It was ten years ago today that my uncle (my dad’s youngest sibling) passed. I was in graduate school in Boston at the time. I had scheduled a Skype call with my parents in Korea to interview them for a cross-cultural counseling assignment - to create a genogram of my family. When my parents called telling me my uncle was in critical condition, I urged my dad to get on a plane from Korea and met him in NY. My brother, my dad and I flew down to Atlanta and rushed over to the hospital.
Only a month prior, I had gotten engaged and my then-fiance, now-husband, spoke briefly with my uncle over the phone. I never thought that would be the last time I would get to speak to my uncle.
My uncle was smart, talented, a musician through and through, a lover of sports, a generous and sensitive soul (sometimes to a fault) and a fighter for justice who stood up for the weak, the marginalized, the poor.
Sitting in that ICU room, I cried out to God like I had never done before. It was the first time I believed with every ounce of my being that He was the maker, the creator and that if He wanted He could save and heal my uncle. Recordings of my uncle singing “예수 하나님의 공의” (This Kingdom) on the radio played in the background as I sat in a corner of the room pleading with God, “You rose Lazarus from the dead, so you surely can heal my uncle. Do it!” Doctors said if he made it five days, there would be a fighting chance… but on that fifth day, while we were out at lunch, his condition deteriorated and the medical staff declared him brain dead. Such a cruel phrase… It still hurts to write it.
Ten years prior when my grandfather passed, my dad asked me if I wanted to say any last words to him. I stood in that cold, white room and thoughts raced through my mind but I couldn’t muster up anything. I was so young then, only a freshman in high school and had never experienced the death of a loved one before.
I held my uncle’s hand, still warm. The concept of someone being “brain dead” was beyond my comprehension. I cried out to him, asking him to please get up so he could be at my wedding, so he could sing a song to congratulate us.
The next few days were a blur. My dad rushed around with funeral service preparations, I called my ten-year-old cousin’s school to inform them that his father had passed and that he wouldn’t be at school for some time and then took him to buy his first suit to wear to the funeral. I’m not sure how my aunt cared for and breastfed his little sister, who was just short of 100 days old, while grieving the loss of her husband. Now, as a wife and a mother, thinking back to those days hits me with a new rawness and pain.
Grieving… it’s not a static, one-time thing. It’s not just about missing a person, who they were. But as life goes on, it has a twisted way of showing you things about them you hadn’t known previously, and you yearn for them in new, unexpected, gut-wrenching ways. After my uncle passed, I sat around the dining table with my aunt as we sipped on tea. It was a rare quiet moment and she started to tell me a story of when I was in college visiting Korea for a summer exchange program. I had come to visit them after a recent break-up, and I told my uncle all about it. My aunt recalls how after I left, they got into an argument. She said to me, “I think your uncle was feeling extra sensitive after hearing about your heartbreak…” When she told me this, I thought to myself, “I guess my uncle and I were both pretty emotional…” I sometimes think about how he would be someone I would go to as I’ve been going through life transitions. Even if it’s to sit next to him and listen to him strum his guitar and hum, I think about how comforted I would be in his presence.
Grieving… it’s not just a longing for what was, but what could have been. How when I see my brother I’m often reminded of my uncle and wonder what it would’ve been like if he was still here with us… how they would have so much in common - their love for music and sports, their sometimes unconventional, rebellious ways. I think about how my husband never got to meet my uncle, never got to know him. I think about how my uncle would have been proud of who I married, how I’ve become a mother, how much he would have loved on J. I think about how the things that burn on my heart may have been the very things that burned on my uncle’s heart.
삼촌,
Today, I grieve, yearn for and remember you.
I miss you.