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| Artcard by Author |
I am no stranger to grief. I first met grief in a hospital room where my Dad’s lifeless body lay. We encountered each other again through a phone call when the news that my Lolo passed during his cancer check-up. A few hello’s from grief as other loved ones passed away through the years. And just recently, on my birthday this year, when it held my Lola's hand as she took her final breath.
I think what makes grief different this year when I lost my grandmother than all the past years I encountered grief is that it was not abrupt anymore. It did not show up at my doorstep and ready to take my loved one away from me. But grief visited me months before my Lola passed away.
It stood there as the doctors told us that my Lola was in critical condition in the ICU and got the high rate of demise talk with the “if anything happens, at least we did our best to save her” line. It was beside me when I saw the body of my Lola as a shell of who she once was, but deep inside me, she felt so far away. Grief followed me around when we finally decided to put her in palliative care knowing that we could not bring her home anymore.
I guess I am not sure if meeting grief way before my Lola’s passing was an advantage because on one side, it did give us a chance to prepare ourselves but on the other hand it was also an agony grieving for someone still alive.
As a person who again is no stranger to grief, it was to my surprise that I realized that the grief from my Lola’s passing was so different from how I experienced grief from the passing of my loved ones before her. It is different from my Dad’s, it is different from my Lolo’s.
If I can ramble about my Dad and even make jokes as a bereaved daughter as my coping mechanism, I find myself shutting down, choking up, and crying my guts out when it comes to my Lola. On some random day, I realized that maybe it is because the process of grieving is just like the art of making kimchi, a traditional Korean side dish— it needs time to ferment until we are ready to open up again and share pieces of them with the world through us.
Step 1: cut the cabbage
The first step in making kimchi is cutting your Napa cabbage. Similarly to grief, when we lose our loved one, our hearts feel like it has been chopped into pieces. Death cuts deep and inflicts a wound so open and raw.
Step 2: salt the cabbage
Just like the famous saying “to rub salt into the wound,” life has a funny way of making situations worse. You are not just dealing with loss but also with so many things, such as trauma, new problems, and life without them onwards.
It is also frustrating that life continues to spin when yours stopped. I remember when I angrily wondered why I had to go through these when others did not. The bitter reality is that life goes on and time moves so fast, and it is okay to pause after losing a big part of you. And it is okay to be angry like I was.
Step 3: ferment and submerge in salt water
Grieving feels so much like drowning. It sinks you to rock bottom. Losing my Lola after taking care of her for so many years, her hospitalization, passing, and the aftermath made me feel so overwhelmed to the point that I was drowning. I did not know what to do but every move I made felt so heavy like how wet clothes make you feel.
No matter how much love and support my family had, I continued to drown, and I guess I just let myself be because it was my reminder that I was not numb yet. Isn’t it such a privilege to have loved so much to the point that its loss was felt so intensely?
Step 4: rinse the cabbage
After salting your cabbage, you have to rinse it. I am not sure if you know the quote “The bad thing is nothing lasts forever; the good thing is nothing lasts forever,” but this reminds me of how life is composed of bad, sad, uncomfortable experiences and also composed of good, happy, and memorable experiences too. Nothing is ever permanent.
After the hardest months of my life, I started to resurface. In a way life washed over me and I came out a different person. Whether we like it or not, better days do happen, and it is easy to let ourselves sink again in our grief because sometimes we are so used to our sadness that it starts to feel comforting but you also deserve good days. You deserve to live. Let yourself resurface.
Step 5: make the chili paste
Step 6: combine cabbage and chili paste thoroughly 
It is true that grief does not go away instead we grow around it. Just like how we combine cabbage and chili paste to make our kimchi, we continue to experience new things and live life while our grief stays. We move with the grief as our reminder that love was once there and continues to accompany us in the new chapters of our story.
Step 7: pack kimchi in a jar
Pack your kimchi in a jar. In this analogy, the jar symbolizes life. Our lives from now on are a mix of everything that happened, but the pain is still fresh. The intensity of grief starts after the funeral, after the condolences, after they are laid to rest. Even though the eulogies are said, the breakdowns lessen, and the acceptance stage is done. This does not lessen the pain of losing them. Even if we all look like we are coping well, we never really know the freshness of the pain everyone carries within them.
Step 8: let it ferment for 1-5 days
Let your kimchi ferment for 1-5 days or in other words, take your time. Healing is never linear. There are days when grief is like a quiet hum in the back of your mind, but there are times when a trigger can make the grief all-consuming and overwhelming. Just like the “grief is a ball in a box” analogy– sometimes a song, a memory, or something that reminds us of them can touch the pain button, and the grief ball even in time shrinks but expands due to the trigger. You do not really have to get over it because you never really do. So, just take it a day at a time and give yourself some grace.
Step 9: it is ready to serve; refrigerate the remaining
But I like to think that I will talk about my Lola comfortably like revisiting her warm hugs in the future just like how I am comfortable talking about my dad now even after so many years have passed if I am given the proper time to process everything.
I like to think that we will find ourselves sharing stories of our loved ones or maybe not, some people are more comfortable keeping their memories private but that is okay. However, may we all find comfort in knowing that our loved ones will forever live in us.
As funny as it sounds, yes you are the refrigerator. And the kimchi? It is just waiting for you to open it again— to share over warm bowls of rice with family and friends, or alone when you are craving the comfort of someone in heaven.
