Chapter 21 Part Three: A Lonely and Long Voyage

Tragedy came to the door silently again. In the early morning of October 26, 1979, my father said, "Today I am going to attend the ceremony held in Zaqiaochuan."After I said goodbye to him, my father left Cheong Wa Dae, and it was the usual day.I also received VIPs at the Blue House that day and spent a busy day.My father returned to Cheong Wa Dae at about three o'clock in the afternoon. He heard the sound of the helicopter and knew that his father had returned. However, because of the visit of a distinguished guest, the meeting with his father was moved to dinner time.After the VIP went back, I went to find my father and found out that he had an appointment with other people in Gongjing Cave that night.In the past, when my father dined out, he would call in advance, but because I was meeting foreign guests that day, I told the secretary that I should have dinner at home first.

I watched the completion ceremony of Sahashigawa on TV that day.After pressing the button of the drainage gate, a huge column of water poured out from the gate, and my father showed a very satisfied expression when he saw this scene.I don't know why his face was extremely pale that day. Even though he watched it on a black and white TV, he could still see his father's pale face. Looking back now, his face didn't seem like a person who lived in this world.At that time, I only thought that my father's health might be a red light, and I had to pay more attention to his health. Later, the secretary who followed my father told me that many unusual things actually happened that day.He was clearly fully prepared, but the moment his father unveiled the curtain, the curtain on the memorial tower was only half drawn down.After the event, we went to the Dogo Onsen Tourist Hotel to have lunch, but the roe raised there heard the sound of his father's helicopter, jumped around in fright, and finally hit a tree and died.Maybe these things are just coincidence, but these situations did happen on that day.

I have a busy schedule the next day, so I decided to go to bed early.Around one thirty in the night, I was woken up by the phone ringing. "Please get up and get ready." Hearing the words of the secretary on the other side of the phone, a chill suddenly rose up my spine, and the scene of my mother being assassinated flashed like lightning in my mind. Later, Secretary Jin Guiyuan came to the mansion. "His Excellency the President has passed away." Hearing these words, my body froze instantly. "how so……" Secretary Jin Guiyuan briefly reported to me what happened that night.

"Are there any abnormalities ahead?" This sentence blurted out unconsciously. What I was worried about was the safety of the 38th parallel. Maybe I was worried that North Korea would launch an armed attack at the moment of my father's death. I don't remember how I got through that night. A terrible tranquility slowly surrounded me. At first it was just a chill, and then my whole body began to tremble continuously.When a person is hit too hard, I heard that you can't cry. I finally understood that night.Slowly the feeling all over the body gradually disappeared, as if being in a dizzying dream.

His father's body was moved back to Cheong Wa Dae at dawn and placed behind the screen where his mother's body was placed five years ago.At that moment, even if someone stabbed me in the back, I'm afraid I wouldn't feel any pain. Father's expression was very serene, as if sleeping in a very comfortable dream, very peaceful.I grasped my father's hand that had lost its warmth. This was the last farewell between father and daughter in this life.My father still has too many things to say to me, I wish I could cry like a child, telling him not to leave us behind. When I regained consciousness, I saw my brother who was crying loudly. He was afraid that the crying would be too loud, so he covered his mouth with his hands.I looked at him, and my heart felt like a torn pain.Tears kept streaming from Jin Ling's eyes. She looks strong and lively on the outside, but she is actually a very delicate child.So I hugged my younger siblings quietly, just like my father hugged us when my mother passed away, I hugged my family tightly.

I suddenly remembered what my father said to me on the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival when he came back from visiting my mother's cemetery.He said, "I really want to go, and I will go soon."Perhaps he had foreseen his own destiny at that time, and my heart ached even more when I thought of this. The mourning hall is set up in the reception room of the Blue House, and the funeral is held in the custom of mourning on nine days.We have prepared a separate incense place for the general public, and mourners have been pouring in from the day of the funeral.The line of people who came to the funeral surpassed the wall of Gyeongbokgung Palace, and there was no end in sight, and inside the Blue House, everyone, regardless of age, was crying into a ball.

During the day, I would first hide the pain in my heart to greet the mourners, but at night the pain would start to hit me.For several days I couldn't close my eyes at all, as if a nail had been knocked into my chest, the pain was so painful that I couldn't sleep.It didn't feel like reality to me, but like being chased by a nightmare in a dream. I don't know what's going on, my hands and feet are in severe pain as if they are about to be broken, and when I lift up the mourning clothes, I find that there are purple bruises everywhere on my arms, as if I've been hit by a stick, and there's more than one place, it looks like Like pulling out a cupping pot, there are big bruises from the shoulders to the soles of the feet.After Geunling, who was worried about me, came to see me in the room, he jumped up and asked me to go to the hospital as soon as possible, but it was inconvenient to do so at that time, so I decided to go to the infirmary inside Cheong Wa Dae.

"When you suddenly receive too much shock and mental pain, you will occasionally experience symptoms such as blood clots in one place." The doctor explained it from a medical point of view, but I couldn't listen to it at all.Anyway, as long as I can be sure that this disease will not kill me, I told the doctor that I understand.When I turned around and was about to leave the infirmary, I heard the doctor say to me in an urgent tone: "You must rest, you must rest well, or you will pass out in a short time." I went back to the incense place again.On the way to the incense place, a lady knelt in front of me and wept loudly.

"How could this be...God is so ruthless..." I helped the lady up.Perhaps from crying all day, her face was swollen and she looked exhausted.I asked others to take this lady to the infirmary, and then just quietly watched her back as if she was about to faint.Many people were as saddened by her father's death as she was. Those who came to the mourning hall were mourners who sincerely mourned, and for me, they were also people who needed to be thanked.After finishing the nine-day mourning, the people's mourning team continued uninterrupted, and the front of the Blue House was full of chrysanthemums.

I was washing the tie and shirt stained with my father's blood, and I couldn't hold back the grief and tears welling up in my heart.When the head of the secretary handed over the clothes to my father, they were covered with blood.Because of the first aid operation, there are still traces of being torn, looking at such clothes, my tears finally flowed down.Thinking of the scene when I washed the Hanbok stained with my mother's blood a few years ago, I fell to the ground weakly like this. Not just one, but both parents were shot and died - I hate this grim reality.Washing the clothes stained with my father's blood, I shed tears that night that most people would cry for a year.I was going through a time worse than death.