By Jinah Kim
Illustration by Kyungduk Kim
I was warned that it could happen, that I could be kicked out of my own father’s funeral. But I didn’t believe it would happen.
Until it did.
Five years ago, I was at the memorial service for my father, who had died of Lou Gehrig’s disease on Halloween day. I sat next to my family in the front row of the Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall in Marina, Calif., staring numbly at my father’s framed picture. “Dong Soo Kim was a wonderful father, husband, Christian…,” the elder remarked. He concluded the service with prayer. I was nervous about what was supposed to come next, but was too sad to think about it seriously.
Suddenly, my aunt came up to me and grabbed my elbow to lift me out of my seat. “OK, let’s go,” she said softly. Before I could protest, she was leading me up the aisle, her hand firmly gripping my arm to make sure I couldn’t flee. As hundreds of solemn eyes looked on, I was marched out of the church like an inmate being led away to jail.
Once outside, I flung my arm out of my aunt’s grip and screamed at the top of my lungs.
***
I was raised Jehovah’s Witness. As a child, my mother would come to my room at the end of each day to kiss me goodnight. To lull me to sleep, she would stroke my hair and tell me how much she, my dad and God loved me. Then, just as I was drifting into slumber, she would abruptly add, “Jinah, remember, the devil walks about like a roaring lion, ready to devour people. If you don’t stay faithful to God, you become easy prey. Good night.”
As the rest of the house slept, I would lay there buried and sweating under my covers, picturing Satan lurking around my room, eyeing me hungrily. At my tender young age, I concluded that the only reason I was still alive in the morning was because I was a faithful Jehovah’s Witness.
And that I was. I embraced my faith with a fervor and zeal that was rivaled by few other Jehovah’s Witnesses my age. I gave public talks and participated actively in our tri-weekly meetings. I would go knocking door to door in my neighborhood, trying to convince everyone and anyone who would listen that Armageddon was coming soon, and that unless they too became Jehovah’s Witnesses, they were doomed to eternal death. I was the darling of my congregation, and I prepared myself for a future as a missionary. My parents were bursting with pride.
Then, during my junior year of high school, my parents lost their grocery store, which was our livelihood since immigrating to the U.S. Suddenly, we found ourselves near poverty, and I saw my parents struggling to find odd jobs to keep us fed and clothed. Frightened, I decided I never wanted to be in that same situation when I got older. I put my plans of becoming a missionary on hold, bought myself an SAT prep book and applied to college. I was accepted into UCLA.
Back then, Jehovah’s Witnesses opposed higher education, believing that it was a four-year investment in a world that was about to come to an end. My parents and the entire congregation tried to convince me not to go. But I remained firmly resolved, and for the first time in my life, left the comforts of home.
In college, I tried to stay active as a Jehovah’s Witness. But something was clearly changing my mind: It was losing its narrow, closed-mindedness as I absorbed fascinating information about the world around me. I was experiencing life as I never had before. By the time I graduated, I had all but left the religion, no longer able to tolerate its intolerant ways.
Two years after graduation, I was “disfellowshipped,” which essentially means I was excommunicated by the religion. Elders at my congregation discovered I had a male roommate. I didn’t know this was a reason for disfellowshipping; I found a place I liked and needed a roommate badly, and the only one who responded to the ad was a guy. But despite my protests and appeals, the elders publicly announced my fate at the next meeting, and the deed was done.
When you are disfellowshipped, no Jehovah’s Witness is allowed to speak to you. Even your own family members are encouraged to cut off communication. And so on the day of my father’s funeral, I could not stay in Kingdom Hall to mingle, accept condolences or represent my family. My mother was so afraid I would interact with Jehovah’s Witnesses that she had my aunt escort me out as soon as the prayer was over. That same year, I was kicked out of my grandmother’s funeral in much the same way.
Eventually, for the sake of making peace between my mother and myself, and because I could not bear the thought of not being able to attend my mother’s funeral when she dies, I decided to get the ban lifted. After six months of Jehovah’s Witness meetings and swearing that I’ve repented of all of my sins, I was “reinstated” into the congregation. With the big “D” figuratively un-stitched from my chest and having exchanged my shameful title for a clean one, I won my mother’s relief, and the ability to communicate with Witnesses again.
Still, in my heart, I had left the church long ago.
I don’t regret having grown up Jehovah’s Witness. I think I am stronger today because of it. And because my mother cannot live without the hope the religion provides, nor without the tight-knit community of like-minded people who encourage her emotionally and spiritually, I support her wholeheartedly in her way of life.
But for me, that chapter of my life is done. And for now, I think I’ll keep it that way.
Jinah Kim is a reporter for NBC News and KNBC in Los Angeles.
By Angela Hur Illustration by Noah Dempewolf
Movie pitch: After a failed relationship, a sassy girl and her fun-loving gal-pals climb aboard a love boat cruising the Caribbean. Nautical and naughty hijinks ensue. Reality: The day after my breakup, I get on a boat headed for Alaska with my sassy mom, her fun-loving gal-pal and 200 other elder Koreans. Drinking and gambling, senior citizen style, ensue.
