the aftermath: romance is a luxury.
My mom seems alright enough, although if left idle for too long she gets teary. It's not so much her father that she's upset about, but her mother's mental state.
My grandmother has Alzheimer's, which is not pleasant or easy to deal with and can lead to frightening situations at times (she burned down part of the house once). The reason why her mind hasn't atrophied completely yet is my grandfather - a few years ago, my uncle insisted that my grandfather move from the farm to join my grandmother in Seoul, where the two of them were living with my uncle. My two girl cousins are living here in the States, their older brother is Germany working on his opera career and both my aunt and uncle go out to work during the day.
It helps to talk to the elderly, it keeps their minds from going. My grandparents had each other to keep each other company throughout the days; the effect was visible, my grandmother became more spry and remembered a lot better, functioned a lot better on a whole now that she had something to do and someone to take care of. My grandfather was a loquacious man, and a fine talker at that, so he talked, and talked to her.
One of the stages of grief is denial. My grandmother keeps asking where my grandfather, keeps insisting that she's going down to the farm to look for him because she's sure that he slipped down there and is waiting for her. She kept asking my mom to take her down to the farm, to pack her bags cause she's beyond sure that my grandfather's there.
Typing that paragraph above, I suppose some twisted reaction would be to think how sweet, how romantic, the elderly couple can't bear to be apart, even in death. But the truth is, I'm not sure if this need and dependency of my grandparents on each other comes from love, whatever that may be, but more a lifetime of companionship, wars, and raising seven children together and educating them. It's a sort of begrudging respect, knowing that this was the parent of their children, and a very capable partner. Maybe it was love, in an odd sort of way.
They certainly didn't marry for that. My grandmother married my grandfather to escape the Japanese - they were taking single women out of the countryside and shipping them overseas to be prostitutes (their ultimate goal was to annihilate the Korean race through rape and destruction, after all). Life on a farm with a womanizing playboy is hardly easy and she made up her mind to run away in the middle of the night, packing a bag and plotting how and where to go - until she discovered that she was pregnant. That day, she threw out any idea of escape and decided to devote her life to her children.
That being said, romance is a luxury - a fairly new concept.
The funeral procession requires that you take a turn around the house and property before taking the body to the burial site. My mother laughed as she told me how since it was the Lunar New Year, no one was working that Sunday, so my pretty cousins (all of them, so tall, so pretty! she said) were in charge of minding my grandmother, feeding the guests and ushering them. But her face immediately sobered up when she thought about my grandfather's dog.
The dogs in my family carry some sort of epic tales about them. Always the smartest, the fastest, the bravest - they'd do things you only hear about in stories, like waiting up the road for the kids to come home from school, only accepting food from family members and the ability to know who was stranger and not. (The last one I believe, because the last dog, who used to try to savage anyone unfamiliar who walked through the door, just wagged her tail at us when we walked in - and that was on my first visit to the farm ever)
During the funeral procession, the normally noisy dog just sat there and watched the whole thing. Didn't try to bark or run, just sat and watched. When they returned a few days later, he was still sitting there, not having eaten the food they left him. There's no one at the farm to take care of the dog and they can't just leave him there, so they took him to my great uncle's down the road - the dog cried and fought to go back the entire way. Whenever he was untied, he ran away back to the farm. Mom's voice cracked as she said "I hope they take care of him instead of selling him - your grandmother's going to look for him when she goes back down to the farm."
My youngest aunt cried so hard she collapsed, and called my mom in the middle of the night to tell her that she was scared (she's still afraid to sleep alone in the dark). My youngest uncle looks just like my grandfather. My grandfather rode his bike around everywhere until his stroke, which was in his late 70s - a pretty formidable feat for an old man. All this she told me without any trouble, but to cry at the thought of a dog? That's something.
My grandmother has Alzheimer's, which is not pleasant or easy to deal with and can lead to frightening situations at times (she burned down part of the house once). The reason why her mind hasn't atrophied completely yet is my grandfather - a few years ago, my uncle insisted that my grandfather move from the farm to join my grandmother in Seoul, where the two of them were living with my uncle. My two girl cousins are living here in the States, their older brother is Germany working on his opera career and both my aunt and uncle go out to work during the day.
It helps to talk to the elderly, it keeps their minds from going. My grandparents had each other to keep each other company throughout the days; the effect was visible, my grandmother became more spry and remembered a lot better, functioned a lot better on a whole now that she had something to do and someone to take care of. My grandfather was a loquacious man, and a fine talker at that, so he talked, and talked to her.
One of the stages of grief is denial. My grandmother keeps asking where my grandfather, keeps insisting that she's going down to the farm to look for him because she's sure that he slipped down there and is waiting for her. She kept asking my mom to take her down to the farm, to pack her bags cause she's beyond sure that my grandfather's there.
Typing that paragraph above, I suppose some twisted reaction would be to think how sweet, how romantic, the elderly couple can't bear to be apart, even in death. But the truth is, I'm not sure if this need and dependency of my grandparents on each other comes from love, whatever that may be, but more a lifetime of companionship, wars, and raising seven children together and educating them. It's a sort of begrudging respect, knowing that this was the parent of their children, and a very capable partner. Maybe it was love, in an odd sort of way.
They certainly didn't marry for that. My grandmother married my grandfather to escape the Japanese - they were taking single women out of the countryside and shipping them overseas to be prostitutes (their ultimate goal was to annihilate the Korean race through rape and destruction, after all). Life on a farm with a womanizing playboy is hardly easy and she made up her mind to run away in the middle of the night, packing a bag and plotting how and where to go - until she discovered that she was pregnant. That day, she threw out any idea of escape and decided to devote her life to her children.
That being said, romance is a luxury - a fairly new concept.
The funeral procession requires that you take a turn around the house and property before taking the body to the burial site. My mother laughed as she told me how since it was the Lunar New Year, no one was working that Sunday, so my pretty cousins (all of them, so tall, so pretty! she said) were in charge of minding my grandmother, feeding the guests and ushering them. But her face immediately sobered up when she thought about my grandfather's dog.
The dogs in my family carry some sort of epic tales about them. Always the smartest, the fastest, the bravest - they'd do things you only hear about in stories, like waiting up the road for the kids to come home from school, only accepting food from family members and the ability to know who was stranger and not. (The last one I believe, because the last dog, who used to try to savage anyone unfamiliar who walked through the door, just wagged her tail at us when we walked in - and that was on my first visit to the farm ever)
During the funeral procession, the normally noisy dog just sat there and watched the whole thing. Didn't try to bark or run, just sat and watched. When they returned a few days later, he was still sitting there, not having eaten the food they left him. There's no one at the farm to take care of the dog and they can't just leave him there, so they took him to my great uncle's down the road - the dog cried and fought to go back the entire way. Whenever he was untied, he ran away back to the farm. Mom's voice cracked as she said "I hope they take care of him instead of selling him - your grandmother's going to look for him when she goes back down to the farm."
My youngest aunt cried so hard she collapsed, and called my mom in the middle of the night to tell her that she was scared (she's still afraid to sleep alone in the dark). My youngest uncle looks just like my grandfather. My grandfather rode his bike around everywhere until his stroke, which was in his late 70s - a pretty formidable feat for an old man. All this she told me without any trouble, but to cry at the thought of a dog? That's something.