This is Us, Too

This Is Us was a real tear jerker tonight.  As promised, we were shown how Jack died but more, it was the story how each of the remaining four -- mom and kids -- individually commemorated his death all this many years after it happened.

We human beings need to remember.  We need to bring back the person we've lost on their anniversaries.  The Jews ritualize it with the yahrzeit, lighting a candle each year on the date of the loved one's death.  Gilbert was Jewish and I lit a yahrzeit candle every year on his anniversary for several years after his death.

I smiled when Kevin (This is Us) called his mother, while sitting at the tree they planted after his dad's death.  My sister died on September 13 and every year on that date, I called my mother.  Now Jeri calls me.  I don't think she even knows that I called my mother every year for many years.

Today wasn't a death anniversary, but it was David's birthday.  He would have been 48 if he weren't stuck at 24.  His brothers are going grey, but David never will. 

We overdo it.  Not only do we commemorate the death dates, but the birthdays too.  David and Paul are one week apart for birthdays and one month apart for deaths.  I don't remember that we did anything special for David's birthday until Paul died, then since Paul loved sushi and David enjoyed it, we started going out for sushi on three of those four days (on the anniversary of David's death, we have Kraft mac 'n' cheese for dinner, since he loved it).

We were going to a matinee in Sacramento today and would be returning to Davis at about dinner time so it would be perfect.  We'd go back to Sushi Unlimited for another couple of those delicious sushi rolls that we love so much.

Only when we got there, the restaurant wasn't open.  Walt suggested we go instead to Zen Toro, a sushi restaurant downtown which has delicious spam sushi (I'm not kidding--it's a real thing and surprisingly, it's delicious).  Only when we got there it was closed too.  What?  Do Japanese not work on Sundays?  All the Chinese restaurants in town were open.

We went across the street to the Dumpling House, a place I'd wanted to check out for a long time (it is both dumpling house and fish and chips).  It's a real hole in the wall place and in fact, we were squished in to a thin table for two across the narrow aisle from two women making won ton and dumplings using vats of stuffing.

We had Thai beef noodles, pork-vegetables dumplings and fried green onion bread.  All delicious.  We ate until stuffed and brought home leftovers.  I will go back there again.  

 

We got home to watch the end of the Super Bowl.  It's the way I love to watch a football game, especially a game that is very tight scoring -- skip the first 3 quarters entirely, and then skip the 4th quarter until the last 5 minutes.  By the time the Eagles made their last touchdown, I felt as if I had watched 4 quarters.

I don't really care about either team but if the 49ers are not playing, I cheer for the underdog so I was as thrilled as any Eagles fan.  Well, maybe not that thrilled but so happy for them.  Brady has enough Super Bowl rings. Time to pass the torch.