My Father and His Return to WE/HERE/NOW
My loving father passed on Oct. 10, 2020 in South Korea. It feels like a big portion of my core is torn away. In memories and sorrows, I thank him for his love for me, comfort him for the pains and sufferings his life caused, and celebrate the gift of himself to the world. I unite with him in spirit, as he has embarked his eternal journey of being beyond the visible world. I send him off to WE/HERE/NOW in a traditional Magoist Korean way, which I have encountered through my research. He seems gone from the physical world but is fully HERE/NOW with All in WE, the Mother World!
My task is to pave his way as much as possible. So I begin with a little about the life he had in this fragile visible world:
Hwang Jong-Hwan (黃鍾煥 July 31 or July 2 on Lunar, 1935-October 10, 2020) was a gifted man, a proud father, and a devoted husband. His name Jong-Hwan, which means the Splendid Bell, was given by his father according to the naming custom of the Hwang clan. His childhood name was Yong-Hwan (the Splendid Dragon). Born and grew up under the Japanese colonial rule, survived the Korean War, and endured the harsh reality of modern Korea’s economic re-building in the 1960s and 1970s. He was the first of four siblings (three sons and one daughter). He was born as the promising son of a self-made businessman (my grandfather) who owned a bike store (sales and repairs) in a historical township, Seonsan in North Gyeongsang Province. However, his happy childhood could not last long. His father’s sudden death (my father was seven-year old) left his wife and children unprotected and in poverty. As his mother (my grandmother) returned to her in-law’s village (I was born there too) with her children and lived as a farmer in the household of her mother-in-law, he grew up as the young widow’s oldest son. Wasn’t able to pursue his educational dream beyond primary school, which hit him hard throughout his life. He kept a drawing journal with a beautiful color drawing (the moon, the village surrounding, and the hind view of a lady with a long braided hair dangling on her back dressed in Korean traditional clothes depicted in a pastel tone, as I recall; its serenity and beauty mesmerized me as a child) and poetic verses during his youth years and carried it with him until his 30s, a book which his children were able to see. In fact, that may have been my first book to read. He was an artist and a poet, I gather now.
Married a woman (my mother) from a well-off family in the same village. My maternal great-grandfather had chosen him for his granddaughter (my mother). He was 6 years older than her. They had three children (a daughter and two sons). Together with his wife and with the support of his in-laws family, he began as a vendor in Seoul to support his family but was not successful at all. That made my mother stronger. He was supportive of his wife and later opened a grocery store, owned a family tailor shop making himself a tailor, and conducted clothing business on and off. He was gifted in repairing household appliances and enjoyed providing his family with external wound care. He even enjoyed cooking for the family especially during family trips in nature. He designed and built a two-story family home in his 50s. He lived frugally and diligently so that they (my parents) could put their three children through prestigious private universities. Two of them achieved a doctoral degree and beyond. He was very proud of his children and enjoyed their successes on many levels.
Loved traveling nationwide and listening to songs. Liked many things among which are gardening, biking, and outdoor-exploring. He held the city’s chess championship and continued to enjoy watching and playing chess matches till his last year. He was diagnosed with kidney failure in his 60s and under dialysis for 16 years. He endured it with an amazing spirit and tenacity for which we, his family, admired and respected him. He had undergone a series of near death crises over the years. Each time he returned with his mind intact and with his body functional. I called him the phoenix. We in our family knew that the farewell was approaching but did not know how soon. He left the visible world at 4:52 AM on Saturday October 10. On the same day, his body was moved to another hospital for the funeral. My mother had hoped to bury him so my brothers honored her wish. Survived by his spouse, three children, and three grandchildren as well as his brothers and their in-laws. We who are his family, relatives, and have known him are grateful for his life of caring, enduring, and giving. His funeral organized by my younger brother’s family was attended by many under the courteous observance of the Covid19 order.
Through the passing of my father, our family members bonded anew and exchanged one another heartfelt sorrows and encouragements, a huge comfort for me. I could not but thank my brothers and their families for I wasn’t there at all physically. And I couldn’t contribute to the expense monetarily. Everyone in the family knows my lifestyle, which barely makes my own living, while leading the life that I am called to. Alas, I am broken-hearted by not being able to see him in his last days and moments. It seems a bit too late to realize that I have taken his love for granted. I, his first and only daughter, am indebted for his love and the love of my family members. I take comfort in the fact that my brothers have been good to him and my mother. I am grateful for my brothers to take care of my ill father and his funeral in a meaningful manner. I love and admire my mother who has unfailingly loved and cared for him.
I missed his funeral as well, a misfortune from which I had wished to be spared. I wasn’t able to travel to Korea to attend the funeral due to the Covid19 pandemic restrictions. That was something that I wasn’t prepared for. Nor was possible my annual visit to Korea this year. The pandemic intercepted an otherwise opportunity for me to tell my father that his love shaped me. I usually visit Korea annually during which I conduct a 2 week-long Mago Pilgrimage with participants. Then I stay in their apartment as many days as possible, with the hope to make up for my previously unavailable days to them because of being away from home. I left Korea in 1989.
