HEIMER

The story was inspired by my real life.
 My grandfather once suffered from Alzheimer’s disease.
 In the final stage of his life, he often called me by my mother’s name.
 He would put his shoes inside the cupboard for bowls and chopsticks, hide the pots somewhere,
 and turn the whole house upside down searching for something no one knew.
 It made both my grandmother and my mother exhausted and helpless,
 but they couldn’t blame him for it. Eventually, my grandfather was sent to a nursing home.
 One early morning, the nurse found that he had passed away in his sleep.
 When my mother received the call, she rushed there immediately.
 She cried and said, “At least he looked peaceful, without any sign of struggle.” Long before that, when he was still fully conscious,
 my grandfather had already decided that he wanted a sea burial.
 So in the end, we scattered his ashes into the sea. Later, when I was travelling alone in Iceland,
 I sat quietly by the ocean, listening to the closing music from our show.
 As I looked at the endless sea, a thought suddenly came to my mind:
 “All seas are connected — maybe Grandpa is travelling around the world right now,
 maybe he’s right here, in this very sea in front of me.” At that moment, I felt a strong desire
to create a story about my grandfather and the ocean for my graduation project.
 So I wrote these real experiences into the story — they became part of the actions and scenes,
 and through a poetic approach, I tried to imagine
 why he could leave the world so calm in the end. During our group discussion, everyone proposed their own story ideas, but I insisted on making this one for another reason —
I wanted to complete a beautiful circle. My grandfather was once a passionate art lover himself.
 Against his family’s wishes, he applied for drama school. He applied for the performance course and even received the offer,
 but in the end, he was forced to study law instead.
 After graduation, he didn’t want to become a judge,
 so he quit his job at the court and joined a theatre company as a photographer,
 occasionally getting the chance to go on stage. The day I received my UAL offer was February 1st —
exactly one year after my grandfather’s passing.
 So I told everyone that my offer from UAL was a gift from him.
And now, as I’m about to graduate from UAL, I want to make this project as a gift in return. I hope this work can transform personal memory into a shared experience —
not only for me, but for people of all ages.
 It’s meant to be a gentle form of death education,
 a chance for all of us to say a soft goodbye
 to those we miss in our memories,
 and to slowly learn how to face and accept the fear of life’s ending.