i have not had the energy to blog lately...i think i can excuse myself though considering the circumstances. it has been a crazy week. exactly a week ago, i was in my dad’s hospital room quietly blogging next to his bed as he slept. little did i know that a few hours later, i would not be able to get him to open his eyes or talk. i still don’t know how i managed to let my father’s life slip through my fingers, but i guess his life was not mine to hold onto in the first place.



the wake was monday and the funeral tuesday. i was overwhelmed at the outpouring of love and grief by so many people. although i was pretty numb through those services, i was nevertheless touched by the genuine expressions of sympathy that so many offered to me and my family. it was nice to have my extended family around as well. many of them came in from out of town, driving long distances. there was at least one representative from each of my dad’s siblings?families present for the funeral. even though we would all have preferred to be getting together under happier circumstances, we were still glad to have the opportunity to spend time together as one big family.



at the lunch after the funeral, i had a long talk with a friend who lost the woman he loved to cancer last summer. we talked about how important journaling was to processing the myriad of emotions and thoughts that you experience when you go through such a profound loss. we also talked about my recent spiritual wanderings and how god somehow worked it out so that i didn’t fall into the abyss, and he told me of his own experiences in finding god for himself, and we discussed our desires to express faith in a personally creative way that may not look exactly like what most people’s expressions may look like. he also brought up the same quote that our family pastor steve nicholson had said to me weeks ago that had impacted me, that “god doesn’t have any grandchildren.? it was encouraging to realize that so much of what i’m going through is not something i’m going through alone, that other people have similar hurts, questions, doubts and hopes.



after visiting my dad’s burial site, i spent some time with my brother jim and our cousins yesterday afternoon at my apartment. this picture was taken on our way to cafe de luca around the corner from me. this window is where i like taking pictures with my friends whenever we’re on our way to something in the neighborhood. looks like i need to take some windex with me next time. anyways, from left to right, that’s my cousin ike from austin, tx, my brother jim, me, my cousin inho (a.k.a. dan) from san diego and his sister and my usual partner in crime kris. since we each only have one sibling, we’ve kind of been extended siblings to each other over the years. i really love them like my brothers and sisters, not just cousins, even though i don’t get to see the out of towners as much anymore. it’s times like this you learn to appreciate the family that you do have. i know my uncles have been invaluable as they stepped up to take care of all the details regarding the funeral and burial.





i am still so numb...i hardly cried at the wake and not at all at the funeral or burial. it was hard because so many people were being openly weepy, and i couldn’t connect to the sorrow that i knew was inside me. maybe it’s a defense mechanism to get through things like wakes and funerals, and it’ll hit me later on. i really feel that there are parts of me that will never be whole again, not in this life. i’ve been consoling myself by carrying a piece of my dad around with me in whatever way i can, whether by wearing his thermals w/ my t-shirts or wearing his wedding band which fits perfectly on my middle finger. i’ve been thinking a lot about how i can still relate to my dad even though he’s not here any more. i just can’t imagine not having him in my life still. so i’ve decided that if my dad is w/ jesus, then i could tell jesus to tell my dad some stuff just so i make sure he gets my message, and then i’ll ask jesus if my dad has anything to say to me. i don’t know how i could communicate w/ him directly—i don’t know how all that works. i admit i have no idea what i’m talking about and that i’m just fishing for whatever way may keep me in contact with my dad. i just want to do whatever to make sure i can still relate to him, even if it’s to a small degree. i can’t not have him in my life. it feels too empty and i feel too lost at such a thought.



today i was somewhat sick. i don’t know if i have a cold or what. it’s quite possible because my brother’s been sick, and i spent a good portion of the past month in a hospital, and i’ve been around a million people shaking hands, hugging, etc. who knows what germs i exchanged w/ whom. i am going to go to work tomorrow for a little bit. just for a change of scenery i guess. i asked my boss to remove the picture of my dad that i had next to my monitor before i got to work because i was afraid i’d break down at work, and i don’t want to do that. hopefully, i’ll be in and out, get what i need done, and leave before i run into a lot of people.



i got an email from my pastor friend rand that someone in his congregation passed away the morning of my dad’s funeral from cancer and that he’d be participating in yet another funeral on saturday. i feel so bad for him because i know he cares so much for people, and to lose two people he cared for and loved in the span of several days—it just seems so harsh. i know i wouldn’t have had the guts to go back to church and consider reconnecting to god if it weren’t for rand’s encouragement, prayer and friendship right now. i know that even though he’s the pastor, he still needs comfort and encouragement too when things like this happen. we all do.



