korea day 2.

In the morning I went out to the cafe on our floor and sat facing the windows that overlooked the city. I ate a brioche with a bit of butter and some strange cured buffalo meat. The morning had not broken yet so everything was quiet and muted - the cappucino makers hummed a lively tune and as I spread a pat of butter on my brioche and absentmindedly looked across the river towards the high tech part of Seoul.

We went to see my Grandfather in the hospital. He was recovering from a stroke and had been moved to a recovery hospital. The train station was a bustling mess and at first I was a bit confused by all the people walking around, everyone with shiny black hair and clothes that leaped off the front page of an H&M catalogue. Apparently, style does not come hand in hand with burgeoning wealth. There were full length mirrors all over the station and wherever I looked I saw girls fixing their hair or their outfits, staring with hard bored glances towards themselves. It made me feel a little sad to be there, a little embarassed to know that I could have been the same way. Thank God I was not.

The train ride was long and I fell asleep on our way to the small town in which my Grandfather was staying. I woke a few times to the sound of raucous laughter, to someone singing amazing grace in korean, and to the flashes of light off of mirrored buildings, sheathed in glass. It was a desperate thing to wake up to and I immediately sought the comfort of sleep afterwards.

The town that we stopped in was a strange mix of suburban and urban, of european and american styles in architecture. We took a taxi to the hospital and asked around to find the right building. We entered my grandfather's room to find that he was not there - it was a large room with six beds, and three were occupied by people whose grip on this world was tenuous to say the least. It was a terrifying thing and I was scared of the sick, immediately feeling terrible about being scared in the first place.

The hospital was grungy and small, not like the one where my grandfather was placed initially. This was a hospital for physical therapy and recovery - the worst had passed, and the long road to recovery was just beginning. At least, that was the sentiment which was not mirrored in the dirty floor, the lackluster service, the smell of preservation and forced cleanliness. This was the last station before death and the doors were not going to open. I was nauseated, and felt a chill roll through my body. I did not want to be here, not in this place where life was already spent, and no-one would understand what I was saying.

We went downstairs to the physical therapy ward and I finally saw my Grandfather. It was a strange moment- I have never been able to speak to him because I do not speak Korean and I never learned, and he does not speak English. Yet we have always had a very strong bond - one forged by blood, and by the similarities in our character. He was the one who taught me zippo tricks when I was fifteen or so, standing behind his house overlooking his farm, showing me how to light the zippo in a variety of ways until my mother stopped him. He looked up at us and for a moment I was afraid he would not know what I was, he would not recognize me. Instead he reached out his one good hand and I gripped it in mine. We stood like that for a few minutes while people talked, and I felt the beat of his pulse through his small and leathery fingers. The sun stood through the window and peered across a mountain range somewhere, and I felt the same way.

We left the physical therapy area and went back upstairs to wait. I sat next to my Grandfather's bed and looked at all the different things placed around him - teas and decaffeinated coffees, humidifiers, etc. Across the room a man vomited in pain and began to weep softly, a thin humming moan escaping from his mouth. I stood up and felt sea green, and walked outside where I ran into my cousin, literally. She is a middleschooler but taller than me - 5'11 or so. It was difficult to imagine that we were related.

When my Grandfather was wheeled back into his room a large group of our family was waiting. I had never really spent time with anyone outside of my immediate family before, and I was to learn why later in the day. My family history is complicated, and everything hangs upon the fact that my Grandfather is wealthy as hell. His farm and various properties are valued somewhere in the range of fifteen million, and all the heirs in Korea are fighting over the money like dogs. My family declined to be considered in the inheritance - why should we be when we don't even live in Korea? My father was proud the day that he decided that we would refuse anything, hoping that it would be a solution to bring together the other members of his family, his brothers and sisters. It did not work. Greed is a terrible thing, and as my father told me the backstory behind ths, I could see the pain that this caused him in the way he looked off to the side, as if seeing an old friend from a sepia toned memory. I did not ask him more, I simply sat by my grandfather and held his paralyzed hand, where fingertips flexed quietly.