Chapter 168: Soonyoung’s Morning
Kim Soonyoung died on a Tuesday in January 2045, and the last thing she did was place the newspaper on the table.
Not Byungsoo’s table — Daniel’s table. The kitchen table in the Songdo house, where she’d been living for three years, the table where Soomin’s galbi was served and where Jihye’s doenjang jjigae was eaten and where the specific, daily rhythm of a family that contained four generations (Soonyoung, Daniel and Jihye, Soomin and Junwoo and Namu, and Bich) was performed with the patient regularity of a household that had been practicing togetherness for three decades.
The newspaper was the Chosun Ilbo. The Tuesday edition. She had carried it from the front door to the kitchen table every morning for three and a half years — the continuation of the ritual that Byungsoo had performed for fifty years and that she had maintained since his death because maintaining it was how she held him, the way the bench held depressions and the tree held rings.
She placed the newspaper on the table. Sat in her chair. The wheelchair was beside her — the specific, modern wheelchair that had replaced the first one last year, equipped with better wheels and the kind of ergonomic support that medical technology produced for elderly patients and that Soonyoung accepted with the specific, resigned tolerance of a woman who had spent her life moving under her own power and who was now being moved by something else.
She looked at the window. The January morning was cold and clear — the specific, Korean winter clarity that made everything look like crystal and that carried, in its transparency, the unspoken promise that spring was only two months away.
Jihye found her at 7:45 AM. In the chair. At the table. The newspaper placed. The window faced. The specific, peaceful expression of a woman who had finished the last task on her list — place the newspaper — and had, having finished, decided that the list was complete.
The funeral was three days. The Korean protocol. The family gathered. The food was prepared — not Soonyoung’s food, because Soonyoung’s food had died with Soonyoung’s hands years ago and what remained was Soomin’s interpretation, which was different and alive and which Soonyoung had approved with the specific, grudging endorsement that was her highest form of praise.
The house was full. Not with visitors — with family. The specific, expanded definition of family that the Cho household had developed over thirty years: blood relatives and chosen relatives and the people who had been adopted through galbi and tea and the monthly dinners and the specific, gravitational pull of a garden with a tree that held things.
Wang Lei arrived from Shenzhen. Seventy-five years old. The tremor in his hands visible, the tea he poured slightly unsteady, the specific, physical evidence of a body that was living honestly — showing its age rather than hiding it, the calligraphic principle applied to biology.
He brought tea. Not Longjing — a different tea. White tea. Bai Mudan. The gentle, floral tea that Chinese tradition prescribed for mourning, the specific, cultural language that said “this loss is felt and the feeling deserves the softest possible container.”
“Bai Mudan,” he said, placing it on the kitchen table. Beside the newspaper. Beside the chair where Soonyoung had sat. “For Soonyoung-nim. Who taught me that tea was the Chinese version of galbi and that both were love expressed through temperature and patience.”
Jimin arrived from Seoul. She brought white chrysanthemums — the same flowers she brought to every significant Cho event, the specific, botanical continuity of a woman who believed that certain flowers belonged to certain families and that the chrysanthemum belonged to the Chos because the chrysanthemum endured and the Chos endured and the association was both symbolic and true.
She placed the flowers beside the photographs. The altar — assembled in the living room with the specific, ritual precision that Korean funerals required — held photographs that spanned eighty-seven years: Soonyoung as a young woman. Soonyoung at her wedding. Soonyoung in the kitchen. Soonyoung holding Soomin at one day old. Soonyoung at the jade tree’s twenty-fifth anniversary, sitting on the bench that she had resisted for twenty-seven years and that she had finally, in the last years of her life, claimed as her own.
The last photograph was from December 2044 — one month before her death. Soonyoung on the bench, in the wheelchair, the newspaper on her lap, the jade tree’s bare winter branches above her. The photograph had been taken by Namu — not as a portrait but as an observation, the specific, nineteen-year-old practice of documenting the garden that he’d been documenting since he was old enough to hold a phone. In the photograph, Soonyoung was not looking at the camera. She was looking at the tree. The specific, settled gaze of a woman who had spent three years sitting under a tree she’d wanted to prune for twenty-seven years and who had found, in the sitting, the thing she hadn’t known she was looking for.
“She looks peaceful,” Jimin said, looking at the photograph.
“She was arguing with the tree,” Namu said. He was standing beside the altar — the specific, quiet presence of a grandson who had spent three years sitting beside his grandmother on the bench and who understood her better than anyone except Byungsoo, because the understanding required only sitting and sitting was what Namu did. “She argued with the tree every morning. Not out loud — in her head. She told me once. She said, ‘The tree is too tall. It blocks the morning light. Your grandfather wouldn’t have let it get this tall.’ And then she’d sit under it for an hour because the shade was better than the sun.”
“She argued with the tree and then sat in its shade.”
“That’s how Halmeoni loved things. She argued with them first. Then she stayed.” He looked at the photograph. “She stayed with Haraboji for fifty-three years. She stayed with this family for sixty years. She stayed with the tree for three years. The arguing was the surface. The staying was the truth.”
