You didn’t know any better.
You were thirteen and living life as innocently and carefree as any fresh teenager would. The one thing you actually loved about having moved half-way around the world was the fact that it placed you by the beach. It was everything you dreamed of; the soft beige sand that blankets your seafoam green painted toes and the salty refreshing ocean that pleases your button nose. Your new friend, Livie was just as infatuated with the coast that everyone else around you took for granted. Watercolor tangerines and cherries fired up the sky as the sun succumbed to the shadows of the night. You and Livie let the serenity take over you as you twirled in the shore.
Spinning,
and spinning,
and spinning.
Stop.
You see him now: straggly salt and pepper hair, grinning with a device in his grimy hands, pointed at you and Livie. The nerves that spreads from your core shake you, making you so, so uncomfortable. The beach was your escape and you were still being scrutinized. You wondered why this stranger had his lens fixated on you.
You felt so uncomfortable.
You and Livie jump around, trying to forget he was there. Soon enough you fall back into the bliss of the ocean blue and summer sets.
Little did you know that six years later, you would look back wishing you had used your voice. You would look back wishing you had done something. You would look back wishing you hadn’t ignored him.
But you didn’t know any better.
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January 18, 2011. Just a few months shy of my fourteenth birthday. The day before my grandma’s birthday, I lost my grandfather. I watched him try his very best to fight an eight-month battle with incessantly growing number of diseases in the ICU. I remember walking off the school bus, cheery for once. Until I reached the front of my house. In front of our white metal gates, I saw my Aunt Connie’s silver sedan. It was unusual for her to be here, since she lived an extremely hectic Seoul life with her new husband. Instead of being excited, I just remember my stomach dropping and not wanting to go inside but also wanting to make sure everything was okay.
It’s all so hazy: watching our front door open, my grandma just walking right past me without saying a word and my mom calmly telling me he had passed and to pack some clothes to stay at the funeral home for the next three days while we formally mourn him. I had expected this day. I just wasn’t prepared. I called Spring, my best friend at the time, and the minute she picked up, uttered the words: “He’s gone.” and wailing in the privacy of my overwhelmingly cotton-candy colored and floral walled room.
We had to take a taxi to the funeral home hotel. I remember hearing the cries of other mourning families in the surrounding rooms. While the place itself looked pristine, modern, and almost luxurious, it was registered to be thoroughly depressing and dark. I remember my dad, the eldest son in the family, greeting mourners and receiving words of sorrow and consolation. I remember his stiff body, holding in all his tears and sadness, and me quietly standing next to him in solidarity and comfort. I remember Uncle Sung Hee, a fancy photographer living in France, came running into my dad’s arms crying out, “Hyung-ah! Hyung-ah!” and the blurry episode of watching my dad finally cry over his father with his little brother sobbing in his arms. I remember grandpa’s cousin, who was like a brother to him, stumbling under his own weight and uncontrollably crying as he crawled to the picture of my grandpa amongst all the carefully placed white chrysanthemums. I remember sitting in one of the many private rooms of the funeral home with my grandma, mom, and aunts, slipping bills out of their white envelopes and counting the amount my grandpa’s friends and family gave in condolences and out of respect.
I remember seeing his sickly green dead body clothed in traditional white hanbok, laid out on a table, so short and small as if the gravity of life crushed him. I remember going up to the dug out grave. I remember not wanting to say goodbye.
I don’t remember what I did before that day at school. I don’t remember how my morning played out. I don’t remember ever finding the keys to unlock the gates to my front yard. I don’t remember whether it was overcast or sunny for a January afternoon in South Korea. I don’t remember what phone I had then when I called Spring. I don’t remember where my dad was at first. I don’t remember what I wore to the funeral. I don’t remember if anyone, other than my dad, wore the traditional black hanboks. I don’t remember who else came to the funeral. I don’t remember what the traditional mourning food was, or if I even ate any. I don’t remember seeing candles, even though they’re technically part of Korean Christian funeral traditions. I don’t remember who I sat next to on the bus on my way up to the mountain where the grave was. I don’t remember what was said by my pastor. I don’t remember how my younger sister, Jenna, was taking it, at the tender age of seven. Or my two-year-old cousin, if she was even up at the grave with us. I don’t remember sleeping. I don’t remember climbing into a truck to cry. I don’t remember what my dad gave me to eat in the truck, because I couldn’t stop the tears from falling down my face. I don’t remember ever coming down from that mountain and trying to move on with our lives. I don’t remember going back to school after those long three days. I don’t remember if anyone else remembered that it was my grandma’s birthday during the grieving process. I don’t think she even remembered. I don’t remember when the sting of the pain subsided. I don’t remember learning to laugh again. I don’t remember being okay with saying goodbye.
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Overanthroposent
n. the mental gymnastics one puts themselves through when trying to feel and understand other people and their perspectives, to the point that it overwhelms them and they are not able to make a decision on their own opinion because they can see both (or all) sides.
Desifuturo
n. the longing for something in the future to happen now even though you know it won’t happen because things take time; feeling like if you just had what you want now that it would fix your current problems.