One day, Halmuni walked into a temple. From decades of Christianity, she chose Buddhism from that day on. The people at church say they’re good Christians, but not really. Their actions said otherwise. This is a running streak in our family, a bristle at inauthenticity.
I asked her in later years what there was to know about Buddhism. I cannot explain it to you. She paused, searching. The Buddha is very old. After a few rounds of asking the same question in a different way, we reached the end of that conversation for the day.
As we moved Haba and Halmuni into their penultimate apartment, we unpacked the ornaments and pieces that might make their new place feel closer to home. We placed a glazen Buddha on her shelf, its palm up in the mudra of teaching. She gifted me another Buddha head dusted lavender grey, saying she didn’t need so many things. The order of their belongings and mementos shrank with each move, and those were many.
She was not so sentimental, sometimes tossing the tchotchkes we brought her on our travels: a beaded bird from Holbox, a carved wooden turtle from Jaipur. Mom rescued some trinkets if she arrived in time to detect the discarded act. One day last summer, she found the rest of Haba’s clothes in the kitchen trash bin, overflowing. It was a gesture of mourning and of practicality — seeing his belongings on the other side of the room continued to sadden her, a reminder that he was gone, that she was lonely.
On the 8th day after her passing, I woke in the early morning hours and could not go back to sleep. It was not very explainable — of all mornings, I had gotten the least amount of rest the night prior, as we woke early to visit the temple for Halmuni’s 7th day ceremony. Only with a bit of lucidity did I realize that these hours marked a full week since her last night on this earth — the hours of awakeness I had wished for, only 7 days too late.
I spent those 7 days mostly in silence — phone off, lighting a prayer and meditating each day. The dailiness of a modern environment, its distractions and chores and the constancy of it all, felt maddening and inescapable. It made me want to wish myself to a place where it could all melt away.
Somewhere in the passing of those early morning hours, I gave myself some permission to return to my ego. I had been struggling in a limbo, somewhere between meditation and prayer. Acceptance and grief felt at odds with each other, and I was caught in between.
I found myself wanting to sweat, to return to the temazcal. It seems there is a parallel tradition in the Korean hanjeungmak — saunas historically fashioned from burning pine and domes of stone, and maintained by Buddhist monks. The outpost of the tradition today has evidently been converted into the Korean spa.
We settle for searching for the sole Korean bathhouse in the Vegas area, a sister location to the one located in Fullerton, and drive the 12 miles up to Flamingo on Friday early evening. The baths are lukewarm, and the only other visitors are tourists passing time after a hotel check-out off the Strip. But there is a room with wood benches and a small portal, puffing the room full of pine. I enter, and place myself directly in front of the steam.
My mother’s brother passed away in 2009 with lung cancer. My last memory of him is from a family reunion in Huntingdon Beach, the first and only one in my lifetime. The adults must have known this was coming, planned it so we could all be together at least once. It was a significant occasion, not least because it is the trip where an ocean wave tipped me over and dislocated my knee. My Uncle Chuck was the one to get me, running into the waves and scooping me up so we could return to shore. An ER visit later, my knee remained swollen to the size of a coconut for the rest of the day.
He passed away in Honolulu, where he and his family were living at the time. The immediate family traveled to be there for the days leading up and following. Halmuni was in anguish. Charlie was cherished, the apple of her eye. His death cast her deeper into a lifelong depression. It muted her. She emerged, never the same.
Halmuni swore to stay the 49 days following at the temple in Palolo Valley, named Mu-Ryang-Sa for its broken ridge. It was an old tradition, where one stayed and prayed for the safe passage of their loved one across their 49 day journey to the beyond.
I later learn that she broke all the rules during her stay, requesting the family bring her rations of Lay’s potato chips and original Coca-Cola, full sugar. She was given a grand beautiful room for the duration of her visit, and she filled it each day with curls of cigarette smoke. When they picked her up at the close of the 49 days, her first demand was for meat. They went for hamburgers, and she complained of the trials of beansprouts and a vegetarian diet on one’s digestion.
