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how to grieve your grandma
on navigating my first korean funeral
PRELUDE
My grandmother passed away almost two weeks ago now. The last two weeks have been an absolute blur and I’m still struggling to find any sense or make out any meaning throughout this process. I just don’t understand. One of my old professors told me that this would be a time that it would be revealed and bring out good things in my life, that things that are really important would shine through. These past couple days I’ve had people reach out that I’m thankful for and I’ve run into people I didn’t really expect to run into that I realized I don’t want in my life anymore that I felt that this must be true.
Another friend told me I should record everything and write down everything that happens. That someday it may come in handy to reflect and guide me for another death in my life. Too bad he didn’t tell me I would be utterly exhausted throughout the entire days proceeding. I’ve cobbled together some of the more procedural anecdotes and facts I’ve learned regarding Korean funeral ceremonies (since I haven’t been to one since I was 9 when my father’s mother passed away, I am in fact much older and wiser and in tune with what’s happening around me), in hopes that it may serve as some guide for someone else or even for myself to process and remember one day. Or maybe I can share something so innately a part of my culture and heritage with someone I love. I hope these small musings, timelines, photographs, and excerpts from my diary serve as some help to someone out there.
TABLE CHAT
Day 1
I pick my brother up from Penn Station and we take the first flight out of JFK. We land in Korea before the sun even rises. My dad picks us up and we drive straight to the funeral after our 16 hour flight. The funeral has already started less than 24 hours after my grandmother passed away.
Day 1 - cont’d
We arrive at the funeral home before anyone else gets there. We eat rice cake, rice, and red hot-spicy beef soup. We eat at a small restaurant/dining hall right next to where the memorial of our grandmother is. This is so that our guests can share a meal after paying their respects, as well as leave white envelopes holding 보상 (money to help us pay for the funeral expenses). While many were filled, we later find out that very few envelopes are empty – either shitty friends or people with no means who needed a free, hot meal. I like to tell the story of my grandmother that time a thief broke into her home. In the middle of the night, while her husband and four kids were sleeping, a thief broke into the house and my grandmother caught him. She gave him a lot of cash, asked him to live a better life, and told him never to come back here again. He came back the next day and my aunt told me on this trip that she slapped him. She called the cops and they moved to the apartment that my grandparents lived in since. I greet my family members who arrive while we are eating.
We all borrow clothes from the funeral home. I didn’t need to run to Banana Republic Factory the night before at all. All-black hanbok specifically worn only for funerals that my dad calls “the scary hanbok.” It’s customary to wear a small white bow on the right side of your hair and don a pony tail. I’m still not sure why but the women in my family all share the same look.
We say goodbye to my grandmother in-person and in-private, family members only. We all cry but I don’t think I’ve ever seen some of my family members cry before. My uncles are quiet but weepy. My mom is the only one who knows what to say because she has to.
Visitors come by and we line up to bow to each other in front of my grandmother’s memorial. There are many traditions I don’t know. After a couple of hours I get tired and I retire to one of the small bedrooms attached to our memorial area reserved for mourning family members. I take a short nap. I’m glad I have a change of clothes on me from my luggage.
Day 1 - cont’d
I wake up from my nine hour long short nap. I eat. I fall asleep watching Lost shortly afterwards around 3AM.
Day 2
We wake up at 6AM and eat. The pastor of my grandparent’s church and members of the church come for service at the memorial. There’s an order of walking and a place where everyone has to be at all times. There’s a small ceremonial walk of moving our grandmother’s body from the funeral home to the car to the cremation site.
My family members take the bus to the cremation site, and many of the church members join us. I don’t know who these people are but my mom tells me that my grandmother asks them to pray for me and our family members, so they know me by name. We say our last goodbyes to my grandmother and my aunt’s voice calling out for her mom is seared in my brain forever. She later says that she didn’t know it was all real until that very moment. We hold another worship service with the pastor and members of the church in the waiting room. I learn so many worship songs. A room full of my closest family and strangers see me wipe snot directly into my hand for an hour because I am crying so much. There’s also a cafe and a restaurant at the cremation site.
After an hour, we watch her ashes be placed into a box behind a glass window and we receive her ashes through a hole in the wall with a conveyer belt.
We begin our three-hour drive to my grandfather’s family mountain where all my grandfather’s ancestors are buried. My mom begins to have doubts about whether or not this is where my grandmother would like to be buried since her in-laws treated her so badly.