Soonyoung was buried beside Byungsoo. The Incheon family cemetery. The hillside overlooking the Yellow Sea. The same view that Byungsoo had looked at from the fishing beach and that would now hold both of them — the quiet man and the loud woman, the newspaper reader and the galbi maker, the Cho marriage that had lasted fifty-three years in life and that would last, in the earth of a hillside above the sea, for as long as the earth held.
Daniel spoke at the burial. More than three sentences — the Cho protocol, expanded for the woman who had exceeded every Cho protocol for sixty years and who deserved, in return, an expansion.
“My mother fed people. For sixty years. Through financial crises and pandemics and birthdays and funerals and ordinary Tuesdays that she considered important because all Tuesdays were important. She fed us galbi and kimchi and doenjang jjigae and the specific, relentless, non-negotiable love that Korean mothers expressed through protein and fermentation.”
He paused. The hillside was cold. The January wind came off the Yellow Sea with the specific, salt-carrying force that Korean winters produced and that made the mourners’ coats flap and the flowers’ petals tremble.
“She argued with everything. The tree. The doctors. The wheelchair. The idea that the galbi recipe should change. The concept that the newspaper should go unread. The suggestion that she couldn’t manage a multi-city galbi delivery network from a wheelchair with neuropathic hands.” He paused again. “She argued because arguing was how she engaged with the world. The arguing was never hostility. It was attention. She argued with the things she loved because the arguing kept her connected to them — the way a hand on a steering wheel keeps you connected to the road.”
He looked at the earth that held his parents. Both of them. Together. The specific, final proximity that marriage achieved in the Korean cemetery — the side-by-side burial, the shared hillside, the permanent, physical expression of a partnership that had been defined by two chairs, a table, a window, and the specific, wordless understanding that being there was the highest form of love.
“She taught Soomin the galbi. Not just the recipe — the principle. The principle that feeding people is how you say ‘I love you’ when the words are too difficult or too Korean or too Cho to speak.” He looked at Soomin, who was holding Bich, who was twenty-one months old and who was looking at the sky with the unfocused intensity that toddlers applied to everything. “The galbi continues. Through Soomin’s hands. Into Bich’s generation. The recipe changes with each pair of hands — Soomin’s galbi is not Soonyoung’s, and Bich’s will not be Soomin’s. But the principle is the same. Feed the people you love. Feed them until they’re full. And then feed them more.”
That evening, Daniel sat on the bench. Under the tree. In the January dark.
The garden was quiet. The house was full — the family was inside, the three-day mourning period continuing, the food being served (Soomin’s galbi, the specific, transferred version that Soonyoung had declared “acceptable” and that was now, in Soonyoung’s absence, the only version that existed).
Two parents gone. Both buried on the same hillside. Both present in the garden — Byungsoo in the persimmon wood buried at the tree’s base, Soonyoung in the newspaper that still lay on the kitchen table because nobody had moved it and because moving it felt like ending something that shouldn’t end.
Daniel put his hand on the trunk. Cold bark. January texture. The tree in winter — bare, honest, the specific, stripped architecture that revealed the structure beneath the beauty.
“Both of them now,” he said. To the tree. To the air. To the specific, believed-in presence that he felt in the garden when the day was over and the sitting was the only activity that remained. “Both gone. The quiet one and the loud one. The fisherman and the cook. The man who sat and the woman who fed.”
The tree held the January wind. The branches moved — the skeletal, leafless motion that winter produced, the specific sound of wood against air that was not language but that served, for a man who had been talking to a tree for thirty years, as the closest thing to a response that nature offered.
“The newspaper is on the table. I don’t know what to do with it. Throw it away seems wrong. Keep it seems impossible — newspapers are daily, and daily things need to be replaced or they become monuments, and she wouldn’t have wanted a monument. She wanted a newspaper. Fresh. Every morning. Placed on the table. Read or unread, it didn’t matter. The placing was the thing.”
He was quiet. The garden was quiet. The January night was the specific, deep Korean cold that made the silence seem thicker, as if the cold itself was absorbing sound and leaving only the essential — the breath, the heartbeat, the slow, invisible growth of a tree that didn’t know it was winter and grew anyway.
“I’ll keep placing it,” he said. “Every morning. The newspaper on the table. Not for you, Umma. For the placing. Because the placing was the conversation you had with Appa and the conversation didn’t stop when you did. The conversation continues. With me. With the table. With the newspaper that nobody reads but that sits there anyway because sitting is what Cho family things do.”
He stood. Walked inside. The house was warm. The mourners were eating. The galbi was Soomin’s. The tea was Jihye’s. The silence was Namu’s. The arguments were… nobody’s. The arguments had belonged to Soonyoung and only Soonyoung, and without her the house was quieter in the specific, noticeable way that houses were quieter when the person who had filled them with noise was gone.
The next morning, Daniel placed the newspaper on the table. The Chosun Ilbo. The Wednesday edition. He placed it in the spot where Soonyoung had placed it, with the same orientation, the same position relative to the edge of the table.
He did not read it. He placed it. And the placing was the conversation. And the conversation continued.
Every morning. For the rest of his life.
The way the tree grew. The way the bench held. The way the newspaper sat.
The ordinary rituals of a family that had learned, through two lifetimes and thirty years and the specific, accumulated wisdom of parents who had been present and then absent, that the most important things were not the things you did.
They were the things you continued.