Joseph Yoo

A while back, I drove to Oklahoma for a church conference.
I actually enjoyed most of the drive. But maybe next time, I’ll just fly.
It was an over-14-hr round trip drive.

It gave me lots to think about.
And gave me a lot of nothings to think about — where your mind roams and it’s really thinking about something but you don’t really know what you’re thinking about.

One of the seeds that were planted on the drive to OK was an idea for a short story.

I like writing.
Whether I’m good at it is debatable.
But. I like it. It gives me a sense of joy. Most of the times.
It is not joyful when I’m confronted with a deadline and my mind goes blank. Those times are not fun.
But outside of that — it’s a nice way to participate in the thing God loved to do: create.

Anyway, I was thinking about all the awkward moments that I created for myself in interactions with parishioners … and people in general.

I was thinking about the many house visits I had when I was in Santa Barbara. At that time, the term for those who were not able to physically come to church was “shut-ins.” Which. You know. Isn’t very flattering, let alone humanizing term for such people.
The term to replace “shut-ins” was “homebound” which always made me think of the movie title, Homeward Bound.

This was Santa Barbara.
Many of those who I visited/interacted with were fairly affluent people with lots of “treasures”: some that were worth actual money; some were worth more than money.

The mind drifted — as minds (at least mine) do — to a question: what would’ve happened, if in one of those visits, a homebound person passed away?

Then my mind took it further — what if that person who passed away had bequeathed (am I using this word right in this sentence?) me some valuables? Like. A lot. Like… too much. So much so, that maybe it’d look suspicious that this person died and the priest is left with a chunk of treasure.
What would I do? Cuz I know immediately, I’d feel like I looked guilty.
I mean, I still get a little tinge of angst thinking that the theft detector thingy will go off when I walk out of a store — even if I haven’t bought anything.
“Don’t look suspicious; don’t look suspicious; don’t look suspicious”
But once you start chanting that — you look suspicious.

Anyway, that was the seed of the short story that was planted in my head on the drive to OK.
A priest (who moved here after recently being widowed) was making weekly visits to a wealthy senior who lived alone and no longer had the desire to leave her home but still wanted to receive communion at home.
For 5 years, every Monday, the priest came to visit her and would stay and chat with her for about an hour.
The lady grew fond of the priest and since she did not have any heirs of her own, she was going to leave him a good chunk of her wealth (the rest going to various charities).
She informed the priest of her decision and the priest was shocked and humbled — even trying to talk her out of it. But she was insistent.
6 more months, he visited her.
As far as anyone could tell, she was healthy for her age and situation.
Then one Monday morning, after receiving communion, she just… died. And the priest panicked.
Didn’t know what to do. Started feeling scared because he was worried that people would think he was involved in one way or another. Especially since he was bequeathed with a good chunk of her estate. In his panic, the doorbell rang — it was the mailman. He would always say ‘hi’ to her and check in on her when delivering mail to her.
Priest, slightly cracking the door open, informed the mailman that everything was alright and that the lady of the house could not come to the door at this moment. Mailman thought nothing of it and handed him the mail and went on his route.
The priest was now even more panicked. If he didn’t look guilty/suspicious before he definitely does now.

That was as far as I got.
I envisioned the story ending with the police headed to her house to investigate. Who knows how the story would’ve really ended.
BECAUSE.

On the way home from OK, after the audio book (Yellowface by RF Kuang) was finished, I turn on Mike Birbiglia’s podcast Working it Out and Judd Apatow was the guest.

They’re going back and forth and Judd starts talking about his kid.
He then shared his oldest daughter’s first short film project.

The premise of her short film was about someone who visits a person and that person dies during the visitation. Panicking, the person goes on with this charade/facade of keeping this person alive — worried that she’d be connected to the death.
Judd asked his daughter, “How on earth did you come up with this?”
Which the daughter replied, “It’s my worst nightmare.”
I feel some sort of affinity with this person whose name I can’t even recall.

But that was the end of that short story idea of mine.
It was fun while it lasted.
I’m sure I could flesh it out and it’d be two different stories. I definitely wouldn’t want go check hers out (even if I could) in worries that I wouldn’t be able to unsee her work.

But really, the fun was taken out of it.
The idea had lost its luster when it was revealed that there’s another version (probably better) out there in the universe.

Ideas come and ideas go.
Some are good and some are so-so.

However, it’s nice to know that there are some people who share in my spirit of the absurd angst.