💌 414. Recalling a Series of Events That Led to My Death

My life, whether it be short or long, was losing its vitality like a flickering candle. Death did not seem very distant to me from a very young age when I did not even know what death was. The countless hours of my lonely struggle between death and life continued to be played before my eyes like scenes of a movie.

When I was very young, my mother took me to the waterside several times, telling me to die with her. At that time, I did not know what it was to live or to die. But I wanted to live and at the same time, I wanted to die too. But when I, as a young girl, stood right in front of death, I realized that I really wanted to live. I did not know why I wanted to live but I never wanted to die.

Now that I was facing death, however, I was once again pondering over the feelings of the little girl that I had been. What did that little girl know that made her so reluctant to die?

The old film (My life story) unfolding before me, as I faced death, consisted of fragments of painful memories. The mere recalling them felt like digging up the live flesh of my being mercilessly.

When I was six, I ate a very little bit of rice cake that someone gave me. After that, I felt something wrong with my body, left all alone for three days in such a state, unable to eat or drink, only throwing up. When my mother came back home in four days, she was shocked and tried all kinds of medicine and methods to treat me but I was only dying. Even a well-known doctor said that there was no hope for me to survive so my mother in the depths of despair took me to a spring saying we should die together.

As soon as my head was submerged under the water, I was suddenly afraid of being drowned to death in the spring. So I promised my mother that I would eat food and came back home alive. But when I ate food, I vomited it again, even yellowish bile juice. There was a superstition that went, ‘If you eat the food offered to the ancestral rites when you are sick, you will be cursed to death.’ Then, my mother gave me the ritual rice cake, thinking, ‘Given that her life is soon coming to an end, let me try to feed her this ritual rice cake at least.’ To her surprise, however, I survived after eating it.

One day in the cold winter of the same year when my mother was away for peddling, my maternal uncle extracted my left permanent molar using pliers. As the molar was pulled, a significant amount of the pieces of flesh inside of my mouth also came off with it. I felt so much pain that I burst into tears and went to the rented room that my mother and I lived in, but as I lost so much blood, I passed out.

I was bleeding alone in an ice-cold room for three days and I died. Then, an elderly man appeared and slapped my buttock with his hand, bringing me back to life. At that moment, I opened my eyes and saw my mother, who had just returned home on the fourth day, crying because I had died.

Also, when I was a 4th grader in elementary school, my friend Joemja and her mother beat me almost to death, leaving me covered in blood. And one day, when my mother was not around, I built a fire alone in the furnace. But some of the firewood was from poison ivy, so I was poisoned with lacquer. When I was lying in my room, even unable to take a sip of water for three days, thereby lapsing into a coma and dying, my mother came home from peddling and cried because I had been dead with my body already cold. Then, a long-bearded elderly man appeared to me and said, "Baby, wake up quickly" and I came back to life.

When I told my mother about it, she exclaimed, "Oh my, your grandfather saved your life." But now when I am writing about this incident, it was God who saved my life. It was not only that. When I was a 5th grader in the elementary school, I fell from a swing and died of cerebral haemorrhage but I was revived three days later when I heard, "Dear baby, it is not the time yet. So hurry back to your mother who gave birth to you and is raising you."

The incident in Bonghwang county that while riding a bicycle at full speed due to a brake failure down a steep road, Jangdameoni, I fell from a 4-meter high cliff into a rocky waterway and died. I was revived when I heard a friendly voice saying, "Should you not get up quickly and continue on your way without stopping, dear?" The incident in Wando county, when I was single, I fell into the sea, drowned to death, but I came back to life!

In another memory that one pharmacist continued to follow me around, asking me to marry him. When I refused his proposal, he told me that he would become like a vampire to drain the life from me. When he even threw a large, heavy lantern at me, my mother hit it like lightning and saved me from immediate death. There was another man who desperately chased after me, saying that he would marry me. To avoid him, I went to an island and got a job in a beauty parlor there. But the owner did not pay me wages for months, so I left the beauty parlor. But I got caught by the owner and three men, beaten to death with wooden square bars, bleeding from my whole body. Yet, I miraculously came back to life.