I had been a member of Maryknoll Sisters, a U.S.-based Catholic overseas missionary organization, in the late 1980s and early 1990s. My father granted me to join Maryknoll Sisters, which meant that his daughter would live her entire life overseas. I was about 24. He knew that nothing could stop me from the course of my life. So he and my mother accepted my decision. One of the things that I dreaded during my overseas missionary years was a probability of not making myself present at the time of a critical illness or a deathbed of my parents. Because I withdrew from Maryknoll Sisters in 1994, I thought I did not have to worry about such scenario. However, the Covid19 actualized my nightmare. As a matter of fact, none of my family was present at his deathbed. No physical visit by anyone to him was allowed. A doctor and two nurses were there, I was told. So he went alone.
That said, I was spared from a total devastation of not being able to speak with him by phone. My father had been hospitalized some days prior. When I called the head nurse of the hospital, she asked me if I wanted to have a video conversation with him. “Of course, I do,” I said. Only then did I learn that Koreans could have a video talk on their cellular phones! But it was not possible through my U.S. phone. So I contacted my youngest brother who had arrived in Korea from abroad and was under a 14 day quarantine. He had the opportunity to speak with him through a video phone. And he immediately sent me some photos cropped out of the video clipping. No sooner had I seen some snapshots of my father than I called him. He was able to hear me and responded to me in a cognitive way. I said, “I love you very much. Thank you.” He responded “Uh.” I repeated the same phrases and he said “Uh” for the second time. When I said the same the third time, the nurse answered that it was too draining for my father to continue the conversation. He had been under the ventilator. I knew “Uh” meant “Me too.” That was what he used to reply to me, when I said the same in person or over the phone. In about five hours, he decided to go. Then he was unconscious for nine hours thereafter. The doctor and nurses could not bring his breathing back.
Only after I lost him, could I see how deeply he was in me. As a feminist in my 30s and 40s, I was angry at almost everything other than myself for many years. For a radical feminist who I was, a loving father was a questionable subject and never a priority. I supported my mother consciously and purposely, which made him feel neglected by me. I spent years to reflect my mother’s influence on my life. I praised my grandmothers. One day I dared to confront him by asking, “Did you cry when my grandmother (his mother) died?” My beloved grandmother had passed about two decades ago, while I was away from home. “Are you serious? Of course I did,” answered he. He was pissed off by my question but did not say further. His reply melted my heart. I was relieved with his reply and was a bit ashamed of myself. Because he used to be a man of few words and emotionally withdrawn, I wasn’t sure if he loved his mother. Despite all, the fact that I was my father’s beloved daughter did not change. Through my mother, I learned that he carried my university graduation photo in his wallet together with her photo. He was so proud of me. I was the first one who not only completed the university education in the family but also went overseas and achieved a doctoral degree. Foremost, my father trusted in what I was doing as a scholar and a writer. He seemed to know that I was an idealist just like himself.
Naturally and gradually I was being transformed from a feminist to a Magoist. Put differently, I was able to become a Magoist because I was a radical feminist. My research on Magoism was guiding me to another realm of awareness. As a Magoist, I was able to accept my loving father. I was able to understand the Mother Mind without being a biological mother. Of course, both men and women are the children of the Great Mother! But I did not have much time to let him know that I love him very much as well and am grateful for his love. I said these words, “I love you very much. Thank you!,” to him increasingly in recent years.
After his death, the funeral took place in 3 days. That was too soon for me to process the loss of him. I did not say goodbye to him yet. By not being there physically, however, I was able to pace myself in responding to his death. On October 18, 2020, the ninth day of his death, I commemorated him here in Lytle Creek, California USA. The virtual event of seeing-off and meeting him anew has not been completed yet. My mind is led to the deep in raw emotions and memories, as I am forming my questions to delve into some answers to them: What does it mean that I embrace his life and unite with him on his journey to WE/HERE/NOW? How has his love shaped the person who I am, the seeker of the Mago Way? What is his influence on me and my advocacy of Magoism? How did Korean Magoist culture shape him? What does it mean that he accepted or refused certain things about traditional Korean customs? What does his life inform me of the central features of Korean Magoism? What do his propensities tell me about traditional Korean Magoists? How do I decipher the message of my father’s life and death for the world today? The path I have taken is not just my way. It has been his path too because I am part of his dream.
Lo and behold! I was researching about the whale-back riding journey or the journey to the underworld, for the last couple of years. Traditionally, Magoist East Asians have believed that the dead are on the whale-back riding journey to the Abode of Mago, the Great Mother, in the northern center of the universe. The Abode of Mago in the northern center of the universe does NOT mean to indicate that the underworld journey is far and away. The Northern Center of the Universe is an indicator of the cosmogonic reality of WE/HERE/NOW. The Northern Center of the Universe, the Womb/Tomb of the Great Mother, is not another world. But OUR WORLD is one big reality that includes the far away center of the universe! Through the dead, we are summoned to the Mother World. He has completed his own circle of being in a visible life and is now summoned to be WE/HERE/NOW. My father’s whale-back riding journey is the guiding light for me. My inner world is being expanded and unfolding.
(To be continued)