Sister Park Jeong-ja Remigius

I received news that my distant cousin, Sister Park Jeong-ja Remigius, passed away on December 16th (Friday). Although her face is not vividly remembered, the youngest sister of the nun, who has been in constant contact with me through Facebook, conveyed the news of her passing. She mentioned that the funeral Mass held on Saturday at Myeongdong Cathedral, attended by nearly 300 nuns from the Sisters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul, was truly beautiful and majestic, as if one had visited the Kingdom of God. The songs sung by the sisters, bidding farewell to the departed nun, were undoubtedly heavenly music.

 

If she is my distant cousin, what kind of relationship is it? My father and the nun's father were cousins, making my grandmother and the nun's grandfather siblings. Therefore, our family and the nun's family are relatively close relatives. Our family lived with the nun's family for seven years after the Korean War, so my early childhood was spent entirely in their home.

 

Around the time I turned six, at a well with a large red peony blossom blooming nearby, I vaguely recall scenes of both sisters gathering for a wash early in the morning. As we moved to a place not far from their home when I was six years old, and the nun went to university and later joined the religious life in the Philippines, the elder sister disappeared from my memory. The people in Uji-ri, the nun's birthplace, were reportedly delighted that a nun was born in their humble village.

 

I reestablished contact with the nun during my fourth year of university. My mother received a message from the nun expressing a desire to visit our home. I visited Kyesung Girls' High School in Myeongdong, Seoul, where the nun worked as an English teacher, on a foggy late autumn evening. As soon as we met, she said, "You're the younger brother of Young-ja, right? You've grown a lot." While walking out of the school together, she gazed at the students leaving for home and muttered, "Our students are really beautiful, aren't they?"

 

I heard her voice again over the phone two years ago. More than forty years had passed since we met at Kyesung Girls' High School, and I was in my mid-sixties, while she had retired and turned eighty. It seemed like she hardly remembered me. Using the phone that the third sister had arranged, she asked the same question she had asked a long time ago, "You're Young-ja's younger brother, or under Young-ki, right?" Unable to drive due to a traffic accident that cost me one leg, and with my wife feeling uneasy about driving in the bustling city, I regret not being able to meet the sister who came all the way from Korea to attend her nephew's wedding in New York.

 

The photo of the nun sent by her youngest sister didn't differ much from the image in my memory. Her facial features resembled the second sister in Korea and the third sister in New York. When she said, "Do you have a girlfriend? No? Then let me choose your match," I couldn't help but think of the beautiful female students I saw at Kyesung Girls' High School. If the promise made by the nun back then had been fulfilled, I might have married a graduate of Kyesung Girls' High School, and my fate might have been quite different. Whether it would be for the better or worse, I don't know.

 

Throughout the Sunday Mass at our church, I kept thinking of her. “Sister, now you can lay down the heavy burden and enjoy endless joy praising the Lord in the Kingdom of Heaven. Lord, grant eternal rest to Sister Park and let perpetual light shine upon her.”

 

(December 19, 2016)