200620-The grave by the seaside of Judo Island

The grave in Judo Island

1.

On a sunny day, take a boat ride through the sea in front of the island. You may come across an extravagant idea you want to be buried someday later by the seaside of the island facing the sunny and tranquil sea. It is said that every sailor passing the sea off the island comes to turn his eyes toward the coastal scenery there which is rarely beautiful and regard the seaside as a propitious site for a grave. Sure enough, there is a grave by the seaside of the island. Perhaps it would remind you of a piece of the poem,' The grave by the seaside'by Faul Valery. 실제로 작은 해안 도시 프랑스 남부 세트에는 해변의 묘지가 있다. 그리고 그 해변의 묘지에 발레리는 묻혀있다. 생명력이 넘치는 푸르고 투명한 지중해와 무수한 묘지의 풍경은 삶과 죽음의 경계를 상징하는 듯하다

It is as ffollows

".......

.......

When sunlight rests upon a profound sea,

Time's air is sparkling, dream is certainty

.....

....."

More than that, the grave has remained safe as what it used to be for more than a century, for in front of the grave stands a huge mass of blackish volcanic rocks as a kind of the strong breakwater defending it against even tremendously high waves caused by storms. By the way, in the end it has suffered heave damages two times by two big tidal waves flowing over the breakwater. It was hit 20 years ago by the first one and well remodelled .And 10 years later it was hit again heavely to be under the condition of partial destrustion.

In the grave is one of the old man's predecessors buried. For a long time to these days he has visited it every year in order to pay tribute to it, beginning in his boyhood to follow his father as the oldest of the family and other relatives and then as the next eldest grandson since his father's death.

He has loved the seaside of the uninhabited island , about 10 minutes or so away by boat from the quayside a village in Masan. Compared with any other sea around Masan bay, the sea there has stayed relatively clear in water quality and there he would on rare occasions fish from a boat. When he took a boat to reach the island, he always would sorry not to get fishing equipments ready, saying to himself ," I should have come here with a simple rod to fish."

One day in Spring he has been by boat to Judo island, accompanied by Mr. Yung Eel Kim living in Daegu, a small seashore village near to the island, who has managed the grave since 1960 s, together with two 2 men especially , a local historian named Mr. Yung Ju Park and a sundry labour to show them the grave, for on coming May he is due to make his last farewell ritual to the grave,which ritual is to be followed by the day's main thing ,that is, to opening it to burn the bones in it to ashes.

It needed quite a few years of pains for him to make up his mind to burn the bones in it to ashes. As previously stated,10 years ago when the grave was heavily damaged again, naturally he had his mind to have to fix the damaged grave sooner or later, as he had done so in the earlier case . Then under this or that reason he has put the job off year after year.

By the way, He was not a little confused over the job, getting more and more conscious that he would return into nothing in a moment in the near future as he himself was already in the latter half of his 70s and that after him nobody could be in charge of the grave. Realistically his only son living in LA was unavailable and there close relatives indifferent to the grave lived in other cities. Without him ,needless to say, the grave would be deserted in the uninhabited island ,even though the ownership of the seaside area is under his late grandfather. So he had a mind that is inclined not to repair it but inevitably to make it nonexistent as he had done so in the previous cases of the graves for not oly his grandfather but also his parents. Most of all now it would be a decisive reason that he could find no one in the village who wanted to look after the grave in place of Mr. Kim. He had informed the old man that he could do the job no more.

For a while there was an internal conflict in his mind on which would he take between the former or the latter prior to his final decision to take the former. Frankly speaking, in the beginning he wished to keep the grave as it used to be conserved. because to him personally his love of the beautiful sea scenery there was prior to his conventional responsibility as the eldest grandson .

그리하여 며칠 전에는 그 섬에 묻힌 6대조부와의 고별의식으로 장손으로서 낭독할 제문을 전래의 격식에서 벗어난 아래의 서한으로 대치할 마음의 준비까지 해 놓았던 그이기도하다.

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