Reporter's comment : At the end of last year, I heard the news that the healing space of the Sewol ferry family'neighbors' was about to close. The corona-related farewell party was unpredictable, and the situation was informing the surrounding people. Those who know what this space means to the Sewol ferry family will know. When I thought that my neighbor was disappearing so quietly, a corner of my heart was lonely and empty. I thought it was necessary to record even the minimum contents of how this space could appear in our world and how to do so. On the 6th, I stopped by a neighbor in Wa-dong, Danwon-gu, Ansan-si. We met Lee Young-ha, who had watched the birth and end of our neighbors, and had a conversation for over two hours. The following is the record. |
The'neighbor' closes the door.
Since it opened in September 2014, it has been 6 years and 5 months.
If I went to the neighborhood, I could get a meal even if it wasn't time for meals.
When you take off your shoes and sit on the floor, you will quickly find warm rice, soup, and neat chan on the soban.
Even if I don't explain in detail who I am or why I came here, Bob just comes out.
Until the end of the prize, people in the same space simply focus on what they are doing instead of giving attention to the person who eats.
Someone chatted and knit next to the piles of thread piled up like a mountain, while others arranged dishes and trimmed herbs in the kitchen.
When you're done eating, just bring the prize to the kitchen and you're done.
You can go back the way you were going, or you can stay a little longer.
When I see someone I am familiar with, I sit next to them and participate in conversations, make a cup of coffee, and sit bruising for hours.
It was possible to spend time together and separately in the neighborhood.
It looks free without rules, as if everything moves by itself, but everyone in the neighborhood knows.
For this powerful and safe comfort that I feel every time I come here, I know that a lot of people are looking after me at close range.
They observe and support each other's condition with sense and energy.
A table of rice handed over without a word contained greetings from countless people.
Young-Ha Lee/ Representative of the healing space'Neighbors'
: I always set a table whenever anyone comes.
After a long period of time, I know which day of the week there are a lot of people.
Before that, I was worried about how many people were coming.
Reporter: What should I do if the amount I prepared is insufficient.
Representative Lee Young-ha
: Yes, fortunately, our
manager
is fast.
On Wednesdays, you can cook more, and one day, you can prepare how much.
If you don’t have anything, you can boil even the burnt.
People with acquaintances come mainly.
On days when many mothers come, twenty-some people come like this.
There are about 10 fixed members, and the rest are jagged.
There is a mother who has not seen it and saw it right after the accident, but it has been a few years, and there is a mother who has been here for a year but starts coming out again.
'Oh, how did you come?'
'long time no see?'
In this case, he says,'I know that I have the door open all the time, so I passed by and came in.'
I'm trying to close it, so the most worrying thing is the bereaved mothers who sometimes come.
One day, when you suddenly stopped by and found out that your neighbor had closed and disappeared, what would you feel?
I'm worried that there might be anyone coming after hearing the news.
I've been contacting my mothers a few weeks ago to inform them that we are closing.
The reaction was "Something to come", "I endured a lot".
The family had a foreboding.
From 3 years ago, "We have a year-end party, mothers come." Then, "Are you closing the door now?"
Do this.
"No why are you closing the door?"
If you say, "I thought it was a party to gather together".
Like us, my family, and the people who took me, I endured like that and came all the way here.
The'birthday gathering' was especially an opportunity for neighbors to be widely known to the public.
On the birthday of the children who died in the tragedy, family, friends, and villagers gathered here to remember the child and share memories.
It was also a place that became the motif of the movie'Birthday (2019, Director: Lee Jong-eon)'.
[…
] The birthday meeting scene, the peak of the movie, is also a meeting of'knowledge'.
In fact, this is the reason for having a birthday meeting at'Healing Space Neighbors' in Ansan.
At that time, the poets who participated in the meeting listened for a long time to the story of the victim student's life, and then wrote a poem in the voices of the children and released it at the birthday party.
Communities that have organized birthday meetings over a long period of time learn about children one by one.
The same goes for parents who find out what they didn't know.
It connects with the community by paying attention to who is the friend who writes letters or brings out memories for the children who have left.
Like Sun-nam, the parents who were crouching in their prison get help little by little.
Like the dialogue in the drama, "Everyone who knows," Su-ho did not notice, so he ran out of food at his friend's house. "Everyone who knows, knows," gave the life jacket to his friend that day, and went into the water to save another friend.
It also means that a person who does not know is a story that he does not know.
They start mourning by knowing and confessing their memories.
As other people's knowledge that I did not know gathers and pieces of memory fit together, mourning, which I seldom catches, takes shape.[1]
Reporter: Did you hold a children's birthday party recently?
Representative Lee Young-ha
: Birthday meetings are rarely held anymore.
It would be nice, but somehow.
Reporter: Do you still look like this?
Representative Lee Young-ha
: There are such things...
As time passes, it becomes difficult for mothers to talk to their children.
I always want to talk about my child the most, but it seems that there are many things that have been hurt by the surrounding reactions to'Stop it now.'
Also, when I had a birthday meeting, I called my friends, but now I am a little careful about calling them.
Reporter: My friends may have been away from the city for college.
Representative Lee Young-ha
: There are things that are sorry, there are fears, and there are various hearts.
So, from 3 years ago, I've been holding an event called'My Day' with mothers as the main characters.
The mother, not the child, becomes the main character and talks.
After leaving the child, I want to hear the story of you who is living in the present day. If you do so, even if you want to tell a story about yourself, you will eventually hear about the child.
In addition, there are stories of the feelings of self holding up and the family members left behind.
Mothers hesitate at first, but after that, they love it.
You hear the heart of the bereaved family that you know only vaguely by guesswork.
Local residents, volunteers, and representatives of related organizations who would like to hear about this mother come mainly.
