The coffin was brought back to our house. Friends and neighbors placed offerings—sticky rice cakes, bowls of grains, and rice wine—on the altar. My mother and father’s marriage photo held the center spot. She was pretty when she was young—long before the sun, wind, salt water, worry, and responsibility had creased her face and turned it the color of saddle leather. But all I could think about was how she must look now: tinted permanently blue from the chill of the sea and iciness of death.
Mi-ja sat with me on the floor just before the altar, her right knee touching my left knee, as our neighbors offered their condolences and respects. When the coffin was lifted again, Mi-ja accompanied my family to the field the geomancer had told Father would make a propitious burial site for Mother. It was surrounded by stone walls to keep the wind from washing over her and animals from walking on her. Mi-ja stood by my side when the grave was dug. Together we watched as food was distributed first to the older men, then the younger men, then the little boys. Next came women, from old to young. Mi-ja, Yu-ri, and I barely got anything to eat. Some girls, Little Sister included, received nothing, which caused some of the haenyeo to shout in their loud ocean voices that it wasn’t fair. But what about death is fair? Mother was lowered into the ground in a position in harmony with the land itself, then some men helped position a stone carved with her name atop the grave. Forever after, I would come here to remember my mother, weep for her, and place offerings in thanks for bringing me into this life.
“You see?” Mi-ja whispered. “She’ll always be protected by the stone walls that surround us. You’ll always find her here.” She gave me a gentle smile. “Every March we’ll go to the mountains to pick bracken to give as an offering.”
After bracken is picked nine times, it will sprout again. The saying Fall down eight times, stand up nine reminds us of this and symbolizes the wish for the dead to pave the way for future generations. We would have many opportunities throughout the year to make different types of offerings, but later that day, after a permanent memorial altar with a spirit tablet for my mother had been set up in our home, Mi-ja was the first to place a tangerine on the table. When I think of the money she must have spent on that . . .
That night, Mi-ja lay next to me on my mat and comforted me as I cried. “You’re not alone. You’ll never be alone. You’ll always have me.” These three sentences she repeated until they became a mesmerizing rhythm in my head.
But my mother’s journey was not yet complete. Over two days of twelve hours each, Shaman Kim performed a special no-soul ritual for the haenyeo collective to cleanse the spirit of my mother and guide her peacefully to the land of the dead. In addition, the shaman would attend to the living, because so many of us had been touched intimately by Mother’s death: I, for witnessing it; Do-saeng and Mi-ja, for being the vehicles that caused my mother to decide to help me get my first abalone that day; the other haenyeo, who helped free her and bring her to shore. The shock we’d experienced caused us all to be affected by soul loss.
The ceremony was held in an old shrine tucked inside a natural outcropping of stones on the shore. Women and girls came from neighboring villages, bringing vessels of cooked fish, rice, eggs, and liquor, which they placed on the makeshift altar next to a photo of Mother. It was not from her wedding day but was a more recent one showing her and a dozen of her classmates posed before the Hado Night School. To honor her diving partner, Do-saeng had her son write messages on white paper ribbons, which fluttered festively in the wind. This was not the only touch of liveliness. Even though it was a sad occasion, Shaman Kim brought with her rainbows of color and a cacophony of sound. Her hanbok was sewn in great bands of magenta, yellow, and blue. She twirled red tassels. Two assistants clanged cymbals, while another three beat drums. All this was accompanied by wailing and crying. Soon we were a mass of bodies swaying in dance. Then we began to raise our voices in prayer and song.
As the sun set, we walked to the water’s edge, where Shaman Kim made offerings to the sea gods. “Release Sun-sil’s spirit,” she entreated. “Let her come back with me.” She tossed one end of a long piece of white cloth into the waves, then slowly hauled it in, bringing my mother’s spirit with it.
The next morning, the winds were violent, making it impossible to keep the candles lit. Today would be about release: for my mother to be released from this plane and for us to be released from our links to her and from our torments. We began with the same pattern of weeping, wailing, dancing, and chanting, until Shaman Kim finally asked us to sit. Around me, I saw faces filled with sadness but also excitement.
“I greet all goddesses,” Shaman Kim declared. “You, esteemed ones, are welcome here. Please know every woman in Sun-sil’s collective has been touched by misery. We must heal those most in need. The spirits ask Sun-sil’s eldest daughter, mother-in-law, Do-saeng, and Mi-ja to kneel before me.”
The four of us did as we were told, bowing three times to the altar. Shaman Kim began with my grandmother, gently touching her chest with a tassel. “You were a good mother-in-law. You were kind. You never complained about Sun-sil.”
The mourners crooned appreciatively at these compliments.
Shaman Kim’s tassel came to rest on Mi-ja’s chest. “Do not condemn yourself for being sick that day. Fate and destiny took Sun-sil from this world.” At these words, Mi-ja sobbed. I’d been so consumed by my own sorrow, I hadn’t realized how Mi-ja might feel.
“She was the only mother I ever knew,” Mi-ja choked out.
Next came Do-saeng . . .
Hearing Shaman Kim console Do-saeng was perhaps the hardest part of the ceremony. She had already lost the lively daughter she had once known, and now her closest friend was gone. Shaman Kim used knives strung with long white ribbons to cut the negativity that surrounded Do-saeng. “Take away this woman’s shock and sorrow. Let the collective elect her as its new chief. May she lead her sea women with wisdom and caution. Please allow no more tragedies to befall this group.”
Finally, Shaman Kim turned to me. The touch of her fingers along my spine caused my back to relax. Her forefinger tapping my forehead opened my mind. The swish of the tassel across my chest exposed the depth of my anguish. “Let us repair this girl’s spirit,” she said. “Let her fly from grief.” Then she shifted away from me, directing her attention to the Afterworld. “I call upon the Dragon Sea God to bring Sun-sil’s spirit to us one last time.”
Before my eyes Shaman Kim opened her heart completely, and I heard my mother’s voice speak of her life, as was customary. “When I was twenty, I was matched in marriage. This was the same year of the cholera epidemic that killed my mother, father, brothers, and sister. I was an orphan and a wife. My marriage was not particularly harmonious or inharmonious. Then I became a mother.”
I needed Mother to say I wasn’t at fault. I needed her to tell me to be strong. I needed advice on how to care for my brothers and sister. I needed special messages of love for me alone, but spirits are under no obligation to say or do what we want. They are in the Afterworld now and have their own entitlements. It’s up to us to read the deeper meaning.
The shaman’s voice rose. Hairs prickled on the back of my neck as I was enveloped in love. “My life has been in the sea, but my heart has been with my daughters. I love my oldest daughter for her courage. I love my youngest daughter for the sound of her laughter. I will miss them in the coldness of black death.”
With that, Shaman Kim came out of her trance. It was time for more singing and dancing. Then we shared a meal from the sea—slivers of octopus, sea urchin roe, slices of raw fish. My mother had died in the sea, but we could never forget that it gave us life.
That night, Mi-ja stayed with me again, curling her body around mine. “Every year you will mourn a little less and release a little more,” she whispered in my ear. “In time, your sadness will melt away like seafoam.”
I nodded as though I understood, but her words offered little comfort when I knew she had never freed herself of the grief she felt for the loss of her own mother and father.
* * *