grief that would come over me. I couldn't control when. They would just suddenly come over me. 

 

To be sure, I know that I'm not the only person to have lost somebody, but I was shocked at how devastating these waves of grief could be, and how much they colored every single moment of my life during that time. Somewhere in the haze of that grief, I realized it was a eulogy to give and that I was the only one that could do it. So, I knew I could write it, but could I actually get through this thing that I had essentially been fearing all of my life without doing the thing that scared me most. Crying incoherently, publicly in front of not only family, but all the friends that were going to come out to my brother's eulogy. 

 

So, a month and a half later, I'm standing in front of 200 friends and family at one of my brother's favorite golf clubs on what would have been his 51st birthday. Behind me, beautiful greens. To my left, there was a beautiful portrait of my brother framed in flowers. And in front of me, 200 faces around round tables looking up at me. And so, I started by telling them that my brother was a legend. He was a legend for all the friends that he made. He was that guy that you wanted to be friends with. 

 

But then I got to that part that I was scared of, the part that I wanted to tell about how he loved and how he was so proud of his family. I could feel the emotions coming up, and I could feel the struggle that was so familiar coming up. And you know what? I just cried. I just cried there, and I let it out and I invited everybody to cry with me. After a lifetime of damping that down and trying to control it and struggling, it felt so good to let that emotion, let the grief and the sadness come out in those tears. It actually felt good to just feel those emotions. It felt great to invite everybody in that room to feel them with me and cry with me. When I made that invitation, I could feel the shift in the room. 

 

Well, I'm teaching a first-year seminar class right now called How to Build a Big, Fat, Fluffy Brain. We have talked about the power of human emotion. During that lecture, one of my students said, “I love all those positive emotions, but I just want to skip over those negative ones.” I thought, “That sounds familiar.” [chuckles] 

 

But what I've learned is that emotions are essential messages. They tell us things about ourselves. They tell us what we value, what we hold dear in our hearts, that grief and sadness, I realized, was an expression of my deep, deep love for my brother. I can't have that love without the grief, and the sadness and the sorrow that comes when that person is no longer there. I can't have one without the other. I can't have the deep love without the grief. I can't have the relief without the anxiety. I can't have the joy without the fear. 

 

So, I now have a different relationship with my own emotions. Okay, I'm always going to be embarrassed that I cry at fake TV weddings. But today, even in public, I'm not embarrassed about showing my true emotions, because I know that they are one of the most powerful tools that we have to show and to know who we really are as human beings. Thank you.