Reporter: It cannot be generalized, but at this point in 2021, how are the mothers' hearts?
If my friends were alive, I would have been in my fourth year of college.
Representative Lee Young-ha
: If they are the same, they are the same, and if they are different, they are different.
But I don't see mothers crying as much as before.
Reporter: Yes.
Representative Lee Young-ha
: After
cooking for
about 3 years, one person is crying when I look back, and when I go to another place for a while, another person is crying.
Even now, there are occasional mothers who cry.
However, there are days when no one cries.
When one person cries, everyone cries, so be patient with consideration for each other.
When I cry, it is difficult to do my daily life on that day.
I worry that other family members will know that I cry and will use my heart.
And what's different is that the story that has always been repeated from about 2-3 years ago has stopped a bit.
There is always a repertoire.
Reporter: About the child?
About the child's memory?
Representative Lee Young-ha
: Most of the mothers talked a lot about the optometrist.
When a child first comes out of the water, the scene when he faces the child, and the process of the child's burning even to find the child.
Talking about and checking what clothes he was wearing, what kind of spots he had on his body, and chasing him because he wanted to be my child whenever something appeared on the billboard.
Infinitely repeat the appearance of the child and the funeral process you saw at that time.
It is very detailed and detailed like a movie in which the scene flows slowly.
The smell of the child, the sound of that time, the feeling of the hand holding me crying, and the light of the light at the moment of fainting.
Almost all mothers did.
So, all the volunteers here are enough to memorize.
Whose mother's son was when, and whose mother's daughter came out in a few days, and who was dark.
Something like that.
Reporter: It was a difficult moment to handle, so I had to take it easy.
Young-Ha Lee
: I think I could only breathe if I kept
talking and talking
constantly.
Is that so that I can escape the moment I couldn't bear?
You were half crazy waiting for the child to be found in the gym day and night.
The sound that many mothers and fathers were crying at the same time in the gym still reminds me of it and talks a lot about it.
Even if I have spoken more than ten times, I have seen countless times when I say the same thing over and over again as I did the first time.
One mother talks, the next mother, and the next mother tells about her experiences.
The listeners continue to listen to it as if they were listening for the first time.
And then we cry together.
I needed such a time.
For a while, I listened to the tape several times so that I thought it was going to be stretched, but from a certain moment I started to feel weak.
Little by little.
It comes out occasionally.
Still, if you listen to mothers' stories while doing My Day...
The pain remains the same.
The more time passed, the longer the time spent without meeting the child.
I want to see more, I want to touch more.
There's a lot of loneliness and a sense of loss that people are forgetting about my child, the fact that people agree and sympathize with my pain is on the decline.
Reporter: Even if a neighbor closes, it would be nice if a public institution could take over this program and proceed.
On the one hand, they have a lot of different personalities.
For example, can mothers have such private and intimate stories in programs conducted in public institutions?
Young-Ha Lee, CEO
: I hope that public institutions will also play the role that neighbors have played in the future.
They have different personalities, but these institutions have been together for a long time, so you will know the hearts of the bereaved family well.
Of course, the approach is very different.
Because public institutions are in hospital mode.
Reporter: I think I have to give you an answer.
Youngha Lee, CEO
: Because we see the bereaved family as patients and targets for treatment.
There are many programs, but at the peak there is a doctor.
It seems to have to be a little different because the rest of the programs are performed in parallel based on the doctor's treatment.
The problem that needs to be improved when you receive care, you approach it like this.
We were in a structure without a healer.
You and I are the same, and I am no better than you.
'I am not an expert' was the basic premise.
All you can do is listen to the story and cry together.
Sometimes it's rice, and maybe it's knitting together.
The rice we eat together looks simple, but it's not.
Public institutions in charge of healing eat rice like us.
But there, I have to reveal my name and sign before eating.
You have to join the drinking water staff, and you may not be able to eat if you don't talk in advance.
The act of eating'rice' as a substance is the same, but it cannot be exactly the same.
It will feel like eating in a cafeteria or something like that.
Public funding is in place, so administrative procedures are needed.
Fortunately, there are also a lot of employees who want to somehow bring warmth into it.
Reporter: Was there any background in which mothers who came to neighbors continued to knit?
Representative Lee Young-ha
: There is a sister who came as a knitting teacher at first.
These are the people who volunteered for a long time at Warak (* Ssangyong Motor Workers' Psychological Healing Center).
Warak also had a knitting meeting.
At first, we started lightly as we wanted to try it.
But I didn't know that the mothers would be so enthusiastic.
It floats day and night.
'Why would you do it like that?
I was wondering.
Immediately after the accident, the bereaved family could not lie down or sit down.
I stayed up all night with my eyes open with crazy anxiety and irresistible emotions.
At such times, if you hold the knitting, you can concentrate and stop even for a moment.
The strange thing about knitting is simple, repetitive movements, but it can't be done without immersion, so I think I was able to concentrate and relax for a while.
In addition, it seems that there was also a place where the desire to touch the child was replaced with knitting.
Now it has a different meaning than then.
Knitting meetings can also be a medium to chat with people all day long.
You can't talk that long after a cup of tea, but if you hold the knitting, you can really talk without being awkward all day long.
Some people do not interact with people around them after the disaster.
There were many wounds from acquaintances who did not understand the heart of the bereaved family well.
But here, three or three mothers who have the same pain come together and get to know each other's news.
As we talk about the embarrassing moments and sufferings we experienced while living as a bereaved family, we learn how we coped with each other.
Since the knitting meeting served as a meeting terminal, many regret it.
When the neighbor disappears, where do we meet in the future?
(Continued from episode 2)
[1] <Birthday> Sharing the sentiment of mourning, Cine21, Song Hyeong-guk
http://www.cine21.com/news/view/?mag_id=92787