When I was running Yoko Academy, my partners formed a conspiracy against me to avoid paying me my money. The director's wife and mother beat me to the point where my whole body was covered with blood. I bled profusely and fell to the ground completely unconscious. But to my surprise, I recovered and survived.

And also, when I was pregnant with my first child, my husband came home late at night after drinking too much. As the smell of his alcohol was so strong in the small room, I stayed out in the beauty parlor. At that time, I lost consciousness and collapsed from coal briquette gas. Despite myself, I was led to an elderly man with a shining white beard. When he blew his breath into me, I flew up lightly and landed to the floor of the beauty parlor. The bucket on the sink that no one had touched fell over, thereby making me wake up and survive.

The memory that I kept earning money to support my husband’s family, so even with my second pregnancy, I could not have proper meals, only worried too much about many things. It felt like I could die at any moment but a kind doctor with a shining silver beard gave me three times of acupuncture with large needles and saved my life. 

In another occasion that when I was pregnant with the third child, my family moved into my parents-in-law’s house. But the pregnancy ended in miscarriage on the second month. Yet, I could not go to a hospital due to lack of money. As a result, I bled profusely in lumps for five months but I continued to work even in such a frail state.

To my relief, my bleeding stopped thanks to an herbal medicine that my mother prepared. Then, while I was giving a free perm to a poor neighbor despite my pain, I collapsed and died with my body turning cold. I even excreted urine and feces. At that time, I came to my senses and survived when I heard a soft and kind voice saying, “You should get up quickly and finish what you are doing?”

The sad incident that after having a forced abortion against my will, I lost a huge amount of blood, underwent another operation again 7 days later but I died the very next day with my body hardened like a stone. At that very moment that I died, I was walking along a path of flowers with a beautiful view. Then, I came back to life after hearing the words, “It is not the time yet, so hurry back.”

Another memory that when I heard my husband’s sworn brother say to my husband, “Cast out your sick wife and I will make you marry a virgin.” and when my mother-in-law, grandmother-in-law, and younger mother-in-law joined forces with a fortune-teller to drive me out, I thought that sacrificing myself was the way for everyone to be at peace.

So, I chose to die and went into a reservoir. When my face was about to sink under the water, I heard a stern solemn voice saying, “What are you going to do, leaving behind your poor mother?” Then, I abandoned the idea of ending my life.

Also, after suffering labor pain every 1 to 2 minutes over a three months and seven days period, I gave birth to my third child but since I lost almost all the blood in my body, I died. Then, a very generous man with a long, white, and glittering beard blew his breath into me 15 times, bringing me back to life. Besides, three months after the surgery, gauze covered in blood and pus burst out of my abdomen... And above all, cancer had been with me for a whopping seven years!

As the lumps of cancer even protruded outside the anus and spread to my throat, it was impossible for me to drink water or defecate, but it was thanks to God's care that I had been alive so far. Numerous stories from my past life, where an indescribably elaborate and cruel noose of death tightened me, even around the very tip of my chin... They came to mind one after another but I cannot list them all.

“I have endured my weary life until this day and life has been too tenacious to end. However, I felt that my life is indeed coming to an end. Is the bitter cup of life a poisonous cup of death that I have to drink? I might have been prolonging my life, though all the signposts around me always pointed to the same conclusion, which was death. This time, I was facing an inevitable death.”

Even amidst it, however, gratitude to God welled up in my heart. When I looked back on the countless hardships of death that had persisted throughout my life since I was young, I felt that it was thanks to God that I had been able to manage my life until then. That was why I was so grateful.

How I had experienced such incredible events, not just once but countless times! What would it be other than a miracle that I had been alive until then? But at the same time, I was drifting in the middle of the violently raging and suffocating storm of death as if my spirit had been lost to brokenness. Now that I had reached the final threshold of death, I was completely stranded with no way out.

The only name I could call upon was God. “God, cover my soul with Your great Wings. Please be my refuge. Please save my soul from this dark, deep depths, as I have depended on you since my childhood!”