The Troubles of Going to a Funeral
by Kai Chung
The Troubles of Going to a Funeral
One day my dad received a call from one of my aunts in Korea, telling him that my grandfather had passed. My whole family was devastated and heartbroken by the news. We wanted to attend the funeral, but we had to go to the Korean embassy in San Francisco to obtain travel visas due to COVID. The first time we came, we had to explain the reason behind our trip and go through a long process of signing documents. After a while, my dad came up to me and told me we needed to take my passport photo. Confused, I walked over to a small photo booth where we took some photos. After, I looked to my dad and asked, “What were those for?”
“When you were born, I was still a Korean citizen, so you have a dual citizenship with Korea and Canada,” he replied. Huh, I thought, that’s cool.
We returned back to the embassy a couple weeks later to complete the documents, and we got temporary visas as well as a temporary passport for our trip. We thanked the people, and a few weeks later, boarded our flight to Seoul, South Korea.
When we arrived in Korea, we were picked up by my two cousins who drove us back to our apartment. We were happy and excited to see everyone for the first time in 3 years, but we all knew why we had arrived. We grouped fully together as a family, as one person, one being of sorrow. I remembered meeting him 3 years prior, seeing him in a wheelchair hooked up to different tubes and medical equipment.
When the day came, we visited the crematorium. My grandfather’s body was inside of a beautifully carved deep brown casket, finished with a flag and a photograph. In order to load the casket into the cremation machine, my aunt removed the photo and held onto it tightly, sobbing heavy tears of pain. My male cousins and I tried hard not to cry, but we couldn’t hold it for long. We cried together as the coffin incinerated in the flames of the machine. His ashes were poured into a pot with gold images of buddhist representations. We spent some time grieving with the pot, before it was transported over to the burial site.
After a quick bite to lighten the mood, we drove over to the graveyard. The graveyard was a beautiful area, with large luscious fields of grass extending far across the hills with a river running below, right next to where the tomb was. My grandfather’s pot was placed next to the pots of his blood ancestors. We completed a jesa for our loved one and composed ourselves to the best of our abilities. It felt like we spent years just sitting there, and I wished that we had. I just wanted to be there with him for once, to make up for the time I wasn’t. I wished that I could’ve been there for him while he was sick, to help him like the rest of my family had.
After we left the graveyard, we spent a bit more time together as a whole family, connected with each other. We had some fun, comparing heights, shoe sizes, strength, and catching up. The last time I had seen everyone in the same place at once was 3 years prior, and it felt good to see them again. We talked about many different things, like how school was going, what we were doing in our free time, and lots of other things.
Although it was a sad time in my life, my 2021 summer trip to Korea gave me many fond memories to look back on, and I now realize that my guilt of not staying as connected as much as I wanted to with my extended family had stayed with me to this day. This is now one of my most important self-taught ideas: to stay connected with other people, whether it’s through in person conversations or online chatting, I always try to talk to people. My only (and final) regret is not being able to realize that earlier.
