Re-Visiting the Past...

It Comes In Waves...
11/2/09

On Halloween, around 2:00pm, my grandmother, my halmuhni, left us to be with the Father.

She passed away with her daughter, my mom, beside her singing a song of Praise to our Maker. As my mom sang, "Hallelujah," my halmuhni exhaled her very last breath.

Around an hour after, I arrived, at her room in the hospital. There, on the bed, my halmuhni rested, her face serene, peaceful... she was freed from the emptiness of Alzheimer's and the slow agony of congestive heart failure.

There's so much about her that I want to share, but I don't know where to begin.

She raised me. It was just us three... my halmuhni, mom, and me, living together in a tiny one bedroom apartment in Flushing. Even when I was living in Korea, I think it was just us three.

My halmuhni was strong. The many years of hardship as a housewife taking care of her husband and the in-laws: his father, his mother, and his siblings; made her physically strong. I don't think I ever felt her hands soft; Hers were calloused and thuggish. But they were there to blow my snotty nose. And they reached out during the final weeks of her life... to be held. I didn't get to hold her hands at all when I saw her on the bed.

My halmuhni was strong. Her father didn't believe that girls should learn to read or write. She was illiterate. But her lack of education didn't stop her from asserting herself when people better educated than her would try to cut her down. She demanded attention and respect, especially from her well educated children and grandchildren. However much we knew or understood about anything and everything, no one had better disrespect her. My mom called her stubborn, but I think halmuhni had to be.

My halmuhni was fierce. She had lost two children. One at birth and the other in adulthood to a disease common to children. She even suffered her husband's infidelity many times over. But she still stood tall. When granddad, hallabuhji, was too sick to take care of himself and moved in with us, she got him to convert to Catholicism, just so that they could be buried as husband and wife, together in a land sanctified by the Church.

My halmuhni was fierce. So fierce that she died on a day where we're supposed to commemorate the dead and the paranormal, Halloween. She was fiercer than Jennifer Hudson ever was when she told Jamie Fox, "You're gonna love me!" I think her final statement to us, and I laugh when I think about it, was: "you'd best remember me; you'd best love me!"

My halmuhni was beautiful. I remember when I was in grade school, I was teaching her how to sign her name for some reason. She was on the kitchen table, with a pen on her name, writing her name one letter at time repeatedly. Her penmanship was shaky at first. But after several sheets of paper were used up, after she was satisfied, she stopped. It was like watching her make noodles, kalgooksu. After the dough was flattened to the perfect thinness, she'd carefully fold it a few times, dusting each layer with flour so that it wouldn't stick on to itself; and with a chef knife, she'd cut each noodle strand so fine and perfect. It was art. Her signature had to be beautiful, like her noodles.

My halmuhni was beautiful. It's funny... late in her life, many non-Asian hospital and nursing home clerks and staff mistook her for a man. I don't know why. She was beautiful.

Strong, fierce, and beautiful.

Her given name was Do-Im, a very uncommon Korean name for a very special lady.

She's survived by her eldest, my mom, and her grandson, me; by her second daughter, her three grandchildren, and her five great-grandchildren; her grandson, the deceased son's son; her youngest daughter and her two grandchildren; her middle son and her two grandsons; and her baby son, and her two grandchildren.

We never used the word, "Love," in our household. It's a very Korean thing to do: not using the word, "Love,' but expressing it in other ways. But I want everyone to know, I loved my halmuhni.

I love you, Halmuhni. And I miss you.