This feature follows up on the events of Homecoming || No. 18.

Family reunions tend to come in two buckets: planned and unplanned. The planned tend to be happy occasions: weddings, baby showers, Christmas dinner—that sort of thing. If you’re going to set a date in advance, there’s no point in giving melancholy a spot on the calendar. On the flip side, the unplanned range from serious to sad; obligatory in nature, unexpected by definition.
 
The sudden Tuesday three-and-a-half bus ride to Busan, Korea’s second largest metropolis, was a result of the latter: the funeral for 작은 할아버지, or my grandfather’s younger brother. Family members, interrupted from their May mid-week schedules, hastened south from the capital to pay their last respects.
 
Death and life are kept in uncomfortably close quarters in Korean hospitals, with the funeral hall filled with the cries and whispers of dark suited and dressed mourners just steps from the main ward. Or maybe that’s my American identity raising the hairs on my arms; seeing a glowing couple cradling a newborn on the first floor less than a minute before spotting teary-eyed in-laws at the funerary dais isn’t something you’d see every day at Huntington Hospital in Pasadena.
 
Perhaps we Americans have it wrong in unnaturally separating the two events, putting miles between funeral halls and birth wards instead of a few quickened steps. It is as if we are trying to pretend that there can be life without death, and death without life. As if oil and vinegar, when reality is more like pouring cold into hot water, the mixture setting at a balanced and warm equilibrium.
 
Daughters and sons, spouses and uncles; all make their way down funeral hall number six on the second basement floor. Imitation ferns placed on wooden stands and wreathed in banners flank both sides of the hallway: the Korean equivalent of flower bouquets, except these have the benefactor’s names on them. One here from the SK Telecom communications group, there from the Channel A broadcasting station, and over there from a minor community group. Though you cannot necessarily determine causation, there is certainly a correlation between the number of fake fern stands and number of lives the deceased has affected, for better or worse. There’s a lot in the hall assigned to our family.
 
The hallway also serves as a divider between emptiness and fullness. On the left: a raised platform covered with flowers, ceremonial food and drink, an incense burner, and the framed portrait of the deceased. A place for paying respects. On the right: low tables covered with plastic plates full of funeral food, which, laid out by servers, could have easily passed in taste and presentation for an expensive restaurant meal.
 
On the funerary side, I know who will be present: the deceased’s wife, children, perhaps grandchildren. But on the meal side, it’s a potpourri of “Do you know me’s” and “Do you remember who I am’s” that stand in for introductions.
 
“Of course I remember!” I reassure them immediately. “Except I don’t know any of your names,” the latter of which I only said in my head.
 
Various relatives cluster around the low tables, eating, pouring soju and beer, reminiscing, catching up as appropriate. Save the immediate family, the topics and tones of conversation among the more distant relatives could have been lifted from the script and put into a Lunar New Year celebration or Korean equivalent of a Fourth of July barbecue and no one could have spotted the difference.
 
Ostensibly, the alcohol is present to ease the flow of oral memories about the deceased. Realistically, after those memories run dry, it facilitates the exchange of new promotions, news about the kids, personal family issues, and other self-interested topics. Later that night, four of my second uncles head to a nearby 당구장, or billiards hall, to play three-ball and reminisce until two or three in the morning. A funeral, like a fallen tree in the forest, can give birth to new information gathering, connections, and sometimes even starts business ventures. With a certain mindset, it’s as much a networking event as it is a mourning.
 
Technically, however, the Tuesday evening vigil is not the real funeral, so to speak—merely the observation period for relatives to come and go. That would happen at 6:00am the next morning. Thus, dreary eyed and suits wrinkled from overuse, we found ourselves back at the low tables at 5:30am, slowly sipping the same stew and nibbling on the same side dishes as the previous evening. By the mid afternoon, we will have had the same contents for three consecutive meals, not that I was complaining at all.

At six sharp, we shuffled to the other side of the hall, ready to start the formal services. The funeral officiant’s loud voice cut through the silence, first as he read a message and then broke into pansori voice, or traditional Korean verse singing, as he honored the dead.
 
Then the instructions came rapid fire. The bowing order:

  • First son (even though he was the youngest child)
  • Son’s wife
  • Deceased’s wife
  • Eldest daughter and her husband
  • Second daughter and her husband
  • Grandchildren
  • Uncles and aunts
  • Other distant relatives
  • Friends of family
  • Wife bows again
  • Son bows again

At last, the officiant read another message. Then we all bowed twice again, with the officiant instructing us with terse syllables: “배,” “bow,” then “제,” “stand,” each time.
 
My second uncle, the only son of the deceased, had told me the previous evening that I would have just one duty the next morning. It’s one thing to be told you would be a casket bearer, quite another to be mentally prepared for it. But there’s no time to contemplate this through the early morning, hangover-like haze; sliding on the white gloves given for grasping the cloth rope tied to the coffin is instinctual.
 