In the days of her transitioning, it occurred to me to begin preparing as if for ceremony: no caffeine, no alcohol, no meat. I began to wonder if I could, if I should, carry out the 49 days for her, just as she had done for Uncle Chuck. It felt both jinx to think ahead, and necessary to manifest the option. I decided to wait until I could consult with the monk. It had been over a year since we had last seen her, when she performed the 49th day ceremony for Haba last spring. I texted her on a Sunday asking if she would visit Halmuni, and she agreed to come that same week.
There is a memory of me at about one year old, walking with Halmuni to a temple for the first time. We walked beneath the rooftop’s wings and stood on the temple’s stone platform. It overlooked what felt like a vast lookout at the top of the hill, sloping into winding trees.
Mom recalls she served as the designated driver that day, though she can’t remember if I was there, or if I have simply merged this story with another memory. It was in 1994 when news spread throughout the Korean temple community. A temple in the Jogye order had been erected in the mountains of Tehachapi, California, and was now open for visiting. Mom recounts waiting in the car as Haba and Halmuni offered their respects — a short while until they said, gaja. Let’s go.
I hear this word for the first in a long time at Haba’s viewing at the crematory. Halmuni shuffles to Haba, holds his hand. He’s so cold. Like ice. She pauses. The suit you picked out is very nice. Pause. When they gonna cremanate him? Mom clarifies that they are waiting for the permits, that it won’t be today. Gaja. Let’s go.
It is for Haba’s 49th day ceremony that we get in touch with the temple in Tehachapi again. With some Googling in the immediate days of his passing, searching for Korean or Korean Buddhist temple options had drawn up empty. Mom found a Thai temple in the Vegas area willing to perform the 7 day ceremony. They bring me for a visit a few days later once I’ve landed off a plane. The monks are hospitable, they say we can come sit for prayer anytime. They guide us into the hallway connecting the main hall and the backrooms, and we talk at the mouth of a kitchen. A shadow shimmers behind me.
The visit ends with me inevitably in tears, wanting Haba to have a tradition closer to his own for the 49th day. My Google searching similarly draws up blanks. From somewhere, comes the memory of the temple in Tehachapi. I wonder if we can find it, if it’s still there. I find the website and phone number online — all in Korean, but evidently still operating. A woman picks up on the first ring.
Do Gyeom Sunim recalls this during our last meal together, on our fifth day at the temple. She had prepared doenjang jjigae for us, our first meal upon arrival and now our last lunch together.
One or two years ago — you called me? I nod, yes. My answer comes quickly, perhaps more than she or my mother expected. I was surprised that she remembered and connected the dots herself. Then again, perhaps there are not too many second-generation grandchildren with an American accent, cold calling to find a temple for the 49th day.
Yesterday was the 100th day since Halmuni passed from this earth.
They say there is a window of 49 days for a soul to pass through, from this life into the beyond. Some families observe for more, and some souls move with less. I feel that Halmuni may have moved on quickly. Perhaps even before the 7th day, she was gone. In her final moments, tears streamed like I’ve never seen. Those last days in limbo, caught between here and the world of spirit and memory, were maybe enough of a plunge into the past — that she had had enough, that she was ready. Gaja. Let’s go. Like a flame dissolved to smoke.
Over the past years, she would occasionally lapse back into Korean, sometimes with no distinguishment between English, Korean, and Japanese. We had always spoken with her in English, and this served a mild slap to reality. I now wonder what she simply did not express to us, because of what the language could not hold.
Perhaps this has been part of the devastation — a fear that in this last and crucial window, we could not meet her in her chosen tradition. A final blow to all that we could not ask, could not understand, would never know.
In her lifetime, she chose her country, her marriage, her faith, her name. She traveled alone the distance from Seoul to the Midwest; she left a good-for-nothing marriage behind. She crossed out the names that didn’t suit her, made a fire in the backyard and burned photos of a life that was no longer hers. One day, she walked off the streets of Los Angeles and into a temple. She chose it as her own.
Across these 49 days, I am coming to understand that what she gave us is not an inheritance of tradition, but the inheritance to choose. It is the gift that we make this life — we decide what we carry with us and what we leave behind.
I am still choosing how I remember, and in what I believe. There is so much that cannot fit in small spaces. But for these 100 days and more, I am choosing to write.
Halmuni, we love you forever. May you be safe, happy, healthy, and free.
Chung Cha Park, 1932–2023
