small chronicles of a korean family

(Part One)

Me

            Cancer patients in Korea spend the last years of their lives in one of four ways. They are subject to continuous chemotherapy in a hospital, lie all day in a convalescent hospital, or give up all hopes of living and entering a Hospice unit. There is, of course, the option of staying at home, but it means dying of pain without being able to get strong drugs. I learned that my grandma belonged to the third case after the midterms. There were two times when she fainted and was sent to the emergency room, but she had been fine after the surgery. Now my family found out she had terminal lung cancer, and she had little time until the natural end.

            I got teary-eyed and asked Mom if I could visit Grandma. What I didn’t notice was Mom looked exhausted, but she couldn’t get past my desperation and decided to follow, with my sister. My identical twin sister with autism smiled in the cab without recognizing what was happening. Mom quietly said, “Actually, we’ve already been there yesterday because your grandpa asked for help.” Arriving at her town, we went inside a Chinese restaurant for lunch and ordered black bean noodles and Kwubaro. Mom explained, “Your Aunt, Uncle, and I have been looking after Grandma and Grandpa taking turns. As you know, I always have to bring your sister with me, and we’ve been going to every restaurant and cafés we could find around the area. Your Grandma has dementia, and Grandpa won’t stay put.” We talked about their degeneracy over the table and went to their house. To Mom’s surprise, Grandma beamed at me with sparkling eyes and tried to catch up with our conversation despite being unable to move. She stayed put while her children discussed how much insulin they should inject on her. “Here, take this and have nice food with your boyfriend,” Grandma commented as she handed me pocket money, oblivious to the fact he was now my ex-boyfriend. After leaving Mom whispered, “She tends to look and act social to those she hasn’t seen often.” Several days later, it was decided that Grandma would go into the Hospice unit.

            What we didn’t know was that this would open up a Hell’s Gate to our family, both physically and mentally. For me, it was the hardest semester yet with taking five biology courses and feeling neglected. Mom was constantly moving between Busan (our hometown where dad works), Sinchon (where I live alone), and Grandma’s place with my sister and help with housework. Dad took on two jobs to make all the money. We didn’t lament much about our situations, but it was chaotic. I remember enduring finals alone, pulling all-nighters for days in the library’s 24-hour study room, and cramming in all the unfamiliar vocabularies and signal pathways. I wanted to cry for not being prepared enough, being out of touch with Mom, and not feeling right about my love relations. But in the end, I got through all my chaos, settled on a new boyfriend who used to be my lab partner, and was able to catch up on the stories mom wished to share.

Mom

            “You see a lot of cancer patients in dramas and the media. There, they die so beautifully and nobly as if they made a great end to their lives. But what they don’t show is how much pain the patients go through, how they become so mentally deranged that it is quite disgusting for you to watch, and how much time, money, and effort it requires in the family,” Mom preached the next morning after we reunited. She was cutting my sister’s sunny side up with her fork. “Families with cancer patients sold houses for expensive treatments. It’s 10,000,000 won per month. Luckily now terminal cancer patients can be covered with today’s insurance. The only problem… is that they don’t cover guardians 24/7. Then a lot of people pay Korean Chinese caregivers 3,000,000 won per month. And that’s excluding the food expenses. Have you seen the news that some of them severely abuse their patients?” Mom darkly commented as she had a bite of her bagel.

            To briefly explain the breakfast scenery, it was at a small mobile table attached to the kitchen shelves that one needed to slide in and out for usage. This was because I rented a loft, so we had very little space for everything. The small refrigerator would not work well, and the things inside would rot within a week. But Mom always made the best out of the simplest ingredients, and I didn’t need to reach out at my little expense for food. I was satisfied eating a home-cooked meal I hadn’t had for a long time.

            The three children took turns looking after Grandma in Hospice or Grandpa at home. Mom was more irritated with Grandpa than Grandma. “For fifty-three years, I have not known my dad’s true self. When my friends came to my house, they would look at Grandpa and say he had some austere aura. Now he’s just a stingy old man who worries over every tiny matter and disbelieves his children,” she lamented after drinking coffee. “Did you hear the story about Grandpa and his big bag of cash? One day, he told me that he had a big bag of cash but was worried anyone coming to the house might steal it. He pulled it out from the bed and paced around the house, wondering the best hiding place. And he kept doing that, unsatisfied with any other spot. So I promised him to make a new bank account under his name and put it in it since it’s hard for him to walk all the way. I spent the afternoon carrying that bulgy cash sack and counting all of them to put into the account. And guess what happened? As soon as I left, he got rid of the account, retrieved the money in cash, and carried it all the way home. Even more, he couldn’t find where he hid the sack by himself.” Like her words, my Mom looked so done with him and his world. “If he hadn’t raised me for thirty years, I would have abandoned him.”

Grandma

             Grandma went to the Hospice unit, Jeonjinsang Welfare Center. Dr. Bae Hyun-jung (who established the hospital) had a round face, brown eyes, and pale skin that matched her gray hair. People could immediately sense how she blended well into the environment, assuring that the hospital would do its best to comfort the desperate ones. She was the only doctor Grandma could recognize because of her physical appearance. Except for Dr. Bae, Grandma would be alert of the other doctors and nurses and think of them as strangers. The nurses would clarify their occupation before setting their first step into the room.