today’s soundtrack:

bunch of songs by american music club: (blue & grey shirt, firefly, jenny, last harbor, laughingstock, pale skinny girl, somewhere, western sky, big night, clouds, this year, chanel number 5, crabwalk) and a bunch of songs by pedro the lion (bad diary days, big trucks, of minor prophets..., of up and coming monarchs, promise, secret of the easy yoke, suspect fled the scene, the bells, the longer i lay here, the longest winter, the well, be thou my vision, criticism as inspiration, diamond ring, i am always the one who calls, invention, letter from a concerned follower) misc mp3s: anyway, (this is not) goodbye, and latter days (over the rhine); deliver my letter (post office); birds & ships (natalie merchant & billy bragg); bread & the water song (clem snide); 405 and pictures in an exhibition (death cab for cutie); yesterday, tomorrow (denison witmer); everybody cares, everybody understands (elliott smith); troubled mind & 25th december (everything but the girl); a case of you (joni mitchell); winning a battle, losing the war (kings of convenience); pictures & prayer for the paranoid & sarah (mojave3), fly (nick drake), brown eyes (red house painters); when will the sun rise again and i wrote a song about the ocean (simon joyner); goodnight lover (songs: ohia).

what do you do when stuff happens and they seem like coincidences but they're too weird to be coincidences and if they're not coincidences then what the hell is going on? that's sort of how i'm feeling about stuff happening to me these days. but here's what i've decided. there is a god. he knows me. he actually pays attention to what i'm up to and cares. he knows stuff i don't know. he can see the road ahead that is hidden to me. he wants me to be happy. so he puts things into play where he gives me enough clues so that i know it's him and not just "chance", and then gives me the choice to take hold of his hand and check out where he wants to take me, or to keep walking on my own. that is where i am now. things have happened that are too much to write in detail involving emails from a stranger in connecticut that land me in church the next day, trusting folks from my past, moving to bucktown when i work in lake forest, and the wishes of my father before he died.



i'll try to make this short...the night my dad died, as i was blogging, i got an email from a stranger named caleb. he was linked to my website by tim white, the fellow i "happened" to meet at the bill mallonee concert (the one i didn't want to go to cuz of the weather but went anyway) and who gently tugged me back into the "fold." tim posted the url to my webpage w/ the bill mallonee photos to the vigilantes of love grouplist, which caleb is a member of. caleb reads part of my blogger and recognizes names. turns out he's even been to and ate at my parents' house. caleb used to go to the hyde park vineyard, where my friend rand tucker happens to be the pastor, and where i tried to go last sunday but got lost. caleb also used to be in a band and likes bands i like and respect (translation being that caleb has instant stamp of approval by me). caleb encourages me to go to the HPV. i think about it and finally late sat. nite, i decide to go the next morning because caleb this almost total stranger sent me via email. so i go and i get lost again but find it this time. i feel weird stepping foot inside church after a six month hiatus. rand teaches on stuff very relevant to my life. rand shares the story of my father passing away and how my dad gave his entire life to the ministry he was called to. i am touched and do what i can to stay composed. people share stuff. one girl shares from a passage in the bible (2 corinthinas 4) that almost makes me lose it because it was exactly what i needed to hear to reassure me that i was not going to be totally irreparably crushed by my dad's death. after church is over i sit alone and a girl named jessy who is obviously very friendly comes over and talks and offers prayer. i decline knowing i will lose my composure if i accept. we talk. i go against my plan to not talk to anyone and end up spilling my guts to her. then i talk to rand & aimee (his wife) for a long time. i tell them i came to their church because it's where my dad wanted to go while he was alive, but it was too far for him. i tell them i thought maybe he'd be there and so that's why i came. i share the long story of how i ended up there even though as of yesterday evening at 8pm i was telling my cousin i wasn't going to church this week. we talk for a long time about how i'm doing, my mom, my brother, what god seems to be doing in my life, my fears, my hopes, my acknowldgments of god doing stuff in and around me. i see even more rand's heart of love for my family and my dad, and i am really touched.



