by Chris Tharp
The infection indeed spread and after two surgeries to clean it out, she lost the leg. I was at the Crown, numbing my nerves with Korean beer when the call came from my brother Glen. I stood in the stairwell and knocked my head against the wall. The sounds of his tears echoed my own.
Within a couple of months a new sore developed on her remaining foot. We all knew where this would lead. Her lower body was simply incapable of healing itself, and it was just a matter of time before she lost the second leg.
I was at the Crown again, when, at midnight, Glen called me with the news:
“They had to take the other leg. She’ll be in long-term care for the foreseeable future. After that we’ll have to find another place for her, as she won’t be able to stay in the mobile.”
That November–in the middle of the semester–I flew home for a week to help clean out the parents’ place. I talked to my boss, Dr. Kim, and told him that I must help my family. Although Koreans value these things more than anything else, this doesn’t always translate into empathy for the foreign help. I’ve known many people who have found themselves out of a job due to family emergencies. The afternoon before I left, Dr. Kim called me into his office. I feared an earful due to my last-minute trip home. Instead, he handed me a white envelope, which contained 150,000 won, about 120 dollars at the time:
“Your students took up a collection, and wanted you to have this.”
* * * *
I should have been home, but I wasn’t. I should have been at her bedside–holding her hand and whispering in her ear. I should have been there to sit and cheer her up, to tell her stories and push her outside for some air, but after years of false alarms and perpetual crises, of midnight phone calls, of bad news followed by worse–the death of my dad–I chose to stay away. I was on a beach. It was just a few days after my Christmas casino meltdown. I was beaten up, wearing my shame like a thick sweater. I also was stricken with food poisoning–the result of some sketchy oysters eaten at the hotel buffet that we visited on Christmas night. I needed rest and recuperation, so Da-jin and I headed down to Thailand to spend a week in the embrace of the tropics. She only had the five days off. I planned on remaining longer, to eventually head north, meet Angry Steve–who also happened to be in the country–and cross into Laos. But the first week would be with my girl, in a beachside bungalow in Koh Chang, surrounded by what seemed to be the whole nation of Sweden. I wanted to enjoy the beginning of a new year with few distractions.
I achieved this for four days, until I got the email from my brother Mark:
Chris. Call home. It’s mom. Urgent.
I sprinted from the PC shop on Koh Chang’s main tourist strip back to our dark wood, beachfront bungalow. Da-jin was sipping tea and reading a book. Luckily her phone was rigged for international calls (mine was not), and after a few attempts, I got my middle brother, Glen, on the phone.
“I just got the email. What’s up?”
She was still alive, which was more than I was expecting, given the tone of the email. I’d received scores of alarmist emails over the years of my parents’ decline, most of which usually informed me about a new diagnosis or hospitalization–but the word “urgent” had yet to appear. It is a word of power and we all knew it. When we see something addressed as “urgent,” we think one thing: someone is dead.
Mom had suffered a year in which God threw a Jobian mountain of misfortune her way. In this time, she would lose not one, but both of her legs, her dogs, her house, and worst of all, her dignity. In her last few months she was at the mercy of nurses and caregivers, lacking the necessary upper arm strength for even the most basic mobility. A very independent and stubborn woman became infantile in her dependency. This, to be certain, is what really killed her.
Logistically I was in a pickle. I was five hours from Bangkok, where I could book a flight back to the States, but all I had with me was a small backpack full of shorts and t-shirts. I would require my winter clothes back in Washington, where the damp cold was in full effect. These clothing considerations were not just limited to the weather. With the situation as dire as it was, it would make sense to bring my best suit. All of this was back in Korea, so I immediately went to one of the many travel agencies dotting the strip along Koh Chang’s White Beach, and tried to book both a flight back to Korea and then another home. This took some wrangling. I was attempting to fly during the absolute height of holiday peak season. Seats were at a premium, and I wouldn’t be able to make it home for over a week, barring purchasing a first class ticket, which was well out of my price range.
