Please Look After Mom

by Kyung-Sook Shin

The word “Mom” is familiar and it hides a plea: Please look after me. Please stop yelling at me and stroke my head; please be on my side, whether I’m right or wrong.

you want to believe that she’s healthy. That Mom is strong. That Mom isn’t fazed by anything. That Mom is the person you want to call

She was born as Mom. Until you saw her running to your uncle like that, it hadn’t dawned on you that she was a human being who harbored the exact same feeling you had for your own brothers, and this realization led to the awareness that she, too, had had a childhood. From then on, you sometimes thought of Mom as a child, as a girl, as a young woman, as a newlywed, as a mother who had just given birth to you.

It was difficult to talk to her about your life, which had nothing to do with hers.

“Do you come here often?” “Yes.” “With who?” “Nobody. There’s nobody who would come with me.”

But there’s no beginning or end to kitchen work. You eat breakfast, then it’s lunch, and then it’s dinner, and when it’s bright again it’s breakfast again.…

Why didn’t you know then that you had a peaceful and lucky life? How could you have taken what your wife did for you for granted, without ever once making her seaweed soup?

Where are you …? If your wife would just come back, you would make not only seaweed soup but also pancakes for her. Are you punishing me …?

How could you have not gone slower, when your wife asked you to slow down your entire lives? You’d stopped and waited for her, but you’d never walked next to her, conversing with her, as she wanted—not even once.

Even if everyone in the world forgets, your daughter will remember. That your wife truly loved the world, and that you loved her.

all I wanted was for you to be free from everything. And with that freedom, you often showed me another world, so I wanted you to be even freer. I wanted you to be so free that you would live your life for other people.

Lie down, put your head on my lap for a little while. Rest a bit. Don’t be sad for me. I was happy so many days of my life because I had you.

You’re paved in my heart like an old road. Like the pebbles in a pebble field, dirt in dirt, dust in dust, cobwebs in cobwebs.

but remaining a member of this family even in death would be too much and too hard.

So why did we think of Mom as a mom from the very beginning?

I’m going to tell her that I love all the things she did, that I love Mom, who was able to do all of that, that I love Mom’s life, which nobody remembers. That I respect her.

He said that back then he didn’t know that this was happiness.