Day 2 - cont’d
We walk up the mountain for maybe 30 minutes. I’m so glad I have my black hiking shoes with me. Ripe persimmons hang on the trees. We walk in order. My brother is still leading everyone in front as the oldest grandson. I can’t help but feel a little jealous that it should be me but I am so proud of my brother.
There are people waiting for us up on the mountain who know more about the procedural traditions than my mom or her siblings know. We take turns burying her ashes. We cover the spot with flowers. Someone off-handedly mentions how much she loved flowers and I cry more. We hold another service at the site. I can’t believe that members of the church are still here.
My cousin who’s been taking it very hard since we got here leaves the burial site last. He leaves a flower for her.
Day 2 - cont’d
We walk around my grandfather’s childhood home. I find out he wasn’t even born here. He barely even lived here with my grandmother. I think there’s a little bit of an unspoken wistfulness among the women in my family (me, my mom, and my aunt) that my grandmother doesn’t get to be buried in her hometown because she’s a woman who married my grandfather.
We eat all together at a local restaurant that makes their own house-made tofu. It’s so fresh. It’s the only kind of thing you can taste in the countryside. We drive home for three hours.
Day 3 & 4
Rest. Finally. I press the flowers from my grandmother’s funeral.
Day 5
We go to church on Sunday. We almost don’t make it because of the Seoul Marathon and the closure of nearly every street. Somehow we make it (my mom’s driving skills and ability to get shit done, she talks to the police officer). They make a special announcement regarding my grandmother’s passing during the service. My aunt is upset because they left out her name on the service guide’s list of her children. I’d be upset too honestly. We get free sujeonggwa – punch made of cinnamon, ginger, sugar, and water. It’s too spicy and I give the remaining half to my dad.
It feels like the intensity of the funeral and memorial is over now. I don’t know if we’ll be okay without my grandma but I hope we can be.
The next day, I get to spend some quality time with my mom, dad, and brother before flying home the day after.
SMALL BITES
How to grieve:
🍙 Snacks
Crying takes a lot of water out of you. Funerals and memorials are exhausting. Asking each other have we eaten or are we hungry is the only thing to do. Taking care of each other is the best we can do.
🛌 Sleep
My father slept alone at a funeral home. This is normal for people to stay behind and entertain any late night guests, and someone did stop by while he was there alone. When I slept there, tiredness waved over me swiftly. No windows, just darkness.
🌼 Share
I pressed flowers for the first time since I was young. My grandmother showed me how to do them in the study. I forgot the parchment paper at first. I crush them in between my elementary and middle school textbooks. Entire flower heads were too big at first. I removed the ones that were browning. I removed the petals because there was too much water in the flowers. I salvage what I can. I slip them into my notebook and bring them back to America. I buy a frame on Amazon and keep it at home.
WORDS
Yesterday morning I felt like getting flowers. An hour later I heard that my grandma had passed away.
As many of you know I was born in the states and moved to Korea when I was 5. At first I really struggled to speak Korean and I didn’t really understand my grandmother back then. One time my grandma kept calling me and my brother her 새끼들 (this word means young kids/children or it can mean “bastards”… totally contextual). I went to mom, told her grandma kept calling us a bad word and my mom explained that word was not what that meant.
My grandmother used to tell me all the time the story of how she held me for the first time in her arms when she visited us in the U.S. but I think my oldest memory of her was when we would visit her house every weekend - she would dye my tiny nails amber with crushed up flower petals 봉숭아 (kind of like henna paste) in Autumn.
Growing up we called my grandma 꽃할머니 (flower grandma). My grandmother was one of the first women to introduce 꽃꽂이 (flower arrangement/ikebana) in Korea. She was an artist, so was my mom, and so am I. She sparked 3 generations of female artists in my family.
Yesterday morning I felt like getting flowers for absolutely no reason. I came back from a workout class and I was so sore and tired and I still wanted to get flowers from Trader Joe’s anyway. An hour later my mom told me my grandma had passed away an hour ago.
My grandmother loved to read poetry. She loved to write her own poems. There were so many things she had left to do but couldn’t. I miss her a lot.
If you read all of this please go get regular check-ups at your doctor. There are rising rates of cancer amongst young people because more people are getting tested but also many illnesses are now treatable! Please stay safe and healthy 💛 xx