i went to HPV this morning planning on just visiting to say hi to rand and hoping to run into jesh & jessie suk. i am afraid of being in church again. but i trust rand. hardly anybody knows me there. it's smaller than the evanston vcf. there are people there who know who pedro the lion and the vigilantes of love are (i admit this last one is a BIG plus). it's 20 minutes away. it's where my dad wanted to go to church (there's another BIG BIG plus). this is where i wanted to go to church back when i was still in the church but it was just way too far from where i was living at the time. and the weirdest thing of all is that right now this is where i want to go to church even though it feels like swallowing chewing tobacco to admit it. i so much do not want to admit that my heart feels like this is where i want to be. so i'm going to take little bitty steps for now. maybe it would help if i didn't call it church. what would i call it? i think i'll start off by calling it "where-my-dad-would-go-on-a-sunday-morning-if-he-were-alive-and-lived-in-bucktown." i think i can live with that. so next sunday, if i am fully recovered from the bright eyes/good life concert, i won't be going to church but "where-my-dad-would-go-on-a-sunday-morning-if-he-were-alive-and-lived-in-bucktown".

today is my first morning in a world without my father. it is a concept i don't yet understand. i'm broken as a girl can be, to borrow pedro's line. i'm going to need some major major work by the hole-fixin man.

i made the rather curious decision to listen to the violet burning's faith & devotions of a satellite heart cd last night around 1 am or something. those of you who know this cd, know i was setting myself up for becoming totally unhinged. last night, i have been to what i know to be the edge of sanity. i almost took a nosedive into the abyss, but somehow i didn't. something tells me that what i thought was the edge was still a good distance from the real edge, and that i will get closer and closer to the limits of my emotional endurance before this is all over. and yet i know that somehow i will get through this. even this.

although i'm thankful to have been there for my father's last breath, it is that very moment that is tearing me up inside now. i do not understand that single point in time in which the crossover is made from life to death. i understand life. i at least saw death. but that line that separates the two, i don't understand. for some reason, that moment in time that is so tiny that it almost doesn't exist is what is really buggin me now.

what becomes of a daddy's girl when she loses her father? will god be my father now? i've never seen much need for him as long as my dad was around. but that time has passed and now i am lost. i feel like my dad was the navigator in my car on my roadtrip called life, and he got out without telling me, but left me the map, and now i have to learn to read maps and drive at the same time and i don't know which way is north south east or west up or down.

can i put aside my grief to honor and celebrate the life of a no-name saint like my father? jimmy jae in r.--born 5/2/1938, married 9/28/1968, becomes father to my brother jim 10/11/1969, meets jesus 01/1972, becomes my dad 5/26/1972, immigrates to the u.s. 5/23/1978, follows jesus and basically loves and serves people until 5/3/2002. i am not exaggerating when i say that the lives he has touched are scattered across the globe, including thousands in north korea, the country to which he devoted a good portion of his latter life and where he wanted to spend the remainder of his life caring for the so many hungry, broken, needy people there. my father would dive headfirst into his adventures. he was a radical among korean pastors. he was not afraid to go against conformity to follow where his jesus was taking him. the roads he took were often bumpy and unpaved, and those close to him who were along for the ride had to suffer through some messy terrain. and even when he would take a wrong turn here or there, he always knew who he was supposed to be following, and he'd get back on that road somehow. he was passionate about everything he did and believed and loved. and he was a worshipper. he loved jesus so much, and i know that it was this love that ignited all his other passions in life. he has passed onto me a distate for blind conformity and i am the free spirit that i am today because of his influence.

he crossed generational gaps in ways that i've seen only on rare occassions, especially in korean culture, where those boundaries between the young and old are so meticulously upheld. he loved children, and they naturally loved him because he allowed them to be children, even in church, and they knew they'd always find open arms if they ran to my dad. he loved the youth and saw the potential in them when their parents only saw rebellion and strange hair and baggy pants and bad study habits and weird music. he loved the young adults and mentored and was a father to many of them and respected them to the point that the pastor he chose as his area small group leader was a pastor who was just my brother's age. he loved the older adults, too, and always had hope for those whose lives seemed to be decades of mess and mistakes believing that it was never too late to find joy and peace. he loved the elderly, and respected the many often forgotten korean grandmas who at the end of their lives in a foreign country have nothing left but their faith to hold onto.

it was my father who suggested to my brother that he check out the vineyard for a church, and that decision changed the course of our family's history. it was really during his decade in the vineyard that my father became the dad and husband and pastor he was at the end of his life. this is where he learned to welcome the holy spirit and to partner with the holy spirit and to follow the holy spirit. this is where our family was reconciled, me to my brother, my brother to my father, my father to my mother.