My happy trip to Thailand suddenly turned into a spiral of anxiety. Here I was, with the girl I loved, in a location of pure beauty–emerald jungle and brilliant sea–yet my mind echoed with the refrain Go home. Go home. But what could I do? I was stuck there for several more days, so I made a charade of enjoying my vacation. I rented a motorcycle and toured around the island with Da-jin. We hiked to a waterfall and swam in the cool waters. We went night fishing for barracuda and got skunked.
On New Year’s Eve, our little resort put together an elaborate buffet meal, with fresh, grilled seafood. Da-jin and I were seated with a sad, childless couple from Japan. The four of us were the only non-Europeans in the place, so we were put together by default. A performance area was set up in front of the tables, where we were subjected to the staff of the resort belting out awful Thai karaoke numbers, as well as the requisite Siamese dancing. The entertainment started at seven and was stretched out over five hours. After a pile of food and two glasses of wine, Da-jin and I retired to the bungalow and took a nap, rising only ten minutes before midnight, just in time for the shower of fireworks blasting off down the beach.
We walked the beach hand in hand, color-drenched explosions blooming over our heads. The beach was full of revelers–both locals and tourists. Everywhere we heard the sing-song tones of Swedish being spoken. Reggae and techno music bumped from the many beachside bars and restaurants. Shirtless fire twirlers swung their flames to an apathetic crowd (kind of a one-trick discipline). We eventually made it down to a big stage, with yet more reggae: a full band of dreadlocked Thais were giving it their best Peter Tosh. We took it in for a moment and turned back around, sauntering back toward the bungalow. I was in no mood for dancing. We ended up taking a nightcap on the beach, at a bar run by an overweight ladyboy in a hot pink dress that acted as a second skin. The margaritas weren’t bad, but the whole affair just felt wrong.
I was back in Busan within three days; five days after that I stumbled off of the Northwest Airlines Tokyo-to-Seattle flight that I knew so well. Washington was as bleak as it always is in the winter–a canvas of grays, blues, and dark greens, with the sky perpetually three feet above your head–and soon enough I was in my white PT Cruiser rental (the only car left), Neil Young in the CD player, screaming down Interstate 5 toward the facility where my mom was housed.
The smell smacked me in the nose as I pulled into the Puyallup River Valley where Tacoma–Seattle’s white-trash little sister–sits splayed out in all of her muddy splendor. It’s known as the “Tacoma aroma” in Washington State, the result of the pulp mill that still operates near the mouth of the river at Commencement Bay. On the hill that sits beside the sad downtown I saw St. Joseph’s hospital, the place where, almost 37 years before, I was born. Both my parents were from Tacoma. They grew up and were married there. I had spent the first six months of my life in one the town’s unglamorous suburbs, and luckily remember none of it. It’s an ugly town–Rust Belt-like–with boarded-up businesses and a palpable lack of optimism. But, as is often the case with such places, a huge heart beats underneath. It’s unpretentious and all about getting to work. As good a place as any to die, I suppose.
Following complicated directions copied from my Korean computer, I arrived at the nursing home where my mother was staying. She had been moved there two weeks earlier, when it became clear that her care needs far exceeded those of the adult group home that we had grudgingly c
hosen for her two months before. It was a place of antiseptic smells, fluorescent lights, and an underpaid, indifferent staff. I rushed through the corridors in a manic attempt to locate her room. When I found it, I sucked in a sour breath and entered. She was in the back, one of two occupied beds. My brother Glen sat next her, stroking her hand and whispering soothing words. He stood when he saw me and wrapped me in an embrace.
“How was the flight?”
“It gets shorter every time.”
She lay there, asleep, looking grey and empty. Each pained breath was piercingly audible–a struggling wheeze. I leaned down and kissed her forehead. It was sticky and cool; I faintly tasted her sweat on my lips.
“Where’s Mark?” I asked.
“His flight gets in just about now. Hopefully he’ll get his car and be here within the hour.”
