In my 40s, I found myself with a life that didn’t look like it was ‘supposed’ to. What was I doing? On trips to South Korea with my mother, an answer began to emerge
A few years ago, my mom’s brother in South Korea announced that he would be getting rid of their parents’ graves. My grandparents had been buried separately, and this uncle and his wife were their keepers. They made several annual visits to the burial mounds (endless gridlock) and prepared Buddhist ceremonies at home (endless cooking and cleaning). Now that they were in their mid-60s and their grown children were unlikely to carry on any of these rituals, they wanted out.
They set a date to exhume my grandparents’ bodies, cremate their remains and say goodbye again. My mom wasn’t happy about this, but she had no real say. She’d surrendered her rights when she moved to the US.