Life Must Go On by Cynthia Landesberg

Life Must Go On | Cynthia Landesberg

“As the Rabbi says, ‘Life must go on.’”

I found out about my grandfather’s passing sometime in the early morning. My mom’s voice vibrated through the phone – steady, strong, alive, a vitality she’s only ever had after a loss. My eyes fixated upon the creeping sherbert sunrise reflecting on the towering glass buildings around me and creating the illusion of a sun that rose from every direction. I mumbled my way off the phone, and stood before the fiery sun, its blistering light paralyzing me like a gargoyle mid-cry.

A few days later, my family gathered in Florida for the funeral. My older sister took charge as my family sat shiva in my grandpa’s one-bedroom condo. I can hear her signature laugh crescendo over the din of funeral chatter, giving everyone permission to smile amid their grief, and see the dining table, where we used to share a piece of Entenmann’s strudel each time I visited, covered with platters of bagels, lox, and fruit. At least that’s how I imagine it happened. I did not attend. I stayed in my city of glass, ensconced under my law books, stone cold and immobilized.

***

“She told me to go home and that she would see me tomorrow. But tomorrow never came.” 

Sudden, inexplicable loss leaves people in shock, drowning in an oblivion of disbelief. Deep within the folds of our gray matter, signals are released to ensure we memorize all the circumstances of the unpredictable loss, branding us with hypervigilance going forward. As a Korean adoptee and mother of two adoptees, I see this hypervigilance regularly, our bodies overriding our sound minds, telling us to panic, to worry, to lash out to protect ourselves at the possibility of saying goodbye. My grandfather knew this feeling too. Five years before his death, my grandmother went into the hospital for a minor stroke, something we all expected her to recover from. The night of her death, she told my grandfather to go home. He agreed, thinking he would see her in the morning. Instead, she fell, hit her head, and passed away.

I did not attend my grandmother’s funeral either. As a junior in college, I was young, self-absorbed, and horribly uncomfortable in my own brown skin. I stayed away to avoid the discomfort of looking like me in a family who looked like them. 

The guilt over not attending prompted me to write to my grandfather and we began a correspondence that spanned from 2003 until a few months before his death in 2008. We wrote about grief, loss, and life, and the man had before only been the retired Jewish grandpa in Florida, with his white v-neck undershirts, perpetual smell of aftershave, and jokes that always began with “A rabbi walks into a bar…” became so much more. Unbeknownst to either of us, his letters mapped a way for me through the adoption grief I would wrestle with years later.  

***

“I’m trying to cope with the loneliness of my losing my partner of 54 years…The men in my building are also widowers and go out to a restaurant on Thursday nights, so they asked me to join their ‘club.’”

Grief has swirled around me, in me, and through me my entire life. I always felt like an outsider in my own life, imported from a foreign country into a white, Jewish family, my feelings of loss and guilt and loneliness clashing with the role I undertook as the grateful adoptee. So I scraped out the incongruous feelings leaving me hollow inside. It was not until I adopted my oldest son and began learning about all the things he had to lose to become my child that I finally understood the emptiness I felt. 

My grandfather’s grief felt similarly cavernous, the silence echoing off the walls of his terracotta-colored condo. My grandparents had moved to Florida after my grandfather retired, and recreated their Jewish New York City life in the sunshine state. They spent their days gossiping, playing cards, and entertaining friends. Over time, their community began to dwindle with each morning’s obituary report, the news interspersed with last night’s baseball scores and tonight’s poker game, and now it was my grandmother’s turn. 

A week or so after her death, my grandfather received a knock on his front door. A man from upstairs had heard the news and called in through one of the glass slats to invite him to a weekly widower’s dinner. With nothing else to do, my grandfather got his coat and went along. I imagine those men, white-haired and liver-spotted, eating their $6.99 early bird special at 4:45 p.m., their collective grief nestled amongst their chicken noodle soups and strudel desserts, and I see that loss is best held by the hands of many. Though no one knocked on my slatted door, I did receive an email from my adoption social worker who connected with me another Korean adoptee adopting a son from Korea at the same time, and found out there was a club for me and my grief too.

***

“You will laugh when I say that I am learning how to make oatmeal. Cut up lettuce to make a salad, forget it!”