my father was an extraordinary man. and at the same time he was an ordinary man. his life was full of mistakes and failures, but he didn't harden his heart, and he didn't give up, and he held onto jesus' hand tightly. he knew that who he was and what he'd done was not by his own merit but by god's grace. i don't put my dad on a pedestal. i have seen with my own eyes his brokenness and his shortcomings and his allround humanness in every facet of his life. but i honor him now because i loved him and still love him, and because his life always gave me hope for mine, that if he could live such a passionate life, that maybe i wasn't too messed up to experience that same passion in my own life. it's true that i don't know god the way my father did, and i still haven't worked out the whole faith thing. all i know is that there is something within me that has protected me from becoming bitter and resentful as i watched the one my heart loves most suffer and fade away. in fact, somehow, watching my father die has softened parts of my heart that were as hard as marble, and i can sense a life within me that i don't understand but know is not made up in my head. is this the new heathen sarah? maybe i'll drop that heathen label from now on and just be sarah, whoever and wherever that may lead. and someday the hope i have is that it will lead me to the place where i'll be with my dad face to face, this time his face beaming again with that angelic smile and his voice able to express his love for me outloud and his arms strong and outstretched to embrace me, the daughter i know he loved so tenderly and unapologetically.

warning--the following post describes an event that some people may find disturbing because it involves death and love intermingled. don't say i didn't warn you.



my dad passed away this evening.



i had spent thursday night w/ him in the hospital, and when i tried to wake him in the morning, he wouldn't open his eyes and his breathing was extremely difficult. i felt right away that his time to go was near, and my heart sank. i tried calling my mom, no answer, my mom's cell phone, no answer, our family pastor, busy. i was scared witless as i saw my dad struggling for each breath. the nurse finally got a hold of my dad's doctor, who got a hold of my mom, and i got a hold of our pastor's wife who gave me a number to call my pastor at.



but for a good hour or so, i was alone with my dad, and i begged him to hold on, mom was on her way. i've never been around a person on their last leg of life before, and what i experienced today is that the lines between the natural and supernatural worlds seem to get fuzzy. somehow, even though my dad could not say anything beyond grunts as he gasped for each breath, i could feel what was in his heart clearly. and the love...the love...my father loved me so much...i saw his eyes fill with tears as he saw me sobbing over him, i saw the pain he felt at leaving me and my family.



all day, our extended family gathered as well as close friends. various pastors came to comfort our family, including my dad's personal pastor steve nicholson and his wife cindy, john willison who wrote some of my dad's favorite worship songs, dave frederick of the oak park vineyard, and rand tucker & his wife aimee of the hyde park vineyard. having rand and john come meant especially a lot to me because they have both been my pastors to some degree in the past. john also brought his guitar and we sang my redeemer lives and anything you ask, two songs he'd written that were among my dad's favorites. i have to say i'm so grateful to steve & cindy for their love and care for my family during this time. i never realized how compassionate steve was until this whole ordeal with my dad.



they say that your sense of hearing is the last to go, and even when a dying person seems unconscious, they can hear what we're saying. so all day, we spoke what was on our hearts to my dad as we caressed his hands, his face, his hair. i will never forget the time i spent today gently stroking my dad's face as i looked into his eyes and told him over and over again how much i loved him. i think my brother finally got to say everything he'd been wanting to say his whole life. and my mother...she will never finish expressing what is in her heart for the man she has been through hell and high water with for 34 years.



he struggled for every breath for another 11 hours until the doctor finally came and turned off his oxygen. everybody then gathered around and they sang hymns and prayed as my brother, mother & i sobbed. it was agonizing hearing him die, as he gasped for the air in his lungs that were cut off by the mass of cancer cells. somehow, i kept my face in front of his face, stroking his cheek and did not let my eyes let go of his eyes as i told him again and again that i loved him, and that it was time for him to rest now, until a few minutes later he gave up his last breath.



i don't know at what point my father went from looking into my eyes to looking into the eyes of jesus, but i know at that moment, he was free from the body that had been so ravaged by pain and suffering for the past 7 months. he was finally free. he is free now. he has entered into his rest, after devoting the last 30 years of his life to running after jesus and serving and loving other people. and he left me, his daughter, with the full assurance of a father's steadfast and unconditional love. never in my entire life have i doubted whether my father loved me. all my life, my mom told me that i was my father's joy of life, and i never doubted it. and at the same time, i watched my father's devoted love for god & god's people & broken people & hurting people & lonely people. i watched him be a father to so many who never knew what a father's love was like. i watched him love and cherish those who were forgotten or overlooked, whether they were single moms or widows and their children or the mentally ill. i know of countless hours spent on his knees in a little closet in my parents' house.



