At Dan’s funeral, the pastor that gave the message said that he will pray for Julia and for Audrey, but not for Dan since he has gone to be with God and therefore is well taken care of. This more or less reflected my own views on the matter as well, and most of my thoughts since the tragedy concerned his family that remained here on earth. It was comforting to think that Dan hadn’t ceased to exist, but that only his earthly body had been destroyed while Dan’s soul persisted, or perhaps even existed in a more perfect way since it was now reunited with its creator. I have told Yuna pretty much this myself, and always made a point of correcting her whenever she said “Dan is dead” (which she said a lot, at completely random times; I think she knows that it is still very much in the minds of the parents). I would always correct her "no, Dan's body is dead".
But upon further reflection (or “musings”, as my friend Nicole would label them), I find the notion that Dan is currently happy and is in some peaceful and perfect place to be troubling and unsatisfactory. First of all, I have to assume that the soul continues to exist in a state of awareness and consciousness, and is not in some way “hibernating”. Otherwise, in what sense is the soul continuing its existence if it were somehow turned “off”, only to be turned back on at some later time? And if Dan’s soul is aware and conscious currently, I have to hazard a guess that it is NOT currently happy or at peace. On the contrary, I would imagine it to be in a state of sadness or even anger at what’s happened. How can his soul be resting in peace if he sees the sadness that Julia and family are going through, or the fact that he will not be an active part of the life of his young daughter? It is inconceivable to me that a loving father (Dan) can be happy and at peace or anything less than furious and in despair if he is separated from his wife and daughter for the remainder of their earthly lives.
No, I have to reconsider, and respectfully disagree with the proposition offered by the pastor at Dan’s funeral; I will also pray for Dan, that he will find comfort with God and that he will eventually find acceptance and peace (if not “understanding” since I can’t possibly imagine what that looks like). Julia and Audrey need practical help here amongst us, now and on a daily basis as they struggle to adjust their lives and grapple with this sudden and immense vacuum in their lives. But I have to believe that Dan, looking at us from his current place also needs our prayer and that God will comfort him just as we pray that God will comfort Julia and Audrey.
Monday, July 26, 2010
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
Dan Cho, Rest in Peace
I was on a rare overnight business trip to Syracuse when I got an early morning phone call in my hotel room. When I saw my wife’s name on the caller ID, I figured she was worried I’d oversleep for my 8AM meeting and was calling me to wake me up. She said something had happened to Dan, and while she didn’t know what it was she guessed something bad from the tenor of all the sudden “wall” postings on Dan’s Facebook page. I could tell from her voice that she was on the verge of tears. I told her not to jump to conclusions, and that we should wait to confirm the facts. The postings to Dan and Julia’s Facebook pages were all extremely ominous and I couldn’t help but think that whatever it was that happened, it was surely not good.
I could not get the sinking feeling out of my stomach as I sat in my meetings that day. I was paying cursory attention to the discussion at hand (about medical research equipment for a new laboratory building), but instead scouring the web for news about Dan. I couldn’t bring myself to contact Julia directly, as if her writing it down would ensure their permanence, but rather e-mailed several of Dan’s friends who seemed to know more at this point asking for any information. Soon, they e-mailed me back saying that Dan had apparently died in a swimming accident in Lake Geneva, Switzerland while touring with Regina Spektor.
I had just days before spoken with Dan. Korea had just beaten Nigeria 2-1 to advance to the knockout stage in the World Cup. Dan and I shared a passion for Korean World Cup soccer, and had been trying to get to Koreatown in NYC to watch the games together before he left on his tour. Dan did not make it out due to family commitments (“things are intense at home right now”, he texted), but we exchanged numerous texts during and after the game sharing our joy and our concerns about the team’s performance going forward. I had taken the “Chinatown” bus from Albany to NYC with the sole purpose of watching Korea play, and had been rallying for Dan to join me.
Over the next day or two, the news came out to confirm the facts: Dan had gone swimming in the lake with a friend and had drowned. The e-mails were pouring out to Dan and Julia’s “walls” on Facebook expressing consolation, disbelief, shock on the one hand and love and concern for Julia and their young daughter on the other.