It used to be easier getting out of relationships. Time markers like graduation or the season finale of a favorite show signaled an easy expiration date. A summer apart allowed the necessary separation, and the lack of narrative escalation emphasized the emotional stasis. But I’m no longer in school. So I moved the few things I had out of the Bay Area, where my ventures in both relationship and city had been a sublet anyway, and asked my mother to take me along on her Alaskan cruise. I had hoped the chilly sea and lack of Internet would help me sever ties and ice my wound.
As expected, I was the only twenty-something in the Korean contingent. Also expected, I was asked if I was married. Repeatedly. And although I thought I’d be embarking on a mother-daughter bonding trip, Mom ran around with her widow girlfriend having a blast while I stared into the vastness of the ocean pondering my insignificance and romantic ineptitude.
For the first couple days, we shot north at a fast clip surrounded by nothing but water and more water. I medicated myself with cocktails. As we slipped through the fjords, I circled the deck, watching the dusky sky reflected off the glassy water. When the boat surged ahead at night, the ocean churned below, frothing at the surface. Who knew there’d be so much visual metaphor for my broken psyche? As my mother instructed me to do, I tried to dump my negativity into the sea. In our wake, we left shuddering waves that rippled forever on out. While I sailed my sadness to the horizon, my mother giggled over her winnings at nickel slots.
Once we sailed further up north, everyone emerged from the cabins and dining halls in order to stand on deck and gaze at the mighty glaciers, which truth be told, were not as sublime as I’d imagined. Don’t get me wrong, the vista was impressive, and all that nature stuff is pretty damn wonderful, but it was difficult to retain that sense of grandeur when absolute strangers would drill me about my marital status.
Although there were 3,000 other people onboard, our Korean tour group did everything together and so we became like family, subject to internal criticism and speculation. I was a visible target, and an elderly couple even debated my physical worth in front of me. “She is not pretty,” said the woman, and her husband countered, “She is pretty.”
Understandably, for elderly Koreans, an unmarried woman of my age is more alarming than the ever-shrinking glaciers. After all, what did this spell for the future, our progeny? Spinster daughters languishing in loneliness! Polar bears scrambling to stay atop cracking ice floes! One was the greater fear and tragedy. The other was kind of funny. And so the tribal leaders of our community in exile granted me their wisdom.
One woman advised me to find a mediocre but nice guy, telling me that men needed to be trained like puppies on a leash. “I’m an educated woman, I’d like to have meaningful conversation, but a smart husband is tiresome. So I found a comfortable, quiet guy who lets me do what I want.”
Another woman informed me that her friend married a guy who died, then died, and then died again. I thought Rasputin was Russian, but upon more careful translation, I realized she meant her friend had been lucky to marry three great men, but unlucky to bury them in quick succession. “Every person has a different fate, and for a woman, so much of that destiny is determined by the man she meets.”
On the boat, we were this gaggle of anonymous Asians that hunkered down at the blackjack tables or crowded the sauna or allowed cuts in the buffet line to a fellow countryman. But when the ship docked, and we Koreans climbed aboard our day-tour buses, we became something else. The squabbling continued, of course. Whenever I passed the beauty judge couple: Is not pretty! Is too! But a greater intimacy was created as well. I became a secondary guide and translator, a shooter of pictures and hunter of bathrooms. I was the dutiful de facto daughter.
Behind me on the bus, a hand tapped my shoulder. The old gentleman behind me then said, “Young lady, do you want this candy?” He was the lone male escort to three ladies, and I later learned that the other husbands in their clique had passed away, creating this new dynamic where one dude trailed behind three lively girls.
The faces became more individual, and I was able to pick out whose visage I wanted to acquire some day. The history and suffering they endured during war and immigration and living didn’t need to be explained. What I wanted to know from one woman was how she retained a smile on her face while she dozed on our train ride up the snowy mountain pass.
I studied her lovely smile, lipsticked in red, wondering what the old lady with her tightly permed grey hair was dreaming as we climbed higher onto wintry terrain. This was the dangerous pass where those hoping to strike it rich carried a yearlong supply of provisions on their backs, requiring multiple trips as they trudged over the mountain into the Yukon.
My thoughts turned from roiling waters of uncertainty, the desperate cry of “Where the hell is my true love?” that fuels so many lame rom-coms, to the thick piles of hushed serenity that allow us to appreciate the view, or simply close our eyes and wait for another moment in which to open them.
I’d like to insert a quote of Yoda granny wisdom here, but instead of opening her mouth to speak, the woman with the smile shoved another piece of candy in my hand, gripped my fingers and, well, smiled. And it was more than enough. I wasn’t wondering anymore who’d I’d end up with, but how I’d end up myself. And lucky for me, I’d found her! She was the one I wanted and hoped to have enough patience to become. Even if her grin was simply a muscle reflex and nothing more.
Of course, it took a bit longer than a seven-day cruise with my mother and a bunch of Koreans to get over my break-up. But it was a good start, and the glaciers are still there, beautiful and glorious, despite the dread and worry and onslaught of time. And here I am, scrambling to get back on the ice, slipping a little, but clawing my way to stay afloat, looking both tragic and funny, which suits me just fine.
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