A Letter Never Sent 5

A Letter Never Sent 5

 

Was the hospital in Seongnam or Bundang? (Are Seongnam and Bundang the same place?) It was somewhere near Migeum Station (I'm not even sure about the station's name). As we passed by, I saw a white acrylic hospital sign shining in the darkness on the hilltop. It was around seven in the evening, and the darkness had already filled every place that the light couldn't reach. After confirming the location of my father’s room at the hospital desk, we took the elevator up. When we got off, we were greeted by my mother, my aunt, my uncle, and my maternal aunt. It was clear that before we arrived, they had been worried, fearing that my father might pass away. But upon seeing us, their expressions shifted, as if they were freed from the chains of responsibility that had been tightening around them. They let out heavy sighs, almost as if releasing a weight they had been carrying deep inside, as though they had breathed the deepest sigh of their lives.

After greeting them, I realized that the faces of my uncle and maternal aunt, whom I hadn't seen in over 30 years, hadn’t changed at all. The long span of time seemed to have not touched them. The only difference was that my hair had turned more gray than theirs. I even wondered if my uncle’s hair was that dark because he dyed it—though I never asked, even when I returned to the U.S. The change in their faces was so subtle, it didn’t make me feel time’s passage at all.

I remembered an incident from my second year of college when I had drinks with my uncle. I was never good at drinking, but I had fallen for my uncle's persuasion and kept drinking the glasses he offered me. Unlike soju, which would burn and make me drunk quickly, sake went down smoothly, and I kept drinking, feeling like I could handle alcohol. I didn’t even remember how many glasses I had drunk. But the drunk feeling came gradually and lasted long. By the time I returned home and lay down, I was struggling to keep my body steady. It was the first time I truly felt how burdensome my body was. I thought about how long that memory of youthful days had seemed, and how dark the road home had been.

But now, the face of my uncle, a bit mischievous yet kind, seemed to have returned. I had memories of sharing a drink with him, but now, upon reflection, I realized that I would never have the chance to share another drink with him. In the style of singer Yang Hee-eun, I thought to myself, life truly seems like a lonely thing. So many thoughts and feelings passed through me in such a short time.

We pushed our bags to a corner of the lounge and went to see my father. He was in a room next to the nurses’ office. They had moved him from the regular ward where five people had been staying because his condition had become critical. My father looked like a mummy. The last time I saw him, just before the end of February at my sister’s house in LA, he had been thin but not this emaciated. His face was nearly unrecognizable. Below his eyes were dark red-brown spots, like the marks around a panda's eyes. My sister seemed to be on the verge of crying when she saw him, but I quickly placed my hand on her shoulder to signal her to hold back. I wanted my father to leave this world with peace in his heart, if possible.

My sister soon regained her composure. I believed that my father would also prefer a peaceful departure, and this was my way of dealing with the final goodbye. Though his body was in pain, I wanted him to leave us peacefully, in peace of mind.

The first thing I did when I saw my father was hold his hand. It was instinctual. I hardly ever held his hand when I was younger. Holding someone’s hand is an act of sharing warmth. The hand of a father and son is the closest touch in the world. But when was the last time I held my grandfather’s hand? I couldn’t remember. When I needed my father’s hand, he was always far away. He had lived a nomadic life as a soldier, always moving from place to place: Inje, Yanggu, Daegu, Wonju, Vietnam, and then after retiring, he settled in Chuncheon. He had lived separately for much longer than we had lived together in the same house.

When I was young, my father felt like an uncomfortable and awkward guest when he came home. His hand was always too far and awkward for me. After I came back from the army, got married, and moved to the U.S., my hand was now even further from my father’s. When he needed my hand, it was on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, a half world away.

Now, at the moment of his passing, my father’s hand and mine had finally touched. How ironic, that in life, his hand and mine had always been so far apart. One of his hands was warm, while the other was slowly losing its warmth.

"Father, do you recognize us?" I asked. He opened his eyes slightly and nodded. Tears fell from his right eye. Only one eye shed tears, and I realized he was fading away. He could no longer drink water, relying on fluids through his veins to survive. The veins near his arms were bruised from the needles. The color of those bruises was a deep, sorrowful blue. Watching the bruises on his arms, I thought that blue was a terribly sad color.

The fact that he cried meant that he was using up the remaining moisture in his body. Those few tears were heartbreaking. His final moments were drawing near. Despite his deteriorating body, his mind was still clear. He had asked several times about the time after hearing we were coming. He couldn’t speak, so he pointed at his wrist to ask. And then he waited. This waiting, so painful, was the hardest part of life. I, his child, could never truly understand the extent of his longing and patience.

A thin hose from a small device was connected to my father’s nose—an oxygen mask. Thanks to the oxygen, he had managed to prolong his life a little longer. He must have been saving his breaths until we arrived. Seeing him struggle to breathe made me realize that breathing, something so simple for me, had become painful for him.

He sometimes tried to speak, but I couldn’t understand what he was saying. He made a few gestures as if trying to write, so I brought him paper and a pen. What he wrote wasn’t legible, just scribbles like a two or three-year-old child holding a pen. At that time, I didn’t understand, but now I realize. He had so much he wanted to say to us.

Now, a month after my father’s passing, my chest aches even more. His last night on this earth was drawing to a close, deep in the quiet of the night.