April 30, 2013
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Family Vacation
So about a week and a few days ago my cousin got married to his fiance and has spent the better part of this past week or so on the island paradise of Fiji, sending out the occasional enviable Instagram pic of their honeymoon. It looks fantastic and I would be jealous, except that it’s not really my nature. I’m glad they both look so amazingly happy and relaxed, though.
Myself, for the most part, spent that same time with my parents on a family vacation (minus my sister) in Death Valley, and then carting them all over Southern California to meet friends and relatives, but also to stop in on my grandmother, who is in a rehab center following a hospital visit. Though the details are a bit fuzzy to me, essentially she was malnourished and in lots of pain, to the point that she was suffering from a kind of dementia brought on by a vitamin deficiency. Normally I wouldn’t be worried, but as it so happens she wound up in the same exact rehab facility my grandfather was in roughly half a decade earlier before he passed away. Seeing it, being there, walking through those doors again brings back memories I had long buried and am not thankful to live through again. Though everyone seems optimistic of her recovery, I feel like this is a very grim reminder of how frail my grandparents have become before my very eyes.
It’s funny, that despite how hard you try, all of your efforts, your attempts to do the right thing and be the best person you can be, inevitably you still become riddled with doubts during those moments of vulnerability, when you feel yourself exposed and the rush of history you believed long past threatens to wash back over you. I never spent a great deal of time with my grandfather, but I do miss him. I always felt, though, that the man I saw, and met, and knew as my grandfather was always an incomplete puzzle. There were so many pieces missing, I never had a good grasp of who he was or what he felt or believed or thought. In addition to the communication barrier between us (my Korean being somewhat substandard), he wasn’t ever in the mood to converse to begin with. His tendency was to retreat to his bedroom and lock the door, to be left in solitude, or to go out somewhere (where he went, I don’t really know). I remember clearly, one of the last times I saw him, he thought I was my dad’s younger brother, and didn’t recognize my name when I told him who I was. He looked at me confused and then looked away from me, towards an empty corner of the ceiling, as if to ponder his circumstances. In Korean culture, your paternal lineage is very important, and yet I know nearly nothing about my paternal grandparents. I’m much more familiar with my maternal grandparents, but both of them are still alive today, whereas my grandmother on my father’s side passed away before I was even born. It’s all history that I’m sure must deeply affect me, but it’s a past of which I’m unaware.
I always try to live a life without regrets, to do what I feel is right, to live life to the best of my ability according to my own strict code of honor. I’ve always believed firmly in honoring and respecting others, and sowing the seeds of good karma, but it’s at times like these that I feel like my beliefs are thrown into doubt. I suppose it’s selfish of me to go on through this existence as if no one I care about will ever fade from my life, but its hard to stare that reality in the face. With such a grim truth staring you down, you’re forced to reckon with the possibility that maybe in spite of your best intentions, you didn’t perform to a high enough standard, and that maybe there were a few things you could have done better. Maybe it’s normal to think of these things at a time like this.
It’s funny, I’ve always lacked the desire and ambition for material things. Objects, money, large houses, expensive cars, I do have some curiosity about it, but I’ve never really had an intense drive to want any of it. I’ve always yearned for the intangible, the ungraspable, the ethereal and wispy threads of things beyond the veil of what we know. We’re here such a short time, our life on this world is fleeting and so quick, to spend it on an unending ambition for material comforts has never been appealing to me. My material needs are simple. I spend most of the rest of my time exercising my mind, trying to learn, to absorb as much as I can in every subject my curious brain ponders about. It seems like an odd fascination, and one that doesn’t lend itself to any sort of money making occupation, but that’s never bothered me. I’m still not entirely sure what my purpose is, where this road is leading me, and where I’ll end up, but I feel like this is the year that life will help point me in a more specific direction.
Right after we had said our last goodbyes to my grandmother and were walking out (my parents had a flight the next morning back to Jersey), my grandmother burst into tears. It was the most heartbreaking experience of my life, hearing my normally stoic grandmother weep for the first time. My mom went back to console my grandmother, while my dad prodded me to keep moving to give the two time alone. My mom is her oldest child, and it is admittedly a bit selfish of her to demand my mom stay, but at this point, in this place, after all of what she has gone through, I don’t blame her for wanting it or asking it. My grandfather later called my mom to chide her and let her know that he had voluntarily gone back to the recovery center to spend time with grandma, as if to emphasize that this was the sort of dedication she should be showing, but my parents have jobs and bills, and lack the luxury of a proper retirement.
Sometimes I wonder about the fairness in the burden I feel my family is made to bear, but then I remind myself that every family has their burden and sometimes, knowing that gives me perspective enough to be thankful that perhaps things weren’t significantly worse, as they could have easily been. And in the end, my parents really enjoyed their vacation to the point that they want to do it again next year. I’ve been tasked with planning a family vacation to Yellowstone in 2014. Life goes on.
Hang in there, grandma. You swore you wouldn’t go anywhere until I got married, so you need to stick around for at least another decade.
