you have to try, mom
Krista didn’t suspect anything at first. After all, her elderly Korean mother had survived the death of her husband five years before. Krista missed her father too yet, she thought mom had done pretty well. But her hard-working mom had never mastered English in the twenty plus years she had lived in the US. When the police pulled her mom over and took away her driver’s license, Krista wanted to attribute it to her mother’s poor English. However, when her mom threw “the fit” in the bank, she knew things were bad. Then the convalescent home had kicked her out after two weeks because she fought with other patients. With Krista’s husband’s reluctant consent the mom moved in with them.
“Honey” said the husband one day, “Your mother is losing it. She glued the kid’s school papers on the wall today.”
Krista didn’t know what to say. As the honorable daughter it was her duty to take care of her mother as the mother had done for her all these years.
Now and again the mom even forgot Krista’s name.
“Mom, you have to try,” an exasperated Krista pled.” You have to TRY to remember things.”
The elderly mom’s slow decline took its toll on the family. Nerves frayed, arguments arose, tempers flew and Krista’s two small children cried frequently. Slowly Krista’s mom withered away until one day she breathed her last. The family picked up the pieces of their life. But one thing bothered Krista. “Maybe it was a strange thing,” she thought but she didn’t want the bed her
mother died in to be in the house. When her husband went off to work and the kids to school Krista decided to take the bed apart. As she pulled the mattresses off the box spring she found a red child’s notebook inside. (A notebook that had been reported missing for some time.)
“What the heck is this doing here?” She said to herself as she opened the book. Inside it written in beautiful Korean every page from top to bottom read the same:
Krista is my daughter’s name.
Krista is my daughter’s name.
Krista is my daughter’s name.
Krista is my daughter’s name.
Krista is my daughter’s name.