I read a book recently, called Please Look After Our Mother. It was written by a Korean, translated into English… which was what drawn me to in the first place. By drawn, I mean - I literally googled ‘best korean literature translated to english'. I liked watching Korean dramas every now and then, but the repeated, clichéd storylines couldn’t satisfy me. Still, their culture somewhat intrigued me, and they had a way of telling stories — even if they were indeed clichéd. So I thought, why not books?
And this book… this book changed my life. It’s a story about a mother who went missing… and the novel is essentially recounts by the children and her husband, who realised that they had taken her for granted all these years. Through their recounts, you realise, as the reader, how much she had sacrificed for her children, so much so that she slowly, but surely, became empty inside. It broke my heart, reading it, not only for the characters, not only for the mother… but because it felt so real.
We all know someone who’s like Mother… certainly, parts of it reminded me of Popo. Someone who is sacrificial, kind, giving, forgiving, puts others before her. I felt sad for the Mother, but also for the children. The fact that I, myself, could identify with the children. How quick have I been to rebuke something Mummy said, or to shake off what Popo advised, or to raise my voice when I was frustrated. The amount of times I had just listened to someone trying to get a point across, in the one ear and out the other. Is it so hard to just do as they ask, even if you think it’s trivial?
I knew I was not horrible to my family… but I also knew I could be so much better. I shouldn’t have to wait till one of them to go missing to be plagued with guilt, realising the many times I’ve wronged them and should have been better. We can be so horrible to the ones we love — they are the ones we hurt the most — perhaps it’s time to stop. Perhaps it’s time I stop.