One of the topics in our adoption education class was about how to include your child’s birth culture into your family. As slides flicked by with names of cultural organizations and holidays and artwork from Korea, imposter syndrome squirmed all the way up my spine and back again, yanking me down in my chair out of shame. I barely knew how to find Korea on a map, let alone learn the language, the food, or culture. I had avoided anything Korean my entire childhood thinking that perhaps if I did not associate with Korea, maybe I would finally be seen as American. Now social workers were telling me I had to, in simplified terms, become Korean again. 

After my grandmother’s death, my grandfather had no choice but to learn at least some basic housekeeping skills. My grandfather embodied a depression-era man. He was drafted into the army in 1941. He shipped off to Hawaii with the worst seasickness of his life and spent the summer of 1941 playing baseball and waiting for something to happen. That December, something happened. My grandfather watched the planes come in over the Pacific, screamed as the bombs fell, and ran for ammunition to fight back. After the devastation of Pearl Harbor, he spent four and a half years in the army, just praying to get back home. When he made it, he began working for the Postal Service and as a shoe salesman, comfortable in the classic breadwinner role, leaving my grandmother to manage the kids and the home. Now, my grandfather was being asked to go grocery shopping, to cook, to do the laundry, and to clean up around the house. Eighty-plus years of doing none of these things, and here he was trying to learn how to make oatmeal.

As I waited for my son’s adoption to be approved, I decided that if my grandfather could learn new things at 88, then I could try to learn something about Korea at 31. So I began learning Korean. Hana. Dul. Set. I started eating Korean food. Bibimbap. Kimchi. Galbi. And I began watching Korean television shows, learning the culture, and learning what my life might have been had Korea not sent me away. And with each step I took towards reclaiming my Korean identity, I thought of my grandfather learning how to make oatmeal. One cup of water. Half a cup of oats. Boil. Stir. Step by step, we can do anything. 

***

“I just miss her so much.”

On my grandfather’s 90th birthday, my parents and I drove to Florida to celebrate with him. We sat together in his living room, no lights on because my grandfather was frugal to the end. We cycled through the typical topics – health, baseball, and the latest free giveaways he collected from the racetrack. In an elongated pause in the conversation, the place where my grandma would usually tell a story about cousin Yetta or the new widow in Number 204, my grandfather’s eyes settled on a picture of my grandmother on the side table. He reached over shakily and adjusted the gold necklace draped over the picture frame, the one she always wore, which bore four interlocking doll charms, her grandchildren’s names etched on each one. 

“She loved that necklace,” he whispered, his perpetually watery eyes at risk of overflowing. 

“Yeah, I remember her wearing it,” I said. 

Silence.

“I just miss her so much,” his voice cracked, and we all gazed in different directions and bore witness to his grief. 

A few minutes later, he removed his thick brown-framed glasses, wiped his face with a handkerchief, and began to talk. And talk. And talk. About his childhood, his time as a soldier, memories he had locked up for years. Hours went by while he held court and we all soaked in the newly painted picture of my grandfather, a man who had suddenly become a complete, whole human before our eyes. Then, as suddenly as he began, he stopped talking. He looked at the clock. 4:30 p.m. He got up without a word, rummaged in a drawer in his bedroom, and came out with a buy-one-get-one free coupon for the local diner. 

“We better go soon before it fills up,” he said with a chuckle, as he slid on his brown loafers and his periwinkle jacket, a smile still adorning his face as he locked his slatted door and padded down the bubbly sandstone walkway to the car. 

When I think about the person I was when I began adopting my son, and who I am now, eight years later, the fundamental difference between then and now is the urgency with which I tell my story. I have shared all of it. The parts I am ashamed of, the parts I am proud of, the parts I still do not understand. I tell my story because of the look on my grandfather’s face that evening of his 90th birthday, the smile he had on his way to dinner– lighter, freer, and more at peace than ever before.

***

“Cyndy, I have no excuse for not writing you. You may be out of sight, but not out of mind. Have a great birthday and many more healthy ones. As ever, Grandpa.” 

This was the entirety of the last letter he sent before he died. His handwriting had progressively become shakier, his letters shorter, but this was the shakiest and shortest of all. Brief, as if he knew the end was coming. Succinct, as if he knew what mattered most– more time. 

With the time I received that he did not, I finished law school, got married, began my career as an attorney, adopted two sons, gave birth to a daughter, and went through the grieving process for all the losses of my adoption for the first time. And as thoroughly disorienting as that experience was, sitting here on the other side, I realized I was never alone in it. I had followed the path my grandfather had walked before me, through grief and back again.

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