            Mom said she’s never seen the worst of grandma. She could deal with the fact that Grandma couldn’t move by herself. But what Mom was pained to see was that Grandma seemed to randomly traverse time, space, and personality, like the multiple egos of Dissociative Identity Disorder patients. At one point, she would be a good-natured grandma who would be thankful for everything. But after a nap, she might be bottled up with anger and impatience and yell at everyone out of pain. And she couldn’t remember what she did ten minutes ago. Although she was able to remember her children, she couldn’t recognize that she was in a hospital or the fact that she had gone to the restroom just before. Mom continuously explained that they were in a hospital, the cabinets were not walk-in closets at home, and she didn’t need to organize them. Grandma would forget what she said and ask the same questions all over again.

            Grandma was also ashamed of getting help with the basic things and tried to conceal her pain. The cancer had seeped almost every energy from her body to the verge that she couldn’t urinate on her own. She still requested to be carried to the restroom and Mom would humor her every request, seeing that Grandma still wanted to keep her dignity. When she did that, she would hold Grandma’s arm and place her hips on her thigh to prevent her from falling and permanently breaking her bones. Mom didn’t sleep for two days. Grandma was also afraid of being left alone when she was sleeping. At first, Mom didn’t know that and left Grandma’s room for a moment to help Grandpa visit her. When she returned to the room, she was horrified to see Grandma’s eyes peeping out from the room door. “Mom, I told you to stay inside! Why did you move? How were you able to get here?”, My Mom bombarded Grandma with questions out of worry and fear. At this point, Grandma was sobbing like a little girl. “I don’t know, when I opened my eyes, no one was here. I only thought that I should go look for you.” After this frightful, concerning experience, her children would move around to do necessities when she was awake, and they would stick to her side when asleep.

            The situation worsened as Grandma’s pain could not be relieved with the painkillers she used before. The doctor decided to prescribe morphine and asked her children to keep track of input and symptoms so they could find out the adequate amount. Mom visited the hospital from Friday to weekends. The problem was that the doctor in charge only worked on weekdays, and the other doctor couldn’t change the input amount except for arbitrary additions. In other words, my mom’s turn was the trial-and-error period, and because little morphine was prescribed for her pain, Grandma became hypersensitive and monstrous. Her expressions changed by the minute, like the faces of Janus, and yelled at Mom out of anger and extreme exhaustion. But when the medical workers came in, she would immediately fix her face and be very sweet and courteous. Mom was completely lost for words. One time, she became so mad about this that she dragged in one of the nurses and asked Grandma, “Why do you hide your pain from doctors and nurses? Tell them like you do to us.” Grandma huffed, “Because I have pride.”

            Grandma had lived her whole life as the eldest daughter-in-law. She was in charge of all family events, from cooking enormous amounts of food, and managing ancestral-memorial rites for in-laws my Mom didn’t even know. Mom said she remembers having relatives at their home all year long. They would uncivilly demand a seven-year-old Mom to cut more fruit and buy bottles of alcohol from the mart. She remembers that she and her siblings have never been the priority for Grandma and Grandpa. “I was born left-handed,” She says one day, “but my  Grandfather did not like it at all. He would make me sit on his lap and eat from the table with my right hand. So I can do things with both hands, but I don’t feel completely comfortable with either,” she flatly remarked. “Oh, and that bastard ordered me to prepare talent shows for the entire family. He never gave me an allowance or any love.”

            So Mom and I could hardly imagine what Grandma had gone through in her younger days. Grandma’s family defected from North Korea after the Korean War, and Mom grew up in the industrialization period. Since rice was so precious, there was a national Flour-Based Food Encouragement Campaign, and schools checked the students’ lunchboxes to see if they brought flour foods. The problem was Grandpa was so sick of eating barley during the most difficult times that he would only eat cooked rice. Although  Mom pleaded with Grandma to make barley rice, she always brought rice because Grandma couldn’t make two kinds of rice. As a result, Mom went around the class begging for little bits of barley, beans, and other crops. Most teachers knew about the situation and would move on, but one particular teacher was not pleased with her getting away. He would look down on Mom, slightly disgusted, and proclaim, “I know you borrowed the grains from your friends. Next time you do that, be prepared to be called to my office.”

            Unfortunately, I hadn’t been able to hear much about Grandma’s past. Mom only knew a string of facts about her and little more. We could only assume she took on a great deal of sacrifice and pride for the whole family. She represented the older generation’s beliefs and highlighted the importance of reputation over reality. Mom grew up in a different world so they couldn’t completely understand each other. However, as Mom took care of Grandma, she began to weave together the strings into a beautiful tapestry. One day, after Grandma woke up from a nap, she was greatly proud that she bore the Jangnam, the eldest grandson. Some nurses had been surrounding her bed. “Look, I bore the jangnam! My mother-in-law adored me. ” The corners of her mouth went up so high that they were about to touch the sky, and she began to laugh hysterically. The nurses didn’t understand what she was saying - no one used that term anymore; sensing her frenzy, they sneaked out of her room. Then, all of a sudden, Grandma time-traveled to her younger self, still hysterical. “Oh, I overslept! I forgot to prepare the ancestral rite! What should I do?” Mom said her expression looked like a naïve daughter-in-law, frightened to face the scolding of Grandpa’s family. No matter how much Mom and the nurses comforted her, telling this is 2024 and that she didn’t have to worry about rituals, she was unable to hear or recognize. This tore my mom’s heart and locked her into great worry. “I’m okay with Mom confusing time and space. It’s just that… she seemed to have a hard life that I didn’t know about, and now she’s suffering from this great pain.”