Like many elderly people in Korea, granny thinks being sent to a home is just like ‘goryeojang’, where in the old days, a child left their old parent in the mountains to die (it’s a myth that came to be believed as a historical fact). So she’s been vehemently against it, and so were her youngest daughter and son, who are ironically the least equipped to take care of granny at their places over the long term. Accordingly, after granny’s release from the hospital, her five children took turns caring for her at their respective home for a month. When it was my younger uncle’s turn, rather than taking granny to his place, he stayed with her at her apartment. After a few days, having absorbed granny’s negative energies, he came over to my apartment and disgorged those dark vibes onto me. Because granny had brainwashed him with all the fictitious accusations and vilification about my family, he was being openly disparaging towards me. I was jobless at the time but had made it to the finalists in a business incubator competition shortly before. When I mentioned it, he said, ‘Not anyone can run a successful business’ and went on to say ‘You should at least get a part-time job’. Since he himself has attempted at many different businesses without success all his life, I understand his concern. But if I were an uncle, I’d never make any discouraging or disparaging comments to my niece or anybody else for that matter, because such thoughtless remarks are disempowering, and who the fuck am I to blurt out such mindless BS to anybody? (Yes, I’m saying this indirectly to my dear uncle.) As the youngest of granny’s five children and the black sheep of the family with his immature, mischievous spirit, he had been the one who always hung out with me and my cousins, and the only one I and my cousins still use the casual/friendly way of speech to (as opposed to the polite/honorific way, since there are largely two different ways of speaking in Korean). He was someone I’d always felt had a special bond with me and my cousins, but that day, he proved to have become a ‘kkondae’ (old-fashioned and condescending boomer) and that bond has disappeared, probably for good.
Curiously, granny’s never ever mentioned anything to her other children about what my family has done for her all those years. Since my parents moved into an apartment complex right across from granny’s, she had enjoyed having three butlers always at her service. She’d call us at any hour of the day or night, complaining that her heater didn’t work or her toilet was clogged. Then mum or dad or both had to go over to her place to fix things. As for me, on top of being summoned for errands, I sometimes voluntarily bought snacks and brought them to her. And each time I started a full-time job, I made a point of giving her at least 200,000 won. But no, granny’s brain automatically deletes all of these positive experiences and only holds onto the negative ones, whilst fabricating fiction about how nasty her first-born’s whole family is. Consequently, my mum’s siblings grew to despise us, with the exception of my big uncle, who’s pretty much a male version of my mum and wouldn’t listen to granny’s nonsense just as mum wouldn’t. The funny thing is, at least two of mum’s siblings actually believed all of granny’s hogwash about my family sponging off her whilst doing nothing for her. I wonder how that was possible since they must know that granny’s only possession is the tiny apartment she’s living in, plus the monthly benefit from the government she receives as the wife of a late man of national merit, the arrangement that’d been made possible only because my dad took the initiative to apply for it for grandpa.
Similarly, granny never mentioned anything to her other children about how mum was almost exclusively summoned, often in the middle of the night, to take care of grandpa and pay for things like anaesthetic shots during his prolonged hospitalisation and multiple urgent surgeries. Grandpa and grandma imposed all filial duties on my mum or my big uncle just because mum’s the oldest and the uncle’s the first-born son. The other children were automatically exempted from such duties just because they were born later. When mum asked her female siblings for help, they invariably refused because they thought (and still think) . So mum moved mountains to take care of grandpa to the degree where it took a toll on her own health. But none of her siblings have no idea what my mum went through since granny’s never uttered a word about it. Even my big uncle and his wife hadn’t been aware of it until they talked about the matter with mum.
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