Tell them

The lovely cherry trees are blossoming along the Yangjae Cheon, and it's spring. And a bitter, wintry wind blows every day.

Today was supposed to be our school's field trip; we were going to Lotte World, the amusement park. But when we got to school, we found that one of our students had been hit and killed by a car last evening.

He was a very nice kid, a sophomore, whom I had in my English class last year.

Instead of Lotte World, the rented buses took the teachers and almost all the students to a meeting room at the hospital in Bundang to pay our respects to the family. Based on the original purpose of my blog, I should tell you all of the fascinating cultural details of how such things are done here; but the grief was so raw and so deep that it would feel almost obscene to cheapen it with some kind of touristy retelling.

Instead, please remember the last time someone you know died unexpectedly, and it seemed so unreal, and how everyone said to tell the people you love how you feel, because you never know... and how maybe you forgot the principle a couple of days later.

Tell them now.