In When Life Gives You Tangerines’ ending, we see Gwan-Sik and Ae-Sun in the prime of their lives, planning the future they will enjoy together. While they don’t get to do most of those things in the future we saw for them, they did live a full and happy life together. When it comes to a show like this, you can’t expect a completely happy ending. The drama, which spans 70 years of Ae-Sun’s life, leaves you completely shattered by the end. Yes, this is because there is death and foreboding, but it’s also because it is the end of not just the show, but the end of a feeling. So, I suppose I could say that the show ends on a sad note, but that would be wrong. We’re sad because it’s over, and we don’t get to follow more generations of Ae-Sun’s family through the ups and downs of their lives. We’re sad because we can’t see Gwan-Sik tell Geum-Myeong that she can come back to him if she ever feels like it anymore. We’re sad because we don’t get to see Eun-Myeong feel like he’s playing second fiddle in his own family again. But, having said that, let’s remember it by what it gave us in the end.
Spoiler Alert
How Does Ae-Sun Survive After Gwan-Sik’s Death?
They say women find it easier to outlive their partners when they get old. I’m not sure this is entirely true, but I suppose we get to see this in practice in the show too. Ae-Sun’s mom was alive longer than her dad. Then her mother-in-law outlived her father-in-law, and finally Ae-Sun had to outlive Gwan-Sik too. It was always Gwan-Sik who was there for Ae-Sun when she needed him. He kept her safe, he kept her fed, and he kept her alive. So then, when she’s left all alone after he’s gone, how can she manage to keep going? Well, by keeping a bit of him with her always. Sure, Gwan-Sik isn’t around to pat Ae-Sun’s back every time she needs it anymore, but she finds it in everything she does. They may not have gone abroad together or paid for piano lessons for their kids, but they took care of them like their lives depended on it.
Gwan-Sik’s final goodbye is a painful one because he’s in the hospital bed, and all he can do is watch his family cry their hearts out because he’s the pillar that kept them strong and steady. Yet, just as Ae-Sun promised him, when he’s taking his last breath, with his eyes locked on her, she gives him the widest smile she can because that’s how he says he wants to remember her. When Gwan-Sik is gone, Ae-Sun finds herself thinking about everything Gwan-Sik sorted out beforehand. Whether it was telling her that she’ll cry every time she looks at egg rolls, or fixing the door lock, or even moving things around on the top shelves in the kitchen so she can manage by herself. He was always thorough when it came to Ae-Sun.
So, even if Ae-Sun is alone, she isn’t really alone because she has her kids (even if they have their own families), and she has the memory of her husband that she can write her poems about. Gwan-Sik always said the reason Ae-Sun couldn’t become a poet was because she married him. But if it weren’t for the pain they endured together, she’d have never been able to write the way she does. As the days go by, spring returns, and Ae-Sun finds her vocation in teaching old women at nursing homes to write poems. She gets called a teacher after all of those years, even without a college degree. She gets to live in her mom’s house because Geum-Myeong buys it back for her, just like her dad did all those years ago.
What Do The Hairpins Signify?
Despite Ae-Sun being a middle-aged woman and a grandma, Gwan-Sik never stopped buying her hairpins. Every day, she wears a new hairpin, ever since she was a child, but the only time we see her without one is after he dies. But, just like the rest, going back to how things were before, Ae-Sun starts wearing the pins again. Plus, she has so many unused ones; they’d last a lifetime. I’d say they’re the biggest reminder of Gwan-Sik to Ae-Sun. More than the egg rolls, more than the sea and boats, and even their kids. Gwan-Sik is in the hairpins, and they’re the little pat Ae-Sun needs every day to wake up and get on with her day. During funerals, daughters always wear a hairpin with a white bow on it. The show gives us an interesting nod to Gwan-Sik by showing Geum-Myeong, his eldest daughter and pride, wearing the funeral pin in her hair. I thought it was quite sweet, and now I’m crying again.
Who is Chloe Lee?
During When Life Gives You Tangerines’ ending, the kids send Ae-Sun’s poems to an editor named Chloe H. Lee. This editor happens to be the woman who found Ae-Sun’s ring back when she threw it away after being mad at Gwan-Sik. She also happens to look exactly like Ae-Sun’s mom. We loop back to the beginning of the show, when Ae-Sun looks out to the sea and calls out to her mom. She says that even after all those years, that’s the only word that she wants to speak. She also says she wishes her mum reincarnated and worked a desk job, just as she dreamed for herself, and I guess, with the same actress playing Chloe, we can assume this is her reincarnating and helping Ae-Sun out in a way. When we see Chloe look through the poems, she begins to cry, something that is very out of character for her apparently. She then says she just feels proud of them because in those little poems is all of Ae-Sun’s life, and maybe it’s pulling at her mum’s heartstrings, telling her that she’s okay and she lived a good life even after her mum was gone.
What Does The End Of The Show Mean?
The ending is a thank-you card from a daughter to her mother. Just as Ae-Sun wanted to speak to her mum after achieving everything she could, going from being the bookworm to an actual poet, Geum-Myeong wants to thank her for raising her so well, despite all the tangerines thrown their way. Ae-Sun tells Geum-Myeong that she thought before that life goes from spring to summer to autumn to winter, but it isn’t like that. Spring will always come back, and even during winter days, there will be blossoms because that’s how we keep moving forward. Tangerines may be sour, but even with those sour tangerines, you can make sweet dishes. I guess the show is almost a plea to live, no matter what life throws at you. It’s a beautiful thread that connects the women of this family and will help them forever.
