Hannah Adams

We took a summer break! This post is from July 4, 2025. Hey everybody, very sorry for the late/delayed posts. Life has been very hectic recently, but I will post a bunch of posts back to back this time.

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As you can probably guess from this title, I recently experienced a loss while in Japan.

This Father’s Day, my great grandmother Judy–or Grandma Duck Duck, as we so fondly called her–passed away. She was 89 years old, only a month short of her 90th birthday. Not only am I not home, but I am thousands of miles away from it. This morning, I attended her funeral via zoom call. As my family said their goodbyes and mourned in solidarity with one another, I was watching on my bed, alone, only the blackness of the 3 A.M. sky keeping me company.

It is hard to continue with life as normal, yet I also feel as though nothing has changed.

Grieving at a distance is idiosyncratic; my heart and my mind know I have lost someone but my body and my time don’t seem to care.

Loss is something that is obviously very difficult. It cuts deep, encompassing every bone and crevice in your body. But the fact that it happened while I was abroad has made this process of grieving and healing so much more difficult. I can’t uproot my life to give myself time to mourn Duck Duck; even if I wanted to. I had a test, a group project, and choir rehearsals all on the day she died. Grief is not an excuse to miss your commitments, they say.

I haven’t even cried yet. Obviously, tears are not a necessity for someone to grieve, and that does not mean that I don’t love her. I loved my Duck Duck so much; instead of sadness, I feel numbness. It feels like this huge prank has been pulled on me and I am just waiting for Ashton Kutcher to jump out and yell “You just got PUNK’D!”. But Kutcher never comes, and I am left alone with the reality that my beautiful, lovely Duck Duck is gone.

There is a James Patterson quote I feel resonates with me at the moment:

“The weird, weird thing about devastating loss is that life actually goes on. When you’re faced with a tragedy, a loss so huge that you have no idea how you can live through it, somehow, the world keeps turning, the seconds keep ticking.”

Even though my world seems to be flipped on its axis, it still keeps spinning. The world does not stop for my grief, even though I really, really want it to. Despite my desire to bedrot and ignore the world for a week, the world is too busy turning to notice or care that I am gone. I can not simply stop living my life in the shadow of grief of someone I once loved, but I also deserve the space to mourn her in the way that I need.

It has been difficult managing these feelings while being so separated from the source of them. It’s hard, but a much needed, albeit brutal, punch in the face from reality that the world does not stop for me, even if I wanted it to. As unfortunate at it is, Duck Duck is only the beginning of many deaths in my life when I will be away from home, and what better time than now, when I have absolutely no one in my family around me, to develop the coping mechanisms necessary for dealing with loss without perspiring into a pool of uncontainable sorrow.

Being abroad while struggling with the death of a loved one has not been an ideal experience – neither is being anywhere and being faced with death – but I am thankful for the opportunity to mature, even though it came at the expense of the loss of life.

I will miss you Duck Duck, and I do miss you, and I will carry your legacy through me.

Your chickadee forever.

After having been in classes for half of a semester now, the life that I have built for myself here in Japan is slowly, but surely, establishing itself as normal.

I have a routine now and am able to navigate Kyoto alone as if I had lived here my whole life. I go out with friends, do my homework, and exist as if I was living in Denver again, only this time, across the world.

I never thought I would be able to assimilate into life here so quickly. I still struggle with things, but I am not nearly as hopeless as I thought I would be. I will say, having friends from home here with me has most definitely helped speed up the process. We have all struggled with the same things and helped each other out, which would be a completely different story had I came completely alone. But I think, still, that I have done pretty well so far.

Classes are actually kind of fun! They are difficult, especially the ones I have that are not in English, but I have greatly enjoyed the people I have met and almost mundane normalcy of it all. I even have my study spaces and cafes I frequent near campus (let me know if you want a cafe/sweet treat review post!)

The way classes work here is extremely difficult than how I am used to in Denver. For instance, our classes start at weird times of the hour–such as 2:55 or 12:15–and are only an hour and a half long. In Denver, though, all of my classes started on the hour and always ended at either half past or 10 minutes before the hour, so I had to get used to that adjustment. I still forget when classes end sometimes, especially my evening classes, but I will get it eventually.

I also only have each class once a week, other than my extensive language courses. I’m so used to having each class twice a week back home that it felt like years had passed since my last class when I first started classes here. It is also weird to have a blocked out lunch period where no classes are occurring. I like not having to block out my lunch plans when registering; they are already established in our schedule. I don’t know why America doesn’t do this, but if any politicians are reading this (I doubt anyone is but hey, a girl can dream), bring this up in your next policy meeting. It is so much more convenient, especially if you have a big test or homework coming up and have no room in your schedule to block time out for it.

I have also thoroughly enjoyed the convenience that is public transport in Japan. I can go across Kyoto for under $10 by simply taking the train or bus, which is so much cheaper and different than many places in the United States. My hometown doesn’t even have any kind of public transportation infrastructure, and the one in Denver is, unfortunately, known for being not one of the best, so I never truly understood how beneficial having train infrastructure is.

And not only is the train infrastructure so nice, but I have now been exposed to the wonders of a walkable city. A 30-minute walk would sound miserable to Denver me, but Japan me is saying “that’s nothing!”. One of our first days here, we went out for drinks and karaoke and missed the last bus, causing us to take on a two hour walk back home at 2 am with ease. Needless to say, after that, I can walk any distance back home now.

It’s not all completely normal though. I do miss being in the same time zones as my loved ones; my day starts as theirs ends, one sun rises, causing another sun to set. Having to schedule calls and meetings based on my 15-hour time difference is difficult, and I can’t wait until I am back on the same continent as my friends and family for that reason alone.

I crave food from back in the United States constantly. While Japan has delicious cultural cuisine, sometimes I just miss a good, spicy taco or some cornbread. There are lots of international foods to try, like Indian or Vietnamese food, which are both incredibly delicious, but I can never truly fight off my American mind craving a burger. Japan and America do burgers differently, and they just don’t hit the same. Same with American candy and treats, sometimes I want a bag of hot Cheetos or Nerds and just can’t find them.

Also, sillily enough, I miss the size of paper back in America. Paper here is huge! It’s almost as if two American sized sheets are stuck together in one big sheet. Almost all of my assignments need to be folded to fit into my folder, and I can almost never write on it if it is fully laid out in front of me. I like having small paper, it is so much easier to carry around and write on. I never thought paper would be a culture shock, but alas.

Some things are still the same, such as the way I still go to cafes too often or watch T.V. or YouTube when I study or eat, but overall, my life has been changing in both the best and worst ways.

This could go on for hours if I wrote down every single thing I miss or have adjusted to, so I’ll cut it here, but I have shaped a little life here. While it may not be my permanent home, it is my home for the moment. I might as well make the most of it and do what I can to make my days as normal for myself as I can.

Torii gate in Uji, Kyoto ٩( ‘ω’ )و

Author: Hannah Adams

Grief at a Distance

Home is Where–and What–You Make It