Death Practice (1)
By Lee Gyeong-sin
Published: October, 15, 2012
Translated by Lee Mi-kyeong
Editor’s note: This article is the start of a new series
about “Death Practice” by Lee Gyeong-sin, who wrote the “Library Outing,” and
“Philosophy in Daily Life” series for Ilda. Now she is exploring the
possibility of good death in a medically-advanced society, and wants to share
her ideas about what is aging well and dying well with Ilda’s readers.
 |
| The cemetery we visited in Paris © Lee Gyeong-sin |
It was the day when I went to Emmaus to buy dishware
cheaply. It was an afternoon full of the happiness of a trivial thing in daily
life, since I had gotten it for cheaper prices than the low-quality new dishes
at supermarkets or old ones at flea markets. That afternoon, I visited a nearby
cemetery with my friend.
The cemetery, along with large stores, was at the edge of
the city. Unlike those shops where numbers of people looking for cheap or used
things - or those who want to buy things as cheaply as they could - kept coming
and going, the cemetery, with its few visitors, was surreally quiet. It even
felt off-limits to living people, as we could not find any traces of living
humans except for us.
Ancient Rome is said to have built cemeteries close to
places where many people gathered together so that people would not be scared
at death, would get accustomed to it and yet would not forget the fact that
they are mortal. Although the cemetery serving where I stay now is a little out
of the downtown area, it takes less 15 minutes from the center of the city by
bus. However, people here seem to live oblivious to the existence of the
cemetery. As long as people close to them are not buried there, few people
visit. For urban people who live thinking they are immortal, cemeteries have
been reduced to space that exists but does not exist.
Where is a grave of a
woman saint?
At the entrance of the cemetery, the graves, which are
neatly arranged as those in other cities of France, came into view. French
graves are quite different from Korean ones, whose round burial mounds are
covered with grass. Near each well-finished quadrangle tomb is a large cross.
Some tombstones include a photo of the dead. The photo shows that the dead
person once was a living one like us. While moss thrives at the graves
forgotten by living people, beautiful flowers of various colors bloom at the
graves of those still alive in the memories of living people.
My friend ahead of me set upright, one by one, flowerpots
that had been scattered around tombs. They might have been knocked down by rain
and wind the day before. We finally found a bench from which the water had been
drained. We sat down and ate the lunch we had brought. We wondered where on
earth the tomb of the woman saint with bags hung on it was.
A woman who had departed this earth hundreds of years ago
became a saint after she died. It is the belief that if people put the earth
around her grave into a bag and wore it, they would be cured of their sickness
that made her a saint. The believe-it-or-not story led even us to this
cemetery. My friend took me by the hand into this place saying that she would
fill a bag with the miraculous earth and put it around my neck for the sake of
my unreliable health. The myth seemed groundless, and we did not have any
reliable information. We had nothing but the vague thought that because the
earth bags people returned to the woman saint are hanging from the cross around
her tomb, we would immediately be able to see it, even from a distance.
In fact, this is not my first time visiting the strange
cemetery where no one close to me is buried. The first time was a long time
ago, when I was staying in Paris to learn French. The cemetery, which is
introduced in travel brochures and has the graves of famous people, happened to
be near the school I went to. It evoked my curiosity to know that so near me
were the graves of famous people such as Sartre, Beauvoir and Baudelaire, whose
deaths made it impossible to meet them in person. One day I visited there after
class.
My visit was made to find traces of famous people, but
before I knew it, I was just strolling about through graves of people unknown
to me while slowly looking around. I was walking slowly as if I were taking a
walk in the park. I walked, and then caught my breath on a bench a while, and
would quietly feel the dead people surrounding me, the invisible presences. The
cemetery was like an island of silent sanctuary in the middle of a bustling
city. The dead did not speak. But it was the peaceful silence that made
merealize I was welcome there.
After that day, I had gone to the cemetery whenever I had
time. Some days I walked around in awe and other days I came back after reading
a book for quite a long time. And when I found cemeteries in other cities or
villages, I visited and rested there. To me, cemeteries were no longer dreadful
places, haunted by ghosts or sprits as pictured in horror novels or films.
Rather, they became a space of rest in which I can escape the bustle of life
for a while in the silence of the dead.
Babies’ small graves
 |
| Small graves for young children © Lee Gyeong-sin |
We slowly walked through the graves, looking around. My
friend continued to stop to stand upright fallen flowerpots. Each time, I
stopped as well and looked around. Big pine trees standing in a row looked like
giants protecting the graves. While crossing the wide cemetery, we could not
see any sign of the cross with bags. I did not care. So what if we do not find
a woman saint’s grave? I was happy just to have a relaxing time in the quiet.
But my friend strode out before me saying she would not fail to find the
grave.
As we continued to search, small graves appeared. What on
earth kind of graves are so small? Examining them, we found out that they were
the resting place for babies who left this world after a brief stay. Later we
learned that it was not long before that making babies’ graves had been legally
allowed in France. For the parents who had only a short relationship with their
baby, these graves are never too small to help ease their sorrow.
How long did we walk? The saint’s grave was nowhere to be
found. I picked up pine cones and consoled my discouraged friend. “If her grave
is somewhere around here, the pine cones from these trees for which her body
acts as fertilizer are likely to be as effective as the earth around her
grave.” And I put three pine cones into the bag filled with dishes. I am not
sure that my friend was convinced.
It flashed through my mind that the dead save the living not
only by the earth around a woman saint’s grave. Isn’t it our lives as humans
that the dead return to earth and the living sustain their lives by plowing the
earth? The story of the dead, who save living people, may be to tell about the
relationship between the two.
If so, graves are the right place to reflect on the
encounters and connection between the dead and the living. Because graves are
where people not only lay their body when they die, but also a place where the
living accept the deaths of those close to them into their life and melt their
sorrow, while considering seriously that they themselves must someday set out
on the journey into the afterlife. In addition, walking around graves, we
clearly face the fact that we not only must die “someday” but also can die
anytime.
Following after my friend who proposed walking a little
longer unwilling to quit, I walked through graves for a while longer. The whole
time, however, there was no one who was visiting there except for us. When we
arrived at the bus stop in front of the cemetery, all of sudden it began to
rain. We felt pleased that we were fortunate enough to have avoided. On the
bus, we recalled that we had bought good dishware cheaply, and got back into
the happiness of everyday life.
*Original Article:
No comments:
Post a Comment