memories

I don't regret coming here. I actually consider coming here to be one of the best decisions I've ever made. I've made great friends here, had enjoyable experiences, and paid off a lot of student debt. Coming here also validated me going to college. If I hadn't gone to college, I couldn't have come here. Simply by being here I'm putting my degree to good use.

That's not to say that there hasn't been a downside to coming here. I'm not a kid anymore; I'm at a point in my life when things change and people get older. If you read this it means that you're a friend of mine, so you know that my dad died during my first year here. However, last year, whilst in Gwangju, my grandmother on my father's side died as well. She was a great lady, a monarch in her own right. She died just before I came home, and I didn't receive the news of it until I'd come home. A couple of months ago my grandfather on my mother's side passed away. He was a great man.

So I've lost people since I've been here, and while I've been here. It's strange, because while I'm here they aren't supposed to be here. Because home is so far away, there's a part of me that is used to not having them around. I can kinda trick myself into thinking that since I didn't take them here with me, they are still where I left them. But I can still remember vividly the last time I saw each of them, and I remember thinking at each moment that it was entirely possible that it would be the last time I saw them.

Sometimes I wish I'd never come here, that I would've stayed home and found some job there. But those three people would've still died. I'd have a few more memories of each of them, but they'd still just be memories.

I received a card in the mail today at work from my grandma. It was postmarked March 22, shortly after my grandpa died. It took so long to get here because she didn't write the country of its destination on it, just the city of Daejeon. In it she told me that my grandpa was thinking of my brothers and me while on his deathbed, and that he loved me. It made me sad, and it made me smile. She said that my grandpa, like my dad, was no longer confined to his sick body, and that they were together up there in heaven. After I read it I put it in my desk drawer underneath some work papers. Then I started teaching Korean children how to speak English, imagining all my loved ones were right where I'd left them.