What can I say about Dan? He was a very talented musician. And by that, I don’t mean an aspiring one, but a bona fide musician that has toured with several very well known artists, having appeared on popular TV shows and played in many venues across the US. He was also a passionate and knowledgeable soccer fan, and was in the midst of serving as a blogger covering the Korean World Cup team for ESPN. He was a relatively newlywed husband and proud father of a beautiful daughter. The love in his heart for Audrey showed so plainly on his face whenever he was near her or was talking about her. But most of all, Dan was an incredibly kind and humble person. Despite clearly approaching near-celebrity status with his frequent tours and appearances, he was always deferential and humble when talking about his music.
Fast forward to the wake; it is a blisteringly hot day. My family has driven in from Albany that afternoon after I took the afternoon off work. We had the “talk” with Yuna about how Dan has died and we are going to view his body. This gets into the tricky question of where is Dan now and if his body is here dead, in what form is Dan? I weakly offer that Dan’s soul has gone back to God, but it is not very satisfactory to Yuna.
Dan’s death, along with the birth of my children has made it essential to believe in the eternal life of the soul. After my children were born, I realized that even a lifetime is not enough. The thought of ever being apart from my children was so painful that I had no choice but to believe in eternal life in order to function and enjoy my time here in this life. While this is comforting on some level, it is woefully inadequate when someone like Dan is taken so young, with so much of his life ahead of him and leaving behind a wife and a toddler daughter.
This young family had a lifetime of love and happiness to look forward to, and suddenly without so much as a hastily shouted “fore!” or a glimpse of a blurry object, Dan is taken away while halfway around the world. Julia has commented on how the soccer jerseys that Dan loved to wear still bear his scent, how his daughter would say “appa, appa” (daddy in Korean) and take them out. I still have texts that I exchanged with Dan following the soccer games in my phone. Dan’s blog entries are still just a couple weeks old on ESPN. Yet, everything has changed forever in an unspeakably sad way.
A lifetime later, we will be reunited with Dan and we will cry and laugh and again enjoy his presence, resume our relationships. For now, we are only left with angry and unanswered questions, lives turned upside down and shattered into a million fragments without reason or warning. We can only hope that the future still holds joy and that we can laugh together again. We’ll miss you Dan.
I could not get the sinking feeling out of my stomach as I sat in my meetings that day. I was paying cursory attention to the discussion at hand (about medical research equipment for a new laboratory building), but instead scouring the web for news about Dan. I couldn’t bring myself to contact Julia directly, as if her writing it down would ensure their permanence, but rather e-mailed several of Dan’s friends who seemed to know more at this point asking for any information. Soon, they e-mailed me back saying that Dan had apparently died in a swimming accident in Lake Geneva, Switzerland while touring with Regina Spektor.
I had just days before spoken with Dan. Korea had just beaten Nigeria 2-1 to advance to the knockout stage in the World Cup. Dan and I shared a passion for Korean World Cup soccer, and had been trying to get to Koreatown in NYC to watch the games together before he left on his tour. Dan did not make it out due to family commitments (“things are intense at home right now”, he texted), but we exchanged numerous texts during and after the game sharing our joy and our concerns about the team’s performance going forward. I had taken the “Chinatown” bus from Albany to NYC with the sole purpose of watching Korea play, and had been rallying for Dan to join me.
Over the next day or two, the news came out to confirm the facts: Dan had gone swimming in the lake with a friend and had drowned. The e-mails were pouring out to Dan and Julia’s “walls” on Facebook expressing consolation, disbelief, shock on the one hand and love and concern for Julia and their young daughter on the other.
What can I say about Dan? He was a very talented musician. And by that, I don’t mean an aspiring one, but a bona fide musician that has toured with several very well known artists, having appeared on popular TV shows and played in many venues across the US. He was also a passionate and knowledgeable soccer fan, and was in the midst of serving as a blogger covering the Korean World Cup team for ESPN. He was a relatively newlywed husband and proud father of a beautiful daughter. The love in his heart for Audrey showed so plainly on his face whenever he was near her or was talking about her. But most of all, Dan was an incredibly kind and humble person. Despite clearly approaching near-celebrity status with his frequent tours and appearances, he was always deferential and humble when talking about his music.
Fast forward to the wake; it is a blisteringly hot day. My family has driven in from Albany that afternoon after I took the afternoon off work. We had the “talk” with Yuna about how Dan has died and we are going to view his body. This gets into the tricky question of where is Dan now and if his body is here dead, in what form is Dan? I weakly offer that Dan’s soul has gone back to God, but it is not very satisfactory to Yuna.
