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Pacific NW Cover Story Michael Ko

Remembering Dad

In recollection and reflection, a grieving son seeks resolution

On Dec. 20, 2004, I found my father dead in the driver's seat of his car. He was slumped over to his right, jacket off, eyes closed. When I touched him, he was cold and stiff. I shook him and shouted "Dad" in Korean — "Ah-pa! Ah-pa!"

Just a few hours earlier, he'd called me to say my mother had been in a serious car accident, and I should hurry to Stevens Hospital in Edmonds.

He mentioned his stomach really hurt.

I didn't think anything of it at the time.

I rushed up from Seattle and found my mother alone in an emergency-room bed, sore and shaken but no bones broken. She was soon cleared to leave, and asked for Dad.

Before I arrived, he'd told her he needed some fresh air.

But I couldn't find him.

I called his cell phone. He didn't pick up. Not sure what to do next, I drove to his insurance office nearby, thinking he might be relaxing on the little cot he kept in the back. He wasn't there.

Back at the hospital, Mom suggested the parking lot.

The night was really cold, almost freezing. It was dark, about 9:30.

I spotted his car quickly and saw him inside. The door was unlocked. I knew he was dead. I couldn't have spent more than a few seconds with him before I turned back and grabbed two paramedics I'd just seen in the ambulance bay.

I think my dad just had a heart attack.

We run to the car; a third guy shows up with a gurney. They check him over, pull him out, ask questions — What medications was he taking? Did he have high blood pressure? — and start pushing him toward the hospital.

Wait!

Mom is sitting in a wheelchair in the waiting area overlooking the emergency-room entrance. She's talking to a friend who'd come by to help. I'm not sure who called her, maybe my dad.

Stay behind the corner, I tell the medics.

I wait until Mom looks away.

OK, Go! HURRY!

They disappear through the swinging doors.

SNOHOMISH COUNTY MEDICAL EXAMINER'S OFFICE AUTOPSY REPORT
Decedent: Ko, Hi Sun
DATE AND TIME OF EXAMINATION
21 December 2004, 1030 hours
IDENTIFICATION: The body is identified by Medical Examiner number 04SN2302 and the name "Ko" written on the right lower chest and abdomen and on a bracelet about the decedent's right wrist. In addition, photographs are taken under my direction for identification purposes.

I'm 31 years old, married a year now and hoping to become a father soon. I've been looking with something like envy at some guy friends and the way they cradle their newborns: a relationship — a touch — so full of love and life and potential.

I wonder what my father thought of me when I was born, what he saw when he held me up to the light and examined me head to toe, what he said to me when I slept, what dreams blossomed in his heart, what fears kept him up at night.

The problem is, I can't ask him now, and my mother's answers won't suffice. Too bad I didn't wonder more when he was alive. I was so absorbed in my own world. And he wasn't much of a talker. There seems to be a built-in detachment among many older Korean men.

More than two years after my father's death, I feel compelled to try to extract some profound meaning from our relationship.

I have the memory of our last unexpected moment together, preceded by a tangle of stories and anecdotes and recollections, some crystal clear and some fuzzy, all of it so intimate and anonymous and unresolved at the same time.

I take inventory:

His great brain.

His introverted personality.

His love of lighthouses and the outdoors.

His resourcefulness and restlessness when it came to any kind of job.

His globe-trotting past.

His goofy smile and his fascination with roaming the aisles at Wal-Mart.

His ability to write.

His Nana Mouskouri album collection.

And in my hands, an autopsy report with the details of, among other things, a heart that failed after just 58 years.

I strain to find the beginning. My dad wasn't around much in my early years. He traveled all over the world seeking his fortune in exotic places like Kuwait and San Francisco, while Mom and I lived in Seoul, then with his mother in Inchon.

My first memory with my father comes when I am 6, after we'd immigrated to Florida in 1981, a few months after my younger brother was born.

We're all at Disney World, about to get in line for the Space Mountain roller coaster. But my little brother doesn't meet the height requirement and has to stay behind with Mom.

My dad and I take the front seat. Side-by-side, we ascend up a dark tunnel . . . clickety-clack, clickety-clack. I'm a little scared. Then, a brilliant explosion of lights whizzing by. I am floating, flooded with wonder. What is my dad doing? I can't remember.

The ride is over.

How quickly it passed.

INTERNAL EXAMINATION

HEAD: The BRAIN is removed in the usual manner and weighs 1240 grams. The LEPTOMENINGES are smooth and glistening, and the gyri demonstrate their usual orientation and configuration. The vessels at the base of the brain are normally disposed and no anomalies are identified.

One of my favorite stories about my father was from our first year in America, after he enrolled at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, where he got his master's degree in business administration.