We sat there for the next forty-five minutes, staring at this woman who, up until this year, had been an immovable force in our lives. She had anchored us all through our worst times. She had given us words of hope and most of all, listened deeply, beyond language. She was now weak, reduced in limbs and spirit, her body and will irreparably broken. I gripped my brother’s hand and he mine. Mom’s breaths became weaker and less frequent.
“She’s going now. She’s going.”
My brother–having worked as a paramedic and surgical tech, as well as having lost several close friends–knew more of death than most people should.
We now stood over her, made the sign of the cross, and recited the Lord’s Prayer:
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…
Within five minutes of completing the prayer, she died. I had gotten there just in time.
My sister Molly had come to the nursing home shortly before the end, but chose to stay outside of the room, just as she did for my dad’s death the year before. She had been both my parents’ best friend and caregiver during those last years, and despite dealing with the awful day-to-day realities of caring for the sick, she had no stomach for death itself. My brother Mark was still absent. Unlike me, he hadn’t beaten the clock, so I waited at the entrance for his arrival. He eventually pulled into the parking lot, and as he emerged from his car, I calmly approached him.
“How is she?”
“I’m so sorry, Mark…”
* * * *
I buried my mother on my 38th birthday and returned to Korea two weeks later, where I went back to work, and got on with life, pretending that everything was normal. And in many ways, things were no different. I had been away from home for several years, and even before that had almost always lived in a different city than Mom and Dad. I was used to not seeing either of them for long periods of time. Now, though, they were really gone. This truth loved to slap me in the face at inconvenient times. Both parents dead in less than a year. Both of them sixty-six. It was and is a dizzying thing to contemplate. Often I’d forget and reach for the phone in attempt to call them, only to have my hand stop in mid-trajectory: Oh yeah, that’s right.
How long does it take the heart to accept what the mind already knows? Months… years, sometimes. These realizations came in flashes, momentary flurries of panic and horror, the knowledge that I was truly alone. Da-jin and I eventually broke up, partly due to the geyser that I had become in the wake of what I went through with my parents. For all her mistakes–her jealousies, her bitterness and resentments–she did what she could to support me. She stood by me through the most trying two episodes of my life so far, but any slight unhappiness on her part was met with rage by me. We tried for three years and she was there for the worst of it, but even that couldn’t save us.
A few days after we parted ways, I went hiking alone. My head was full of static and I needed it cleared. It was a warm, fall day, and I headed up to Geumjeongsan, Busan’s biggest and most famous mountain. I walked from my small apartment in the center of the city, along the busy streets, past old women selling lettuce and orange persimmons; past men gathered in the parks, playing go-stop and baduk; past the packs of white and navy-blue clad middle-school girls, with their frumpy short haircuts and fat backpacks. Visor-wearing ajummas sold the pressed fish-paste skewers known as odeng, batter-fried cuttlefish, and spicy ddokbokki from food stands on the side of the streets. Warbling voices hawked vegetables and frozen mackerel from blue flatbed pickup trucks, tape loops blaring their deals through old, distorted speakers. Eventually, I reached the mountain, climbing up under the orange cable car line that ferries the lazier visitors up and down the slope. The trail got steep and I quickly left the din of the city, relaxing in the peaceful quiet of the low pines. Lone older men passed me on the trail, giving small waves, smiling and greeting me with “Pangapsumnida!” always happy to see a foreigner hiking on the mountain, that most Korean of pastimes.
Close to the summit, I stopped off on a large rock that offered a viewpoint of the city below. I saw how beautiful Busan was from the air, a long reach of white and beige buildings with green mountains in between. I could make out the span of Gwangan Bridge in the background, with the blue of the ocean behind it. A game was on in Sajik-dong: the baseball stadium was packed full of fans, whose cheers and songs floated along the wind and up the mountain. I looked down at these streets that I knew so well, that in just five years I had traveled extensively, by bus, taxi, motorcycle, and on foot. For that one moment I didn’t feel like a foreigner. I felt like I belonged to this city, that I had earned a place in it. Yes, I was alone. My parents were gone, and though I still had friends and family in America, I didn’t have a home there. My home had moved. I had taken it with me, and it now resided in a place called Yeonsan-dong, in a crazy city named Busan, on the southern tip of the Korean Peninsula. Who could have predicted such a thing?