my father's life was far from picture perfect. he knew first hand the meaning of the dark night of the soul and was familiar with spiritual lethargy and depression. he knew first hand the pain and disappointment of pouring his entire life into a church only to see it seemingly die as his own body became too ravaged with disease for him to continue pastoring. he knew first hand what it means to sow with tears knowing that he would not see the fruit of his labor with his own eyes in this lifetime. he did not always behave like a loving man. but he had a humble heart and freely admitted his shortcomings.



i am so proud to have been my father's daughter. i am forever changed by the love that he showed me, not just his own love for me, but also god's love even when i didn't believe it was real. on april 4th, i posted that as i was driving, i felt a small voice saying that through my father's process of dying, i would find salvation. it seems that the voice was right. somehow, in the midst of the pain of losing my father, i found myself surrounded by a grace and love and comfort that i can't explain. even when i ran far away from god, apparently it wasn't far enough, and he still held me in his arms so that when i finally collapsed, i was safe. even now, as thoroughly broken and devasted as i am, i know that i will be made whole on the other side of this life. that is not to say that i am okay. i am far from being okay. i was a crumpled writhing mess of tears and hair and snot and fists and "why?"s and "daddy!"s on the floor a few minutes ago. i am unfamiliar with grief as close to the heart as this. i miss my dad so much. reality is biting a huge chunk out of my heart, and so the blood flows. i wasn't made for losing people i love, i can see that clearly now.



i just don't understand death. it's not natural. how in a single moment one passes from being a living being to being a dead one is beyond me. i don't understand how at one moment i was looking into the eyes of my dad, and the next it was a hollow mass of cells. i watched death take over my dad's body rapidly, and for a long time, i was perplexed and troubled because i could not find my father. so i asked steve (our pastor) if my dad was with jesus at that moment, and steve assured me that he was. it was a relief to me, and a comfort, because at least for that moment, i could imagine my dad painfree in the arms of his loving saviour, and took comfort in that image. but i was still sad for myself, because now i can't see his face light up with that angelic smile of his, and i can't feel his gentle loving understanding touch, and i can't hear the delight in his voice as he calls my name. i feel like i've been robbed of my most prized possession.



months ago, when i told my dad i was leaving the church and a whole bunch of other stuff, he told me he knew i'd be okay and that he wasn't worried about me. and now, i have to believe that what he said was true, even though i don't see how i could ever be okay again. i am crushed to smithereens but somehow i have to believe that the pieces will be mended back together again in time.



the wake is monday night 6-8pm @ colonial funeral home in niles and the funeral the following morning at 10am at the same place. i don't really feel like going, but i guess i'll be there any way.



musicwise, i'm too tired to say, but it involved damien jurado, denison witmer, the ocean blue, everything but the girl, and nick drake.

today was my dad's birthday. he has lived to be 64. it seems such an incomplete age to be ending on. we had brought cake to the hospital for him to share w/ the nurses, but we couldn't get him to stay awake, so we decided to just give it to the nurses to eat amongst themselves. the nurses however didn't give up and later in the afternoon came into his room with a tiny cake and a birthday balloon. he stayed up long enough to hear them sing happy birthday, but then was right back asleep again.

i am in the hospital watching over my dad as he sleeps. he has become even weaker than he was yesterday. he can hardly stay awake, and the pain is more frequent and more intense that his morphine dosage had to be increased. he is too weak to even push the button to self-administer the morphine, and someone has to push the button for him to receive a boost of the drug every now and then. it's really hard, because i can't stand to see my dad suffer, but the more morphine he's on, the less coherent and alert he is. as i see him go deeper and deeper into sleep, my heart sinks lower and lower, knowing that my time left with a coherent and conscious father is as fragile as the last leaves on a tree before the winter wind swoops down and steals them away.

tomorrow we will bring my dad home to glenview. i will be moving in with my folks for the time being. the doctors are worried about how we'll manage all the machines and iv's, but my concern is getting my father home where he belongs where my whole family can be with him all the time. i just don't want him to have to be in the hospital any more, when there's nothing they can do for him here.

i had the chance to take some pictures at the bridge on north ave where i wanted to last night but was confined to my car by the rain. today was a gorgeous day--just a tad chilly, maybe, but i didn't notice. i was so glad to actually have some time outdoors in the sunshine. now that april is over, i'm hoping that may will be a sunnier, warmer month. but i don't want to jump right into summer either, which chicago has a tendency to do. the change of seasons is always a shock to the system here in the windy city.

today's soundtrack:
blue--joni mitchell
black out--the good life
songs for the new year--simon joyner
s/t--scientific