Ellen Chung Memorial Page

This page is dedicated to my friend Ellen Chung. Our friendship spanned 24 years. The years I have known her make me certain of several things related to her passing:

1) Ellen would hate the boilerplate, stock-imaged memorial pages that result in an internet search for her obituary.

2) Ellen would hate her memory dishonored and her decades-long struggles concealed by the perpetuation of shame on the part of her family, especially when another could possibly find correlation, solace, exemplum, caution. She’d be honored to help another in that capacity and I won’t contribute to disallowing this legacy. It would bring her such purpose.

3) Ellen would want to see as many old pictures and all the ridiculous pointless video footage (This was a our thing in the early 2000’s) I had of us in my archive. Deep cuts.

And finally, 4) That I am part of the family Ellen chose. I knew her deeply and authentically. And I will honor her the way I know she’d want to be honored… because, having been blessed to know her and care for her wholly, I have a responsibility to her that is not skewed by stigma.

---

Ellen and I met in 1996 at Tower Records, where we both worked. The store was a safe space for misfits, a place where disgruntled and anti-establishment types could convene and find acceptance and commonground. There was no internet at this time… weirdos were suspended in a vacuum of normies, regularly rejected and dejected (See here.) But finding kinship, a tribe, at this pivotal time was life-changing. Ellen and I became friends.

Very early in this friendship was a road trip to Boston to see Bikini Kill… in the middle of a snowstorm.

Ellen drove and I was squeezed in the backseat. The snow had made conditions on the road pretty bad. At one point Ellen lost control of the car and we skidded in a 180 degree curve, facing the oncoming traffic on the northbound I-95. Thankfully all were driving slow and with more than ample space to come to a stop. It is a memory that remains vivid–the foolish incaution of youth.

Youth is a time when, though unqualified, you determine the course of the years to come. It’s a time when the adverse experiences in early childhood direct your actions before you have developed the self awareness to discern it… before you have the life experience to understand the impact of a soothing yet maladaptive choice, how it can become a lifelong struggle.

In a time when it wasn’t all that common, Ellen took pictures all the time. She was the first photographer I knew. I was the subject of her pictures often. She liked my indierock look I suppose, but also my intensity. I was very angry about a lot of things, held very passionate ideals, but yet I could smile so easily, laugh without restraint. This is still the case, thankfully, and would still be an important piece to our friendship decades later.

But it also could have been that I didn’t mind doing wacky stuff for a shot. Like walking in mud.

Though it sounds awfully cheesy to say, laughing and smiling was a huge part of my friendship with Ellen. To see her smile was so satisfying to me and I wanted her to do so as much as possible. I often did silly things to make her laugh. To provoke a smile in an afflicted soul is to share some of the burdensome weight, to help them be free. Beyond Ellen’s signature stoicism and biting humor were so many laughs, thinly veiled and ready and willing to burst and affect her entire face. This was the Ellen I loved, surrendering helplessly to the laughs.

It is interesting to watch old video footage and see myself contorting my face for her sole amusement.

When Ellen moved to Seattle to go to school for photography, I was to follow soon thereafter. I guess it would be the equivalent of going away to school for me, but with no transferrable credits. In Seattle, Ellen and I drank often, enjoying an empty off-hour Cha Cha Lounge, which I guess still exists? We met more misfits.

We went to a lot of shows, flying back and forth to New York and Seattle based on who was playing. Ellen continued this as she settled, again, on the West Coast–in Los Angeles–a few years ago. Music was very important to Ellen… and she lives in so many beloved songs. Camel Lights was also very important to Ellen.

When we both were back in New York in 2001, we spent a lot of time together and, once again, working together briefly.

On the job at Stuart Parr Gallery where we did production work for Emimem… Ellen was very industrious, working very hard and earning respect in any and all positions she had. And she hob-knobbed with celebrities through the years. She won the high regard everyone with the sense to understand how special she was–from the film stars she worked with in the studio to the homeless men she befriended around her neighborhood in Los Angeles. She touched so many lives… far more and far deeply than one could ever imagine, far more than a Facebook page could ever tell.

Even my students were impacted by Ellen. When she found out I worked at a Title 1 middle school in Brooklyn, she purchased two boxes of school supplies for them.

Ellen and Joe, both gone now. Both by “heart attacks.” Please tell me how hiding one’s illness does to the grieving process? What good it does to omit that which is powerful enough to take a life prematurely? How the mispriority of saving face helps in any way? I’m all ears. The truth is that it’s utter bullshit. An addict who is not shamed has increased access to support systems.

Good times at the Mercury Lounge. Coney Island High, Tramps, The Knitting Factory… our youth saw the best shows by the best bands at the best venues before everything turned to shit.

Ellen and Pete would stay together for many years, though I would lose my friendship with the both of them for most of those years.