I suppose that day I came to some sort of peace, that the anger which had possessed me so greedily had now relaxed its grip. It turned into sadness, which in time blows away, I’m told. But it still cuts me to think about what went on, how death can come earlier than any of us wish, and how ugly it can be. I have many friends here whose parents come to visit. It’s a very natural thing, isn’t it? Parents come to visit their son or daughter who works in Korea. It’s a great excuse for a trip to Asia. I often meet these parents. I shake their hands and attempt my best happy face (“Do you like Korea? What food have you tried? Wow!”), but I really want to fold in on myself. I see my friends’ parents–usually in their late fifties, sixties, or even seventies–and it reminds me of what I don’t have. These parents who come to Korea are vibrant and healthy, traveling across the world to see their kids, who in turn will go back home to visit them. I know that I will never have this, and it busts me up inside.
CHAPTER 18: ALMOST KOREAN
A few years ago I discovered a lump in the middle of my back, about the size of a large gumball. It wasn’t painful; nor was it particularly uncomfortable; but it was unsightly, and it was a lump, so I thought it wise to have it looked at. I visited one of the large hospitals here in Busan and was quickly seen a by an internal medicine specialist, who informed me that I had grown a benign fatty tissue known as a lipoma. He told me that this condition was quite common and non life-threatening, but that it would be best to have it removed.
I came in the next week for surgery, which took just thirty minutes; only a local anesthetic was applied. The wound, however, took a frustratingly long time to close up, due to the stitches being removed too early by a different doctor (they were subsequently put back in). The thing became a bit of mess, frustrating my main doctor with each successive trip to the hospital. Finally, after about two weeks’ worth of visits, my doctor looked me in the eyes and said, in stilted yet competent English:
“As you may know, the white man heals much more slowly than the yellow man, because the white man has the weaker tissue.”
Weaker tissue? There he was: the picture of clinical professionalism–white coat, stethoscope around his neck, standing in front of a desk, behind which were framed several very fancy-lo
oking diplomas. This man was a medical doctor, yet was relying on some half-baked notion of eugenics to explain what was going on. Did he graduate from the Josef Mengele School of Medicine? Or was he just repeating to me what he had been taught all of his life: that the difference between Koreans and other races goes all the way to the molecular level?
A Visit to a Dead President’s Home
In May of 2009, former South Korean president Noh Mu-hyun committed suicide by jumping off a mountain behind his house, near the town of Gimhae. At the time, Noh was under investigation for corruption. Many believed that this inquiry was a politically motivated witch-hunt overseen by the new right-wing president, Lee Myung-bak. Noh came from humble beginnings and built a reputation as a human rights lawyer. He ended up succeeding Kim Dae-jung as leader of South Korea and continuing his more liberal policies, including that of rapprochement with the North. It is said that Noh took his own life to spare his family the shame and indignities that come with a full investigation. It worked: soon after his death, the lead prosecutor in the investigation resigned and all further inquiries were called off. It seems that in Korea, the authorities can be paid off in blood, especially if it’s your own.
I was shocked when I read the news of Noh’s suicide. The thought of a former American president taking his own life was and is unfathomable, yet in Korea such a thing, while upsetting for many, didn’t seem to come as a huge surprise. There is a long tradition of suicide in Korea, especially in an attempt to shield one’s family from dishonor. Both the ex-mayor of Busan and the incumbent mayor of Yangsan, along with several other nationally prominent figures, have killed themselves as a result of corruption scandals, so Noh’s death could hardly be viewed as anomaly. Still, it was big news, and it happened just an hour away from Busan.
Two days after Noh Mu-hyun’s death, my friend Big Welsh Will and I met for breakfast. It was Sunday. We had planned a motorcycle day trip, but still had no destination. So over a cup of coffee, Will suggested what I was already thinking: “Why not go to Noh Mu-Hyun’s village and check out where he killed himself? Should be an interesting scene.”