boyhood one

the first time woohyeon met death he was nine years old. it wasn't like how it was in the movies, peaceful, white blinding lights, and the finding of a peaceful sleep. it was dark, heavy like rain clouds, and cold. grandma was gone, and the empty shell of her body remained.

but it didn't really look like grandma anymore. once healthy, golden, bouncy skin became ashy, discolored, and paperthin. the veins on her hands stuck out like the blue highways marked on road maps. her fingertips were purpled and the elegant slopes of her fingers bent inwards against her will. she'd no longer be able to hold woohyeon's hand.

her dragon eyes, much like woohyeon's own were sunken in, carved out like the beginning of a clay doll. the brown of her iris' had long turned to a milky, sick grey. forever open, but seeing nothing. nothing. nothing. his hand had trembled as his mother guided their palms over her lids and shut them for her. he felt sick.

he felt guilty for feeling sick. he felt guilty for feeling anything at all. not like his grandma.

his mother had given his hand a squeeze, once, twice, thrice before it fell away. badum, badum, badum. woohyeon counted his heartbeats in time with the phantom feel of it, the ghost beat of his grandma's heart.

his hand fell to the conclave of her collarbones, pressing his fingers there like if he could hold on and reach down further, under her ribs, he could massage her heart into function. his mother's hand gripped his shoulder, tears falling from her narrow eyes. so that was death, woohyeon thought.

but death wasn't just that, it was flowers filling the spaces grandma used to occupy. it was mournful apologizes being whispered over and over, it was "she's with the lord now" that kept coming with no end in sight from people woohyeon couldn't place. it was a funeral.

it was a funeral with people who didn't truly know grandma, didn't live with her, didn't eat with her every night, didn't lay out on her bedroll and feel her fingers rubbing soothingly up and down the notches of their spine. they didn't know the mirth in her eyes when she snuck a piece of candy, or a swig of wine.

death was returning home day after day to an empty chair in the sun, a cold and forgotten futon, and it was starting to forget the sound of her laugh. it was staring into her empty room and realizing it'll never be the same. it'll always wear the mask of death, it'll always house her ghost.

death was going through her belongings, finding what to keep, what to purge, what to cry into, and what to slip between the pages of her favorite books and hidden like a bible in the nightstand. it was coming to terms with a family of three reduced to a family of two. in a nights time, love devoured by the inevitable.

woohyeon will find himself looking back on that first meeting with death. sometimes more than others, but the moment truly never leaves from him. as he's grown older there is comfort in it, comfort in that death of knowing that while she was alive, she really wasn't.

she was existing through her dementia, stumbling through the late stages until she was no longer able to swallow, to take her medications to respond to any stimulation. there was no dignity in her diagnosis.

woohyeon realized that in his growing, in his own aging something simple; quality over quantity.

grandma's passing was his first rite of manhood. he was expected to step up. to help his mother more around the house and outside of the home as well. to put away some of his childish things and focus. to look at her death certificate and acknowledge the change in his life.

meeting and accepting that grief was the first death of his boyhood.