A   few years ago, my mom’s brother in South Korea, the oldest son, announced that he would be getting rid of their parents’ graves. My grandparents had been buried separately, in far-flung cemeteries, and this uncle and his wife were their keepers. They made several annual visits to the burial mounds (endless gridlock) and prepared Buddhist ceremonies at home (endless cooking and cleaning). Now that they were in their mid-sixties and their grown children were unlikely to carry on any of these rituals, they wanted out. They set a date to exhume my grandparents’ bodies, cremate their remains, and say goodbye again in an elaborate service run by our family friend, the head monk at a temple east of Seoul.   My mom wasn’t happy about this. When her father died, the family only had money for a basic burial. By the time her mother died, Mom was working in the US and could afford an elevated plot with a view, in keeping with the principles of pungsu, or Korean feng shui.…