Something kept happening at my dad's memorial portrait. I don't know what to think.

I wasn't going to post this but.

Last month, my dad killed himself.

We don't know why. Not family, not his closest friends. Nobody. Turns out he had an insane amount of debt that none of us knew about. Which makes no sense because we're not poor. We're not the kind of family that drowns in debt. We have no idea who he borrowed from, or why, or for who. The only thing we can figure is that he was just... too good a person. That someone took advantage of him and he ended up holding a debt that wasn't really his. Did someone threaten him? Did he feel like there was no way out? Was he trying to pay it off with life insurance money?

I genuinely don't know. I'll never know. He left no note. He was always the quiet type, never said much. He took every truth with him when he went.

Mom passed from illness six years ago. So all I have left is my older sister and my paternal grandparents. My grandparents were completely fine before this and now they're showing early signs of dementia. From the shock, I think. My sister just cries. And me... ever since I found his body, I've just been. Empty. Like something in my head got switched off.

"Dad... why."

I've been forcing myself to act okay in front of family and relatives this whole time. Smiling when I had to. But standing in front of his yeongjeong¹, I couldn't hold it anymore.

Before the cremation, the altar area around his portrait was absolutely packed with flowers and offerings. SO many. You could tell just from the sheer amount how much people loved him. Family, relatives, coworkers, neighbors, people from the community. Everyone brought something.

And then the next day, something changed.

Every single flower had drooped. Like bowing. The flowers themselves weren't wilted, they were still fresh, but the stems had all bent in the same direction, heads down. All of them.

The day after that, the flower heads were on the floor. Like someone had taken scissors and just cut them all off. Petals scattered everywhere. The fruit offerings had all gone soft overnight. Candles kept going out the second you looked away. Incense wouldn't stay lit. We'd set up his portrait carefully and it kept falling over.

Kept. Falling. Over.

Is he trying to apologize to us? Or is there something unresolved keeping him here?

Only he knows.