There are six of us—various nephews and myself—that enter the morgue room, which has enough space for about eight to 10 bodies to be stored at one time. A quick scan of the room bears a different coffin leaning against the wall—a sturdy box of spruce or pine. But the casket of our interest is covered in linen cloth and over it is a red banner with hanja characters with name of deceased painted onto it.
 
At this point, my second uncle, the son of the man of the casket, is in tears. “밀량에 가자, 아버지,” “Let’s go to Miryang, father,” he says, standing at the back of the coffin. At his nod, we grasp the white tassels and carry the casket to the elevator, following the eldest granddaughter cradling a memoriam with deceased’s name on it with the eldest grandson right behind holding large framed portrait of the man to be buried. This takes us to the parking lot where we place the coffin carefully in the limousine-sized hearse with the immediate family members climbing into the back seats. The rest of us board a bus trailing behind as we make the 45-minute drive to Miryang.
 
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It’s been said that if you had watched the region for centuries, you would have seen the forests of Korean pine trees climbing down the mountains, like lava flowing at an unnoticeably slow pace. The pinecones, compelled by gravity, would drop from tree boughs and naturally roll downhill, attracting the wildlife that subsisted on the edible nuts and spread the seeds. Eventually, as if pulled on an invisible string, other fauna and animals that preyed on the seed-eating animals would follow, including humans. In this way, the forest spread until ‘home’ was no longer on a single mountain but spanned the entire Korean peninsula.
 
So our part of the family going to America and staying simply the pinecone traveling further downhill? Were we meant to leave eventually? Or was I lost, separated first by ocean, then by language, now by worldview? Is it an “I” question or a “we” question? Is identity a people, a place, or a bit of both?
 
These raw thoughts float through my mind as we follow the hearse.
 
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The bus first stopped in northern part of Busan at the crematorium (화장), a large and venerable structure not unlike a temple. Once there, we were told to wait for a while—in the body queue, so to speak—drinking coffee in the 20-minute window.
 
We then returned to the back of the hearse to lift out the body. After placing it on a rolling crate and leading it to the entrance to the crematorium, the procession started again. At the threshold, we stopped and allow for family to touch the coffin one last time. 작은할머니, the wife of the deceased, put her arms, then entire body, over the coffin in grief.
 
A few moments passed respectfully before we collectively moved to viewing area to wait for body to be exhumed, looking at a TV screen showing an overhead camera view of the doors to the crematorium. The framed portrait was placed below the TV screen. In this large room big enough to seat 250, there are framed photos of different people in almost every open slot of the 15 available. As the cremation process commenced, we sat in the hall for over an hour-and-a-half, staring at phones, chatting, and being intermittently interrupted by shrieking mourners passing through the hall.
 
What seemed like hours later, we made our way to a counter that was much like a bank teller’s with a glass window and open slot, except through the open slot was to be passed not money but the jar of remains. Suddenly, the worker turned holding a metal box, showing us the ashen remains—a whitened femur joint here and hip bone there that clearly signified that there had once been human life where there was now the absence of it. 

At the son’s assent, the caretaker put the remains into a machine that crushed the parts into a fine dust that was to be wrapped and put into the funerary vessel. At first, the remaining remains were too large to fit into the vessel, so after lengthy discussion—during which I got the sense that some relatives wanted it done right but others just wanted it done—it was decided that some of the remains would be poured out so as to fit into the jar. The vessel was boxed and wrapped in white linen and slid purposefully through the slot. Clearly, the skilled and comfortable doing with simultaneous poise and emotionlessness.
 
Thankfully, we made our way back to the bus and set off for Miryang for the final natural burial process.
 
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A light drizzle—the kind that’s light enough to stick to your eyelashes and blur your vision as you blink it away—fell slowly as we disembarked at the family hometown. Not two days prior, speaking with Fulbright Infusion magazine editors about my previous piece about visiting my hometown, I had said I didn’t see myself returning anytime soon. Yet here I was again, carried by the same twists of timing that had allowed me to visit last year. Personally, predicting the future has been a wholly inaccurate endeavor.
 
Marching up the hill to the family gravesite had become almost familiar: The ankle-length brush crunching softly beneath our footsteps, the double-file tire tracks, and the crops flanking the narrow path. This time, tables and tents were set up at the foot of the burial mounds, with plates of ceremonial food and liquor—the same from when we had conducted ancestral worship in November—carefully placed atop white linen tablecloth.  
 
One relative grabbed me by the arm, gesturing to the left side of the mounds where another set of ceremonial food had been hastily laid on a small tarp. Just as before, I was to bow again to the 수호신, or the protective spirit of the mountain. According to the accompanying attendant from the funeral hall that was presiding over the services, this was appropriate for me to do up until marriage. At his instruction, I bowed twice before throwing parts of the food—dates, chestnuts, and liquor—it as far as I could into the brush up the mountain face, baseball background unexpectedly coming in handy.
 
