all souls' day

...although i am not catholic (in the roman sense of the word), i do want to point out that today is All Soul's Day, which you can read about here in the Catholic Encyclopedia. i don't quite get the gist of the holiday from a catholic perspective, but i think any time is a good time to remember those loved ones who have passed on.

of course, the first person who comes to mind when i think of the dearly departed is my dad, but since i eulogized him quite a bit six months ago, i would like to take this opportunity to remember my grandma, my dad's mother.

it was almost ten years ago when my mother called me at work to inform me that my grandmother had passed away the previous night. i remember that phone call vividly because i basically lost it on the spot. i had never experienced the death of someone i cared about, so i wasn't prepared for how it would impact me. to make things worse, my grandmother had been suffering for a long time with alzheimer's and ill health, and a few days before, i had had a dream about her.

in that dream, she called me on the telephone, which may not sound all that significant except for the fact that she had lost her ability to speak some time ago due to a stroke, so when i heard her voice in this dream, and that voice was strong and clear and healthy, my heart sank and i asked something like, 'but grandma, how can this be?' and she answered me, 'i'm okay now!' and then i started weeping on the phone, because i understood that to mean that she had passed away, and that her bodily sufferings and limitations were no more.

i woke up from that dream disturbed and determined to go visit my grandmother as soon as i could. however, i waited a few days too long, and i got another phone call, this time in real life, when my mom called me at work to notify me of my grandmother's death. i was so upset that i hadn't gone to see her before she died, not to mention a little spooked at having that dream so soon before her death.

i wasn't particularly close to my grandmother, even though she and i shared the same room during much of my youth. there was a language barrier between us, as she never learned english and i forgot my korean. she didn't seem particularly fond of children, at least not on the outside, and she always seemed so stern. i remember as a little kid pining for a cheerfully plump snowwhite-haired granny wearing an apron and silver-rimmed spectacles who would bake chocolate chip cookies with me and pour me a tall glass of milk and tell me stories of the good ol' days.

...my grandma didn't have many good ol' days to reminisce about. she was born in north korea in the early 1900s. during an era when women around the world had few opportunites outside the home, let alone in a culture that expected quiet submission from its women, she managed to get an education and to become a practicing dentist. she lived through the fear and humiliation of a japanese occupation. after the end of WWII divided the korean peninsula between north and south, she lost contact with her family in the north, since she had married and settled down in the south. then after several years of peace and prosperity for her family (both she and my grandfather were dentists), the invading armies from north korea forced her family to flee to the south and to live as refugees. their prosperity was now reduced to poverty. during that time, she worried daily how she was going to feed so many mouths (including children from my grandfather's previous marriage, she had i think 7 kids or so to look after).

my dad told me that my grandmother's mother was the first person to convert to christianity in her village in north korea. she passed on that faith to her daughter, and she in turn instilled that faith in her own children, although a few of them didn't come around to it until much later in life. throughout her life, it was that faith that sustained her, through the violence and uncertainty of war, through poverty, through personal heartbreak and tragedies, through coming to a new country with unfamiliar customs and an unfamiliar language.

i wish i had more time with my grandmother while she was alive. and even though my faith today may not look a lot like my grandmother's own faith, nevertheless, her legacy of faith and fortitude continues to inspire me, and i am honored to remember her today.