Dan’s death, along with the birth of my children has made it essential to believe in the eternal life of the soul. After my children were born, I realized that even a lifetime is not enough. The thought of ever being apart from my children was so painful that I had no choice but to believe in eternal life in order to function and enjoy my time here in this life. While this is comforting on some level, it is woefully inadequate when someone like Dan is taken so young, with so much of his life ahead of him and leaving behind a wife and a toddler daughter.
This young family had a lifetime of love and happiness to look forward to, and suddenly without so much as a hastily shouted “fore!” or a glimpse of a blurry object, Dan is taken away while halfway around the world. Julia has commented on how the soccer jerseys that Dan loved to wear still bear his scent, how his daughter would say “appa, appa” (daddy in Korean) and take them out. I still have texts that I exchanged with Dan following the soccer games in my phone. Dan’s blog entries are still just a couple weeks old on ESPN. Yet, everything has changed forever in an unspeakably sad way.
A lifetime later, we will be reunited with Dan and we will cry and laugh and again enjoy his presence, resume our relationships. For now, we are only left with angry and unanswered questions, lives turned upside down and shattered into a million fragments without reason or warning. We can only hope that the future still holds joy and that we can laugh together again. We’ll miss you Dan.
Saturday, July 3, 2010
Listening to Car Talk: SL 500 VS $50 a month?
Someone recently called in to the NPR show "Car Talk" complaining of leaking anti freeze coming through their air conditioner/heater in the car. The hosts offered up a diagnosis which involved replacing the parts in question to the tune of several hundred dollars. The caller sounded hesitant and revealed that this was a sum of money they did not have. The hosts of the show recommended a cheaper, interim solution of sealing up the hoses (which would also also mean they have no heat/AC) and also recommended setting aside $50 a month until they have the money to do the full repair.
The next caller was a lady asking for advice on picking a car for her nephew's 16th birthday. She was concerned that her first choice, a Mini Cooper Type "S" was deemed too girly by the nephew. In choosing her car, she said she had been requested to keep it below $25,000. The hosts suggested the Honda Element. Later in the conversation, the caller revealed the she herself was also about to complete a purchase of her own new vehicle of a Mercedes SL 500, a roughly $100,000 car.
Gifting a car is an extravagant measure by almost any standard, but the stark contrast between these two back to back callers in very different financial circumstances underscored this difference further. One caller could not afford to repair a leaky heating/AC system that was introducing anti-freeze in to the cabin of the car. The other needed advice on selecting a sub $25,000 car for her nephew's 16th birthday. I got the feeling that the second caller, the one who was in the market for two brand new vehicles could have paid for the repairs of the first caller with the money in her wallet. But that is not the point of the show.
In what way does the abundant availability of a resource by one individual/family in any way relate to the dire need for the same resource in another? The hosts of Car Talk did not comment on the two callers. The show is primarily about "cars, car repairs", not a social commentary. Is the progressive tax system an infrastructure to address situations like this? Or should this be the prerogative of the more well to do to give to charities or other mechanisms as they see fit?
The next caller was a lady asking for advice on picking a car for her nephew's 16th birthday. She was concerned that her first choice, a Mini Cooper Type "S" was deemed too girly by the nephew. In choosing her car, she said she had been requested to keep it below $25,000. The hosts suggested the Honda Element. Later in the conversation, the caller revealed the she herself was also about to complete a purchase of her own new vehicle of a Mercedes SL 500, a roughly $100,000 car.
Gifting a car is an extravagant measure by almost any standard, but the stark contrast between these two back to back callers in very different financial circumstances underscored this difference further. One caller could not afford to repair a leaky heating/AC system that was introducing anti-freeze in to the cabin of the car. The other needed advice on selecting a sub $25,000 car for her nephew's 16th birthday. I got the feeling that the second caller, the one who was in the market for two brand new vehicles could have paid for the repairs of the first caller with the money in her wallet. But that is not the point of the show.
In what way does the abundant availability of a resource by one individual/family in any way relate to the dire need for the same resource in another? The hosts of Car Talk did not comment on the two callers. The show is primarily about "cars, car repairs", not a social commentary. Is the progressive tax system an infrastructure to address situations like this? Or should this be the prerogative of the more well to do to give to charities or other mechanisms as they see fit?
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