Larger than Life

Yesterday morning, my grandmother passed away very suddenly. She had been suffering from heart disease for years, her health steadily deteriorating. Nothing out of the ordinary portended her swift passing.

While she may no longer be in this world, she will continue to exist vividly in my memory. She has been one of the most influential figures in my life, caring for me when my parents were working in Japan, standing up for me when I was being picked on, and shaping me into the person I am today. My grandmother devoted her entire life to caring for others, raising not only her own 6 children, but just about every single person in my generation as well.

She was a strong woman who faced and conquered obstacles that I cannot begin to imagine. While my grandfather was away in war, revolution, etc, she singlehandedly ran a farm while raising 6 kids. Given the brutal economic circumstances of the time, during a period in which the whole nation was on the brink of starvation, a lone woman through sheer maternal determination and practical ingenuity successfully feeding 6 hungry mouths is an accomplishment of heroic proportions.

My grandmother was not born with privileged circumstances, the second oldest in a family of many girls. For much of her life, milestones were not marked by celebrations but by varying degrees of hardship. Nevertheless, she had a good sense of humor and a playfulness that remained with her till the very end. She always greeted me with the sweetest smile, and was always as eager to teach me things as I was eager to learn. She never had the opportunity to learn how to read or write, and instilled in me the importance of literacy and education. She was skilled in sewing and craft-making, and had a sharp memory that allowed her to recount the funniest stories about everyone in the family. She worried incessantly about everyone else, always placing others before herself. Once when I was bed-riddenly sick in 2nd grade, she--being by this time already ill with heart disease--walked solo to the large stadium gym in our town without informing anyone, hiked up the stadium steps to the highest level, and burned stamps for me to keep the bad spirits away. She might have been a little superstitious too...

My grandmother had so much love that I cannot possibly comprehend how her heart could have held so much. She has not only been the support system for our family as a whole, but also in the life of each individual.

I don't hope to pay my respect to her through this online entry, as it would hardly be sufficient, but I just wanted my close friends to know about this significant event in my life and share with them my memories of an amazing woman who has been larger than life.


A beautiful butterfly I met on an afternoon walk. I guess all of us, despite our small frames, can cast an impressively large shadow.