Haunting

“Sometimes, I am scared of my own memory... My memory and all those sharp razors ready to haunt me the very second I make my mind up to forget; as an evil ghost refusing to leave the spot that made him feel at home, a ghost that I don’t seem to be able to escape from.” She said to me and I understood it was that time of the year. 

I got our clothes ready and looked at her, I always wondered why she used to do this memorial service, I read about it and it is a ritual practiced in Korea and other countries honoring ancestors, but it doesn’t seem to me this has to do with a dead relative, then what was this? I could never figure her out completely, there was always a missing piece to the puzzle. She got ready and told me to go with her. I always follow her silently, I know how annoyed she gets with noise, she says it over and over again in her books and poems: “Silence”, she claims to want silence; I wonder whether she wants it or she was left without options and ended up embracing it way too hard, and that’s why now she was so quiet. 

We started walking stairs up and I am not going to lie, it surprises me how such an old lady can move around so graciously as if life wasn’t as heavy as it claims to be at that age. 

“Should I wait here?” I said before reaching the door.

“Yes, please.” She said. I have been working with her for five years already and I still wonder whether we are friends or not, she can be extremely secretive about some matters, and incredibly open about others. The only thing she ever told me about this annual ritual was “I haven’t really learned to speak the language of those who are gone, but I have learned to listen to their requests”, and all I thought was “How can you listen to their request if you don’t understand what they are saying?”.

I sat down in the stairs and I could listen to her crying. It was always the same, the ghost she couldn’t run away from would still make her cry and she didn’t seem to want to be comforted. I wonder if she is paying some kind of penance. Maybe that religious practice of hers has more in it than what I have learned so far... Maybe I haven’t learned the real essence of it yet and maybe that’s why I don’t understand her.