The way Mom tells it — with pride — my father often studied through the night. He had double duty, taking business classes and learning English. One evening, he started after dinner, scribbling notes with a full-length No. 2 pencil. When she awoke the next morning, he was still going strong.

And the pencil had been worn down to an inch-long nub.

When my father was growing up in Korea, students took standardized tests that determined where they attended school.

My dad always scored well, reaching the prestigious Jemulpo High School, then Seoul National University, Korea's equivalent of Harvard, and then Seoul National Law School, where he graduated first in his class.

In a culture with such high respect for education, my father's reputation was cemented.

His academic résumé followed him for the rest of his life, even to Washington state, where all sorts of Korean people I'd meet at a church function or one of his alumni association meetings would inevitably bring up the subject of what a brilliant student my father was, and how proud they were of his accomplishments.

He was resourceful, too. After he got his MBA, we flew cross-country to Glendale, Calif., where he'd lined up work as a manager at a company that imported luggage from Korea.

When that didn't work out, he found a job selling heavy construction equipment to Korean companies that were working in Saudi Arabia. For a year, we lived in an American compound in Al Khobar, where I finished fourth grade.

Unlike a lot of Korean parents, who are notorious for pushing their children into fields like medicine and engineering, my dad remained mostly quiet about my academics, other than making me sit down almost every day one summer in junior high with a book of words that frequently appear on SAT tests.

I remember he promised to buy me a BMX bike if I won my fifth-grade school spelling bee. "Business" ousted me in the third round. But a few weeks later, he bought me the bike anyway.

My parents pushed me to take the journalism elective in junior high to improve my writing. Loving the process of producing newspapers, and the interesting friends I made doing that, I continued writing throughout high school.

At the University of Washington, I majored in classics, then switched to anthropology (which my mother had to look up in a Korean-American dictionary) before settling down at the school daily, and eventually into a journalism career.

I never felt the need to talk through most of these decisions with my father. In part, I felt capable of making my own choices. In part, they just happened.

After he died, I tried my best to recall what he said and did, looking for something more.

He had a habit of semi-deep declarations like, "My match is no match" (defending his wardrobe) and "You can't find love, love will find you" (addressing my brother and me). But meaningful one-on-one sessions with my dad were few, and my memory of them is hazy at best.

I think I was in college when we were parked in the driveway of our house and he said something like, "I've decided to let you live your life the way you've wanted to, pressure free, so you can flourish into whatever you want to be. If we stayed in Korea, life would have been a lot harder for us."

Maybe he was reacting to his pressure-filled upbringing. Maybe he had his own problems, and this was just a cop-out. Maybe I should have asked him more about why he immigrated when he had shown so much promise in Korea.

Maybe I'm not even remembering what he said right.

EXTERNAL EVIDENCE OF INJURY

1. On the distal left forearm are two linear ½ inch abrasions.
2. On the anterior surface of the left lower leg covering an approximate 7 x 2 inch area are scattered healing abrasions of varying ages and sizes.
3. On the dorsal surface of the left big toe is a ½ inch healing abrasion.
4. On the distal right lower leg is an irregular 1 x 1 inch area of healing abrasions having a greatest dimension of ½ inch.

I think my father carried many other scars, deep and painful.

He grew up during the Korean War and often mentioned childhood memories of fleeing with his family to bomb shelters.

When he was just a sophomore in college, he, too, lost his father to a heart attack.

Soon after his father died, he and his older brother drifted far apart, reconnecting only after his brother was diagnosed with cancer.

I suspect he also struggled when he finally had to settle down.

My parents decided on Washington because they'd heard it was beautiful. When they got here, in the late 1980s, they dumped their savings into Casino Cleaners and Laundromat in Everett and moved us into an apartment on the same street.

For more than six years, the routine was the same. On weekdays, my parents worked from 7 in the morning 'til 7 at night. All sorts of toxic chemicals were involved. Some Saturdays, I opened the store so they could sleep in and relax until noon.

Sundays were reserved for church.

A couple times a week, during most of junior high and high school, I was my dad's co-worker. We had a route along Casino Road, where we'd stop at many of the apartments, pick up piles of dirty, dusty drapes and load them into our van.

My job was to take off all the metal hooks. My dad would wash the drapes and re-pleat them on a big rack in the back of the store. When they were folded neatly again, I'd put the hooks back on.

I don't recall talking too much about anything. But I think it was around this time I first became aware that my dad actually had feelings. I remember him and the guy who owned the fried chicken shop next to us, Uncle Bud's, sometimes yelling at each other in the back of our mini-strip mall.

My dad was very protective of his emotions.

As best as I can remember, he raised his voice at me just once. When my brother and I were a little older, we got into a fight about something and ended up wrestling on the living-room floor. My dad pulled us apart, the look on his face wild.

