Weddings and funerals

By Jake J. Nho

I went to a wedding the other day. I don’t do a lot of weddings since they are happy occasions and the people who invite you would rather have you send an envelope and not come since that would cost money.

What that means is that you get to send your congratulatory gift but do not incur the cost of having the lunch or dinner as well as the beverages. They get married one way or another.

A funeral in Korea is quite different. For those who are not familiar with this ritual, those who pass away are laid to rest for a couple of days in funeral parlors when those who want to pay their past respects can visit, also for some type of a meal.

The very different thing about a wedding and a funeral is that while a wedding takes place at a certain time, the funeral, so to speak, goes on for a couple of days.

You can go in the middle of the night, early in the morning or in the middle of the afternoon. They are resting there waiting for you, for the final moment, so to speak.

I went to a funeral a couple of months ago. This was in fact quite different since this was a person I knew really well.

He was only about 60, which is like a teenager in these modern times of centenarians.

He had been in charge of public relations at a large company for decades and his children are all grown up. Unfortunately, none of them had entered into matrimony before he passed on.

And then there are cases in which you don’t actually know the person who has died. You just happen to know their children well and it seems proper to say goodbye to the ones that we know were well loved.

There was one time when I actually went to a funeral, the actual act of burying a person.

She was the mother of a very good friend, one who had made lots of money on Wall Street and whose brother and sister were engaged in happy lives.

But one day, as her husband was getting better from years of fighting illness, she decided to check out. She took her own life at the tender age of 71.

Often I cry at funerals, mostly because of the circumstances under which the deceased faced their final moments.

Often, it is not a matter of choice. Fate has a way of taking lives away, whether you like it or not.

I remember this one time I had to go to the funeral of a senior executive of a company who died in a helicopter crash. His staff tried to stop him flying because of poor weather conditions but he insisted and that’s the way he went.

I cried at his funeral as I did at that of another man, the chairman of another major company who allegedly took his life, because of the people who will miss them for all eternity.

In that sense, a wedding is a better occasion to attend.

They are wonderful events in which two people who are in love get to start a life together. And so whether or not you are there makes little difference. They have their weddings and fly off to Hawaii or Timbuktu.

I had to go to a wedding the other day because it was of the daughter of a person who recently left the company in which we worked together.

Had he been reporting to the office, I would not have felt the responsibility of going all the way to the end of Gangnam on a Saturday afternoon.

But I had to go, make that rather long trip because he was no longer with us, not physically at least.

He seemed delighted to see me, and I of him, and the couple looked happy.

We sat down and chatted a little bit, catching up on the couple of months that he had spent away from the company. I was glad to have made the trip.

Life is like that, I think. Sad at times but mostly good.

Jake J. Nho heads online operations at The Korea Times. He can be reached at jakenho@ktimes.co.kr.