Ellen often liked to send me things in the mail. As recent as August we had sent each other “just because” post cards. When she started her recovery in August of 2020, I had found an Etsy seller who sold cards for the occasion. After sending her this card, mistakenly without any postage, it was successfully delivered to her in LA. We laughed about it. She then sent me a sheet of stamps and we decided we would single-handedly keep the USPS in business despite the recent news of its troubles. I bought two cards for her, knowing she would need support through what would be a long and grueling process. The second card I still have, though I sent her a picture of it on September 16, 2020… when I was trying to get her to go along with our plans to see each other while in New York. But after her Zoom recovery meeting she determined it to be safer to stay in her motel room, which was only 20 minutes from me in Downtown Brooklyn. She was having a hard time. It was there in that motel room that her life ended. There where she would be discovered when she did not check out. I was the last loved one to speak with her. I know I conveyed love, concern, my support–which is comforting–but she was alone… in a stupid motel room, a room reservation she changed several times in the weeks before her visit as we talked out where it’d be best to easily see each other–to drive me to work after getting coffee. She was 20 minutes from me. That part is hard for me.

Ellen’s battle was very long. In the two page spread she contributed to my last published zine in June 2001 she asks, “all finished?” along with several drug monikers. 19 years ago. Soon after this was published we had a falling out. We wouldn’t speak again until 2019.

Our reunion in 2019. So much had changed. But we fell right back into place. Older I recognized more clearly what I valued so much in Ellen… where in the 90’s I’d say “She’s cool.” Now I understood her to be perceptive, caring, principled, passionate, intelligent, empathetic, strong. Each of these traits on their own can cultivate a deep connection. With Ellen and I, I feel like we were proving to each other that people did not suck, that there is good–so much good–something we both needed desperately to know.

Her ability to listen is unmatched. In the many long “deep” conversations we embarked upon as adults I was so struck but how well she listened–she wouldn’t presume what you were going to say and wouldn’t already be forming a response as you spoke; she stopped talking in honor of the conversation and its potential impact. Even when angry, like when she spoke of the trauma she held from her youth in regards to her race and how that related to my white priviledge, she listened… though very sick of listening to white people her whole life. [Thankfully she understood me to be an ally and even bought me an Anti-Karen Karen Club Shirt.]

I was happy we got to see New York City during Christmas time. She had an appreciation for The City that stayed with her always. We bounced around Koreatown, walking into ridiculous tourist shops.

And we saw the Rockefeller Center tree. Just like we might have done after a closing shift at Tower Records.

Our Tower Reunion call

When Covid hit we spoke regularly. She was the only Facetime request I’d answer. It was to see her smile. It still felt so good to see her smile, like in the 90’s. Perhaps more. I’d watch her do her work, smoke, and drink coffee. We talked about her recovery, Black Lives Matter, Trump, music (ok, old music), our plans, our history…

We talked about her trip to the East Coast in September 2020.

If I could have seen her September 16, 2020 as we had planned, I think I could have made her laugh; I think I could have helped her to day 76 of sobriety. And I think Ellen knew this too. But in the moment, in her ear on the phone, I could not match the power of her illness. And I believe she didn’t want me to. A thought that grew to resentment in the days of no contact that followed our cancelled plans… when she was already gone but I didn’t know.

I found out she was gone after she was already buried. I know it was accidental as we had discussed in detail our plan for her next visit in October, when we would embrace Autumn in a cheesy fashion–apple picking, pumpkins, foliage upstate. Her September trip was meant to be a short one, a means to distract her from losing the purpose her job as a production accountant had offered. She had no obligations until December, and the free time unnerved her. We spoke about it on our many Facetime calls. I urged her to find a volunteer position, perhaps one involving the presidential campaign, to try to structure her time. Idle time is the devil’s plaything they say? But she came to the East Coast to see all the people she loved… and, tragically, she was close to her old habits.

I believe Ellen Haeson Chung, my friend, passed away on September 16, the evening she was fighting her demons alone inside her motel room. At 9:18 p.m. I checked in on her and she responded cryptically.

I wanted to give her space. I was quite certain she had relapsed. I didn’t want her to feel as if she disappointed me after my battlecry to achieve Day 76 on the night we spoke. I texted again on September 25, unaware that services and burial had taken place, unaware that I had inadvertently overlooked her sister reaching out to me thanks to a total avoidance of most social media after watching The Social Dilemma. She was already in the ground. And I felt trapped within the parameters dictated by her sister’s wishes of privacy (shame)… a sister who was not at all close with my friend.

But Ellen would despise her sister silencing me. Ellen would want the world to know just how much strength she had in her to have fought so long. Ellen would want me to cut the bullshit. I am blessed and honored to carry out her values in her passing–and to continue fighting for a world she would have felt better within. Rest in Peace, my dear friend.

All finished.

To honor Ellen’s memory, please consider donating to the Asian American Drug Abuse Program (AADAP) here. They are an Los Angeles-based organization working to “change lives and save families adversely impacted by substance abuse.”