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My grief comes in waves and is usually triggered by something arbitrary. I can tell you with a straight face what it was like watching my mom’s hair fall out in the bathtub, or about the five weeks I spent sleeping in hospitals, but catch me at H Mart when some kid runs up double-fisting plastic sleeves of ppeongtwigi and I’ll just lose it.
This could be my chance, I thought, to make amends for everything. For all the burdens I’d imposed as a hyperactive child, for all the vitriol I’d spewed as a tortured teen. For hiding in department stores, throwing tantrums in public, destroying her favorite objects. For stealing the car, coming home on mushrooms, drunk driving into a ditch. I would radiate joy and positivity and it would cure her. I would wear whatever she wanted, complete every chore without protest. I would learn to cook for her—all the things she loved to eat, and I would singlehandedly keep her from withering away. I
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our conversations became a lot like explaining a movie to someone who has walked in on the last thirty minutes.
My mother would have killed me if she saw the things I was getting rid of. School essays and old insurance cards, VHS tapes of my cameo on a children’s show in Korea and the cartoons my aunt dubbed. I sold the Beanie Babies we had been duped into buying, the Princess Diana bear still in its plastic case and tag protector. Samantha, the American Girl doll with long brown hair I had begged for, Craigslisted along with the clothes she came with and the extra ones my mother commissioned at a bargain. It was something like being possessed, the rampant disposal akin to a house fire.
