"My heart is at peace."
These are the words aesthetician Kim Jin-young left behind just before his death.
When I read that one line, printed so that it seemed to use every bit of the page, I could not close the book for a while.
To be at peace. It sounds simple, but it is very difficult. Even more so in a time like this.
As we live our days, the heart is constantly in motion. Hope and anxiety, anger, impatience, regret. We try to keep our balance while being pulled by emotions we cannot fully control. That is why I was deeply struck by how one comes to a state of mind at the end of life where one can simply say, "I am at peace."
Kim Jin-young's posthumous collection Morning Piano is a diary that traces the days from the moment he was told he had cancer until his death.
It does not record only quiet acceptance. There is bewilderment and sadness, anger, and a refusal to give up. The emotions swing back and forth again and again, and each time they are written down in words.
But as you keep reading, change gradually begins to appear.
What starts as long passages becomes shorter and shorter. A style that feels like an essay eventually turns into fragments, and in the end only a few lines of poetry-like words remain.
As if everything unnecessary were being quietly stripped away. As if the soul were quietly leaving the body. The words grow shorter and shorter, losing their outline as they sink to a deeper place. That process was beautiful.
Perhaps people do not simply end all at once in a single moment. While remaining in the body, they drift farther and farther away. Their outlines slowly come undone. Morning Piano recorded that quiet transition.
After closing the book, I found myself thinking.
At the end of life, what does a person think about?
I don't know the answer. But strangely, I thought that maybe, after all, it is the scenery of "now."
A casual conversation with family. The evening light streaming through the studio window. The quiet breathing of a cat napping on the living room sofa. A dining table with steam rising from it. Small days that might be overlooked in the middle of busyness.
Perhaps those are the things we later remember and think, "Ah, that was enough. That was good." Or perhaps we simply hope that we will be able to feel that way.
I still don't know when that day will come. But I do find myself looking forward to it a little.