Crying in H Mart

by Michelle Zauner

My grief comes in waves and is usually triggered by something arbitrary.

The world moved on without pause on a pleasant, warm day in May while I stood silent and dumbfounded on the pavement and learned that my mother was now in grave danger of dying from an illness that had already killed someone I loved.

“How can you believe in god when something like this happens?” she said.

There was no one in the world that was ever as critical or could make me feel as hideous as my mother, but there was no one, not even Peter, who ever made me feel as beautiful.

If we always had something to look forward to, we could trick this disease. Not now, cancer, there’s a wedding! And then a tasting in Napa! Then an anniversary, a birthday. Come back when we’re not so busy.

the day threatening to begin.

I cried all the way home, big, comically fat tears, and then I cried hot, small ones alone in my bedroom until I fell asleep.

In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.

When you’re here you’re here you’re here!

None of us could understand the lyrics, but it had a sound that was captivating and timeless and we were drunk and somber and moved.

Not quite my mother and not quite her sister, we existed in that moment as each other’s next best thing.