The End

            The End came fast. I was fortunate to have visited her the day before; it was deeply saddening to see Grandma, who called me “Sinchon Beauty” asleep floating on a pool of morphine, and IV bags injected into her body. “She hasn’t been able to eat since Monday”, Mom said, “So everything needs to be injected.” It had been four days since Grandma had last eaten. It was my first time visiting the Hospice, and I never experienced such a depressing place. Everything was so quiet and stable that I felt it was almost lifeless. And when Grandma opened her eyes and blankly stared at me, I couldn’t help but cry in the back after saying hello.

            I had been reading The Sorrows of Young Werther until Mom alarmingly woke up at 1 a.m. and said I needed to look after my sister until morning. I immediately nodded, snuggled with my sister, and opened my eyes at the sound of my sister emptying a 1.5L water bottle into the trash bin. I made the best breakfast meal I could, with an orange, sunny-side up, yogurt, and a piece of bread. Afterward, I tried to keep her still, but she instinctively sensed Mom wasn’t home and caused all kinds of accidents. She opened the fridge, gulped a big piece of brownie, and kept pouring water into the trash bin. I couldn’t control her by discipline like Mom or by force like Dad. Her mess persisted even after I received a call from Mom that Grandma passed away, and while we waited for Mom to return from the hospital. I was like a madwoman, sobbing at one point and yelling at my sister for not staying put at another.

            We pretended to jam to upbeat songs like  Highway Star and  Catallena, which my sister liked while driving to the hospital. We found the funeral hall spacious, with separate resting areas for the bereaved and two restrooms inside. My sister loved the room and walked around when there were little people. “It was the only room we could find in the hospital,” Uncle stated. “It’s quite costly as it seems, but it’s just like your grandma would have wanted.” We got flowers from Dad and Uncle’s relations, greeted the visitors, received condolence money, and sat around to talk with people we knew for two days. I usually kept my place at the counter because there were no visitors under my name yet. I expected that Dad and Uncle would have visitors, but it was surprising that my cousins also had a lot of visitors. To think about it, they were eight and ten years older than me, my niece being an assistant manager at a company and my nephew a Ph.D. student. In my eyes, they looked like “real” adults, as they always have been.

            We endured this period by continually drinking from the snack bar and popping sweets in our mouths. I started menstruating as soon as I arrived at the funeral hall. It felt like a cycle of life and death, Grandma passing away, but I would be able to give birth to another life. And my nephew was to have a wedding in March, so life could go on, even without Grandma. But at the moment, nausea and tiredness overwhelmed me, wearing me out after several hours like an old cheap battery. The bed in the resting area was an oasis, comforting me to hang in there, and all would end soon. Mom was a woman of steel, for she made sure that my sister and Grandpa had meals properly, and drove everyone to  Grandpa’s house after all the visitors left. I was shocked to see her mopping the house after getting my grandpa and sister prepared at around 9. a.m. “Mom, aren’t you tired? How could you be in the mind to clean the house?” Mom shrugged and commented, “Well, this is what I have been doing. No pressure.”

            But even this woman of steel broke down when the cremation day came. “I’m gonna cry a lot today,” Mom pronounced. “This is the only day I can cry.” She was okay when we got up at dawn, packed our things, and drove to the funeral hall. But there were many times when she was off. She couldn’t calculate when we should wake up to arrive at the hall, have breakfast, and be in time to start the Mass (Grandma was Catholic). “Mom, if we wake up at 6:30, we can leave before 7 and arrive around 7:30. Then we can have breakfast within 30 minutes and start the mass at 8, right?” Mom nodded with a blank stare. It was despairing how Grandma’s death paralyzed Mom’s brain. She looked after my sister while the mass was held. Then we moved to another funeral hall by bus. The church people who came with us constantly sang prayers for Grandma throughout the trip. Hearing such songs for the first time, frankly, it sounded eerie and a little depressing. But my family appreciated the dedication and energy they provided for our beloved grandma.

            I think it was Mom’s first time attending a funeral after some time in years. She probed into the details she thought she should know while waiting to be assigned to a room. “What happens after the burning? They grind the bones by machine, right?” Dad calmly responded to all of her questions, recalling the details of his father’s funeral last year. “At my dad’s funeral, it was like that, but it may differ by the funeral company.” While the cremation was in process, we were sent to a waiting room for the bereaved. Aunt broke down in a wail of despair, and Mom could barely walk into the room because of crying. Every moment of waiting was the slowest and most somber moment in my lifetime. I wanted to somehow liven up the atmosphere, and tell them that Grandma must have gone to heaven, but I couldn’t because I was crying too. And the process after the cremation was quite terrifying. After the speakers announced that Grandma’s cremation was complete, a worker opened up the curtains, dug into Grandma’s ashes with a big shovel, and unceremoniously ground the last bits of her bones right in front of us. Mom and Aunt almost screamed with sobbing, and Mom tightly held onto my left arm out of extreme pain. Dad later recalled that he and Uncle were really surprised that they showed the process in front of the bereaved. It might have been out of confirmation that they were burning “the right bones,” but it was very inconsiderate.

And a New Beginning

We put Grandma’s ashes at Bethania’s House in Yongsan Church of Christ (Hyochang Park), one of the most sacred Catholic places. Grandma would have liked that she was lying with some of the earliest saints in Korea, enjoying the warmth of the sun that shone from the Han River in front and admiring the beautiful flowers. “Your grandparents bought their places here twenty years ago, carrying 3,000,000 won of cash to secure them. I’m glad this is Grandma’s new home.” Dad placed Grandma in the highest cabinet, and we took a group photo in front of her like sad puppies (“It’s a sort of trend now” the funeral worker had told us). Each of us said the last words of goodbye before the cabinet was sealed. It was time to let Grandma go and return to our mundane lives.

            Three days after the cremation, our family gathered once again for the funeral mass and visited Grandma’s cabinet. It was the first formal Catholic mass for many of us, for only my grandparents and aunt’s family were believers. Although I felt the priest’s words weren’t for me, I’ve come to realize why so many people rely on religions; to sublimate the pain and find meaning in every day that they live. 

Before we visited Grandma, we had a big lunch at Shabu-shabu restaurant. While me and my sister joyfully dug in at the dishes, the adults carefully discussed the processing of documents and what to do next. Then everyone drove to Bethania’s House. Mom bought three small preserved hydrangeas to decorate Grandma’s cabinet. She examined her handiwork with pride. Uncle laughed and remarked, “Your mom is amazed by her excellent taste!”. Since Dad was the tallest of us, he put the flowers and Grandma’s wedding picture in the sealed cabinet. Until he closed the cabinet, we couldn’t help but stare at the last part of Grandma in this world. Then each family parted, taking different paths after exiting the Yongsan Church. Uncle pulled his car in front of the church and picked up his wife. Aunt and her husband took a path down the left and waved us goodbye. My family climbed our way back up the hill and found our car in the parking lot.

            As much as Grandma’s untimely death was tragic, it became an opportunity for family bonding and reconciliation. Our family couldn’t meet often because we lived in different parts of the world (Busan, Seoul, and Hungary), but were forced to return to our roots and rethink life. And each of us found the best way to permanently remember her. Mom found condolence in constant work and storytelling. Cleaning houses and looking after Grandpa was a busy routine, and this helped her feel alive and move on. She would also naturally tell us some moments she shared with Grandma and the experience of watching her last minutes of life. I chose to indulge in the grief without trying to hide it, and then returned to my pattern of behavior like meeting up with friends and reading books. This writing is also an attempt to remember her life and what she means to us. She is now my inspiration, role model, and everything I would like to dream about.