Meanwhile, gravediggers had prepared a burial spot in the gap between the deceased’s older brother—also my grandfather’s older brother, who was born in 1930 and served in the Korean War—and his father and mother. Conspicuously missing—noteworthy at least to me—was the absence of the middle brother, who was buried in Toronto a few years prior.
 
We gathered around the tent-covered grave hole before one-by-one dropping a handful of dirt onto the box of ashes that had been placed in the hole. I copied the others: three shakes of the open hand and then a brief pause before moving on to the next person. Sons, daughters, sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, grandchildren, relatives—all were invited to participate in this ritual. To finish the process, we took turns in the same order and stepped firmly on the dirt, firmly pushing it into place and flattening it. As we moved to another tent that covered a table with framed portrait of the deceased, the gravediggers placed the burial marker in the soil and sealed it down with cement, using a level to ensure the correct orientation.
 
In front of the portrait and laid out food and liquor, we again bowed twice as whole unit and then the immediate family conducted a series of bows. For reasons I didn’t catch, we were instructed to turn around to face the valley as all the ceremonial food was replaced; the old thrown into the box, “eaten” by the spirit, and an identical set laid out in its place. This having been completed, we turned back again and repeated the entire bowing process again to wrap up the ceremony.
 
If this sounds like a marathon, it was certainly so. Sitting around temporary tables eating another funeral meal up on the hill, multiple relatives came up to the only son of the deceased and expressed how difficult it was for him to complete his filial duty alone. Indeed, in another echo of entrenched Confucian influence, it was understood that it was solely the son’s duty to conduct the day’s events. Surely, the heavy combination of emotional and logistical stress must have been enormous, yet he showed it only in brief moments throughout the day. Still more commendable was his invitation he extended to all present: He would be returning to the burial site—three to four hours by car—every Sunday at 10am for the following seven weeks. Such an announcement, stated without burden or complaint, made our attendance seem minimal in comparison.
 
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I wish I could say that I felt the same emotional pain and absence of those present that day, but that would be false. Memories of my grandfather’s younger brother amounted to a visit to our house in Los Angeles when I was in middle school and spoke no Korean and a few conversations in Korea during my visits to the homeland that I could count on one hand.
 
If anything, my attendance was less important for who I was than what I represented: A symbol of the expatriate (from their point of view) branch of the family. Emotionally, this is a grey area: What I felt and expressed while present was of little consequence so long as I was present. Yet there it was—this gnawing, out-of-body sensation of being distant from the experience entirely even as it happened real time.
 
Judging by the rest of the family, me being there was clearly a plus, but my absence would not have been a minus. No sense of a somebody, something, missing. Not that I have any misconceptions of my personal, individually miniscule importance in all this; just a clear understanding that with the passing of my grandfather’s younger brother, there is one less thread holding us together across continents. And the possibly of complete separation of the family was all too apparent through the absence of any tension related to the situation. It is as if the tug-of-war might suddenly end because one side simply stopped caring and let go of the rope, leaving the other wondering what the point of it was in the first place.
 
And what is the point? To use another metaphor, it’s if a tree had been successfully grafted, with the cut branch growing fruitfully independently, and then the original tree forgetting it had lost a branch in the first place. Does that lost memory matter?
 
I hope my time here—swimming against the current—helps keep that memory alive. I hope the memory—of home before home—means something. I hope the future and its blank pages are better written because we understand our past. Yet our hopes and reality are not always in tune.
 
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Often, it almost seems gratuitous to put these things to a typeface, especially when almost 3000 words could be summed up to thirty or less—“This week, Caleb went to a funeral.”—and be done with it. I think the impetus for the wordiness is for fear that the actual answer to the inevitable question, ‘So, how was Korea?’ will fuse with the one sentence deflection of ‘Not bad, learned a lot.’ Like the romanticized memories of traveling around Europe and feeling more ‘cultured’ for reasons you can’t quite remember.  
There’s no wool over the eyes here; like Emma Stone’s character from La La Land, once the curtain falls and the house lights rise, there is going to be family, a few scattered friends, and some random stragglers that stuck around until the end. More salient too is a growing awareness that, more likely than not, the year in Korea will circle right back to where I started—freshly graduated from college, starting a job in the U.S., speaking little Korean except to my grandparents, and still favoring American over Korean cultural norms. Decisions-wise, I will have objectively spent a year making no new decisions.
 
The real gift of the year has been the excuse it has given to do things, to go places and explore. A government-sponsored, company-sanctioned motivation to look more closely at a life that could have been, at living an out of body experience except still within the same body. Akin to a Japanese tea ceremony, which ostensibly is about chicly consuming caffeine, when in reality the actual ceremony itself is what nourishes you. Like future Econ majors suffering through Latin’s second declension in Vergil’s Aeneid, the learning process matters more than the goal.
 
So even if the outcome is zero, with the path unchanged, I will have changed. I think that alone will have made this all priceless.