Only once did he ever look vulnerable.

A few years ago, my parents were stressed about their marriage and my dad came to me, trying to tell me — maybe teach me? — something about relationships, mumbling about decisions he'd made.

I desperately wish I could remember what he said.

ORGAN SYSTEMS

CARDIOVASCULAR SYSTEM: The HEART weighs 470 grams . . . The right coronary artery shows an acute thrombus in its proximal portion. The left anterior descending and left circumflex coronary arteries show scattered atherosclerotic plaques with narrowing of the lumen up to 75% in multiple places . . . There is atherosclerosis of the aorta with the disease more prominent in the abdominal aorta, particularly below the renal vessels.

Ever since my father died, every little twitch and pain inside me, every shortness of breath, makes me fear my heart is flawed, too. Two generations before me have died of heart attacks. I beat myself up for overindulging on dessert or junk food, for not exercising enough.

What did my dad do with his mortal fears?

From what I gathered after his death, not enough. He was on high-blood-pressure medication, but he hadn't had a really good physical in a long time.

I had my cholesterol checked, and it's great. A couple visits with my doctor have turned up nothing obviously wrong, other than her telling me I'm most likely having anxiety attacks, and I should take up tai-chi.

My theory is that a really good, long cry would get everything out.

Except the tears haven't really come.

I didn't cry when I saw my dad dead in the emergency room, his tank top torn open and a tube shoved down his throat, or just before that, when the doctor had pulled my mother and me into a side room, telling us they did everything they could.

I was probably too shocked. And how could I cry, with my mother weeping and my brother, on an overnight trip in Canada, not knowing what had happened yet? I had to tell him, and all the relatives in Korea, too.

No one explains beforehand how much you have to do when someone suddenly dies, how much you have to keep it together.

At the hospital, I had to sign a bunch of papers, recover my dad's belongings, answer questions from a police officer and call the relatives. The next few days were busy with funeral arrangements and mundane tasks like picking up my dad's car from the hospital.

The night my father died, an older Korean man, a family friend, told me not to cry in front of my mother. He said my first job was to take care of her, and after the funeral, I should find someplace private and cry then.

That Korean male detachment again.

I know I have some of it, too. Maybe that's why I clamp up.

But I also know I want to be different from my father in that way. I don't want to bottle up my feelings until they become toxic.

I sought counseling after his death, thinking it might help locate the feelings I was sure I had.

Some of those sessions, along with a firmer grounding in my family and faith, and abundant grace and patience from my wife — who lost her own mother to cancer — have given voice to some of those feelings.

I feel sadness and regret — that I didn't know my father as well as I should have.

I feel fear — that I, too, might die early.

I feel confusion — about why he made some of the choices he made, and also that I'm understanding and explaining him wrong.

I feel weird — that I can't stop wearing his ratty brown jacket that's too short in the arms.

I feel grateful — that he moved his wife and children to another country, and despite all the obstacles, did what he could to feed us, keep us safe, buy us toys and somehow build a new life for us. I feel like I have a solid foundation for making my own decisions and being responsible for my own successes and failures.

I feel proud — that he lived a rich life, full of successes and mistakes and daring. Maybe there were times he wished for more, but my guess is that he was in the end satisfied. In his 50s, he would sometimes walk around our water-view house in Mukilteo — one result of my parents' dry-cleaning toil — and say life was OK.

And I feel acceptance of our relationship — that any profound meaning in what transpired between us will become clear in its own time, not in mine, and that the tension in my chest will loosen, as it has been, as the days pass.

In his last few years, my dad was finally able to pursue one of his true passions, travel writing. He had always known about great places to hike, had always taken us car camping and given me and my brother referrals when we wanted a quick day trip.

Now, he finally had an outlet. He went out on weekend retreats with my mom and penned columns — reflecting on the Northwest, the outdoors, being an immigrant — for a couple of local Korean newspapers.

After he died, Mom gathered the best ones and sent them to Korea, where another family friend helped get them published in a book.

It's a handsome little hardback titled, in Korean, "The Heron of Padilla Bay," named after one of my father's favorite places to walk. He said it reminded him of Inchon, his hometown. The cover is pale yellow, with a drawing of the bird in the center.

These are his last insights, his freshest.

I've promised myself that I'll translate the book into English — for my sake and for the sake of my children. But I've been living in America for 25 years, and I struggle to decipher my native language, my father's true thoughts.

I flip through the pages and sound out the words.

Maybe I will find some answers. Maybe the puzzle will only grow more complex.

Maybe this is just the profound wonder and mystery of fatherhood, and no interpretation is really necessary.

Michael Ko is a Seattle Times sports reporter.

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