I was sitting in between my parents on a 15-hour flight from Toronto to Seoul, where I was going to negotiate a book project. My Airbnb had enough room for us all. So when my parents brought it up as a half-joke that they would come, too, I didn't think it was unreasonable.
I was merely 8 when we embarked on our immigration journey. Korea was their country. They wouldn't need me there as they did in Canada. But the first week proved to be rough. We were upside down with the time change. My father announced that the first thing they wanted to do was visit my grandma's grave（坟墓）. We had discussed visiting a few relatives, but going to grandma's grave had never come up. It was starting: family obligations seized my work time. "You guys go, I said. While my father showered, my mother took me aside. "Your dad has always been counting the days for the moment when he can show her how well you grew up. "I laughed but I was deeply moved. So I decided to accompany them.
As we approached the graveyard, I gathered some colored wildflowers from the parking lot and tied them with a long piece of grass. My parents got busy weeding around the headstone. "Your name is on the back, my father said. "See here?" I looked, and there was my Korean name carved beside those of my siblings and cousins. It felt odd to see our names on the headstone all of us, the living and dead, connected. I saw a link in a chain that stretches generations back.
I didn't know how to tell them that the trip was amazing. I realized how I was intertwined with them, and they were interwoven into me. We don't belong to languages or countries. My grandma died only four months before we moved to Canada, when she was too frail（虚弱的） to make the trip. I hope she knows that we did take her, and that maybe all we have is each other.