85 Years

         My grandfather died today.
         All I could think of is how she called me a family curse, declaring that if he died it would be due to my blackened name; that it would be all my fault.

         He passed away suddenly, to an unexpected bout of pneumonia and not the carefully avoided coronavirus, just mere months since my birthday when she screamed at me; eyes bulging crazily, spittle flying syllabically, while I laid trembling on the ground and prayed for her words to wash over me instead of being absorbed too deeply into my paper-thin skin.

         He would always come find me in the moments after the madness; his house slippers shuffling slowly towards me until he found my hand and patted it gently, telling me everything was alright. I would only cry in front of him – something about kindness that instantly broke me more than months of bitterness ever could.

         It’s so strange to look at photos and realize that the person in them is no longer walking the earth – for the first time I understand why the Native Americans believed that photographs steal fragments of our soul and are inherently cursed. I’m still in disbelief that he’s really gone, even as I write this, and my heart is wrenched in an instinctive way that my mind has yet to process.

         I can still feel his frail grip on my arm as I walked with him to church, I can still see his Parkinson’s-curled fists stubbornly resisting my attempts to coax them into gloves, I can still smell his distinct scent of sun-dried sweaters and the Vaseline I would massage into his fragile flesh with my fingers, I can still taste the ramen I would make for him just the way he liked it on the afternoons when we were alone, I can still hear the sound of my name being held in his voice.

         I wish we had more time for me discover the man he was before he became my grandfather. My aunts proudly tell me stories from their childhood, about how their father was a local celebrity due to his intelligence and how all the village people would ask him for help; be it in Korean history, government policies, math problems, or minor repair work – until they all started to call him “Professor Kim.”

         I wish we had more time for him to see me grow into the woman he always told me he believed I would become; for him to see the sacrifice of him scrubbing pots in kitchens on military bases, in a country where he was neither acknowledged or respected, finally pay off. He gave everything up so I could grow up into the kind of callous child who had the choice of making mistakes, of walking away.

         I picture the man he was at my age, already a father of five with three more to come. I picture what he would say if he were alive and standing beside me, what would he have to say about the aimless trajectory of my life? Would he be proud of me? Would he be envious of my freedom or satisfied by the outcome he worked hard to make possible? Would he worriedly lecture me the way my mother does? Would he yell at me the way his only unwed daughter does? Would he struggle to understand my newfangled lifestyle in the same way he referred to all of my tattoos as “scribbles” or would he surprise us all with his acuity in the manner in which his mind outlived his doctors’ expectations despite his Parkinson’s constrictions?

         I wish I had answers to all of my questions; tangible certainty instead of all this conjecture. Did you see me for who I was? Or did you see me through the Korean lens of an abject failure? Do you remember how these tattooed hands held yours? How my marred flesh did my best to support your brittle bones? Do you remember our long walks? How I would carefully dress you in your favorite newsboy cap and warmest gloves? Do you remember how much I cried? Do you know how badly I wish you were here, right now, to tell me that everything will be alright?

         I called my mom right away when I heard that you had died.
         I didn’t cry until I heard her voice and I said to her, “I’m so sorry for your loss.”

         I found myself sobbing, then apologizing, because I had called her to console her instead of pretending that what I felt came close to what she must be feeling. You were my grandpa, but you were her father; I still feel the reverberations of my own paternal loss, even 12 years later, and I cried not for myself, but because I was so heartbroken for what you must have meant to my mother.

         I remember the sound of my mom crying into her pillow when her mom died, just three months after my dad succumbed to the same cancer. She didn’t want me to witness her pain, even though we shared a room in a tiny two bedroom apartment, and I pretended not to hear her. With you gone, she’s an orphan now, and I sobbed into the phone as I told her that both of you had left her all alone.

         My mom surprised me then – she laughed out loud, saying she appreciated my empathy but that she was a 61-year old woman and didn’t consider herself an orphan. I shook my head stubbornly, insisting that I refused to lose her no matter what age I was. Be it 28 or 58, I want my mom to live a long, long time and make up for the insufficient memories I made with my father.

         My mom says she’s happy you’re up in heaven with her mother; no more suffering, no more adult diapers. No more Parkinson’s, no more dependence, no more devolving into a shell of a man unrecognizable to yourself or others.

         My mom says that she used to wish that you could be free of your pain, of your shame, of your disease; and drift off into a happier place, unfettered. She cried only once as she told me she regretted ever having such thoughts, that having half of you was better than having none of you at all.

         If you can hear me now, I wish you could tell my dad the same thing; that for too much of his illness I wished for an end to his suffering. With him gone now, I wish every day that I could still have even a fraction of him. Are you together, at last, reunited in a place I can’t comprehend and looking down at me cry?

         I tried to convert to Buddhism once; for the meditation and the enviable sense of peace. Then I learned that there was no concept of heaven and I took it too personally, screaming at the person who told me because it hurt too much to believe there wasn’t a place for my dad to somehow still be a part of my life beyond all of this. I resolutely reaffirmed my wavering Christian inclinations that day. I don’t know how else to carry all this pain if the people I lose along the way can’t be reclaimed. I don’t want you to be reincarnated as strangers, as animals, as generalized energetic forces. I want you to be wholly mine, now and forever.

         I hope you both can watch me become the kind of woman you can be proud of.