엄마, Remember Me

One of the most poignant memories I have of my mother is from when I was in 6th grade, around 10 years ago. I had just gotten into a nasty fight with my best friend. Distraught, I came home from school and burst into tears in my room. About an hour later, my mom returned home from work and found me curled up in a pitiful ball on the floor, still sobbing in the most undignified way, my T-shirt soaked with tears. I half-expected her to scold me for crying over something so petty. Instead, in that moment, she did what my crushed heart had longed for most — she knelt by my side and wrapped me in a tight, motherly embrace, as if she would never let me go.

“Oh Grace,” she said through my muffled cries into her blouse. “Juhee-ah, 미안해 [I’m sorry]… I should’ve been here for you earlier when you needed me the most.”

It was the summer after my freshman year of college.

I was working, sure, but my mind was elsewhere. All my friends and I were back for the summer, so right after work every day I hit the gym, then spent the rest of the day living out that sweet suburban summer dream — late poolside nights with friends, trips to the residential lake past hours, lazy drives around town with the windows rolled down and the crisp, evening breeze feeling like silk against my face. Something about the air felt different; I felt freer, lighter than before. A new sort of energy coursed through my veins as I reveled in the last of my teenage years.

I signed my mom up for the gym with me, and we hit the treadmills together most weekdays, her walking and me running. There was one problem, though. It never struck me as anything other than slightly annoying.

“How do you turn this on?”

An exasperated sigh. “I showed you so many times, um-ma.”

“You did?”

I leaned over to her machine and pressed the START button, adjusted the speed level to a brisk walking pace. I thought little of it, blaming her forgetfulness on what I thought to be a lack of technological familiarity. I put my earbuds in and turned up the volume.

A few months later, our family took a trip to Korea.

It was a long-awaited and long-overdue trip — my father hadn’t returned to his native country in nearly 30 years, and it would be my first time since my grandparents brought me back in 2001. My white-washed, second generation Asian American siblings and I had high hopes of rediscovering our cultural identities as Koreans in the motherland.

Instead, we discovered something else. It was then that mom’s behavior had become even more perplexing: she started showing signs of paranoia, constantly digging around in her wallet, afraid that someone had stolen her money. Struck with sudden desires to go back home, she became increasingly agitated and angry towards my father. She threatened to leave on several occasions.

We didn’t know what to make of it at the time. How could we? Maybe it was travel-related stress, or the general irritability that comes with middle age.

Not in a million years would we have guessed it to be what it was.

“Early-onset Alzheimer’s,” my dad said. He had brought my siblings and I into a room and relayed the diagnosis to us with a grim expression.

My mind went blank. What?

It was impossible.

All four of my grandparents were alive, and their minds were still relatively sharp.

All I knew about Alzheimer’s was that it was reserved for white-haired, frail, elderly women and men who were almost at death’s door. Not my mother, my 54-year-old, smart, educated mother who had been exercising her brain fervently ever since she was young. White hairs barely sprung up on her head, and if they did, they were plucked out with haste.

As my dad went on, gently telling us what we should expect for the years to come, I willed my mind to wander into places far, far away from where I stood, rigid and unfeeling, far away from my little brother’s pudgy face as he looked down at the floor, stroking his stuffed dog for comfort, far away from a world where my mother’s mind had slowly begun unraveling before my very own eyes and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I wanted to rewind time and eradicate this new piece of unwanted information from my mind forever.

I could not bear to look my father in the eye. I was afraid of what I might see.

My mother used to take my siblings and I to our local Barnes & Noble. We’d grab a table, order some coffee, and do work or read together. As a prolific academic, previous university professor and PhD recipient who had multiple papers published to her name, she insisted that we become hardworking and diligent, always hungry for knowledge.

“You reap what you sow,” she’d always say. Work hard now, reap the fruits of your labor later.

One day, during my sophomore year when I was home for break, we found ourselves at our regular spot. I peered over at her notebook, unnerved by what I saw.

“Mom, what are you doing?”

She had scribbled the same line on her notebook, over and over and over again. My heart broke for her. Even when her brain was failing her, all she wanted to do was work.

It didn’t take long to realize that movies like The Notebook barely skim the surface of what Alzheimer’s actually looks like. The forgetfulness, the inability to recognize familiar faces, those were the tamer side effects. What they failed to include was the screaming, the temper tantrums, the scathing insults and blows my mother would hurl in our direction, particularly towards my father and grandmother. It got so bad that my weak grandmother lived in constant fear of her own daughter, to the point where she eventually had to move out of the house for her own safety.

The disease progressed faster than we expected, and manifested in unexpected ways — as often is the case with neurological conditions. Once you mess with the brain, everything’s fair game.

Each time I came home from school for break, I was met with a different mother.

The first day or so, everything felt normal.

Then, after a few days, the abnormalities would surface. The most evident of them was my mother’s newfound kleptomania. Silverware, books, mail, and just about everything began disappearing mysteriously and reappearing in bizarre places — the fridge, random cabinets around the house, the bathroom. Anything of importance left out in common areas was gone within minutes. The mother I once knew had turned into a full-fledged hoarder who stashed trinkets, shoes, and fruits in desk drawers. Later, she would become convinced that we were stealing from her.

미쳤어, she would spit at us. You’re insane. In her eyes, she was the only sane one.

My mother also developed a penchant for cursing. Having never been properly acquainted with Korean swear words, I now almost exclusively heard them on a daily basis; nearly every other word that came out of her mouth was one. She sometimes hurled them at my father, sometimes she sang them.

The sheer ridiculousness of it all was almost laughable.

I have voicemails saved on my phone from years ago, the earliest one from 2012. My phone reminds me from time to time that I need to clear my inbox in order to receive future voicemails.

But I can’t bring myself to delete them. They’re a record of my mother’s voice, before the disease ravaged the parts of her brain she used to speak English clearly. She almost strictly speaks in Korean now, but even so her words are sometimes jumbled, her sentences illogical.

2019 was when I received my last voicemail from her. She no longer can use a phone, and so my father discontinued her cell phone service. Now the very first phone number I ever memorized as a child no longer belongs to my mother but to a stranger.

Her voice sounds unsure, her thoughts scattered like dandelion seeds in the wind.

“Hello? Hi Grace, this is your mom, and I’m actually… trying to talk to you, but I guess you’re… away. I guess. [in Korean] All right, Juhee, take care. Take care of yourself. I… I have your number and Christina and Joshua’s numbers written down here… [laughs softly] Okay? Take care. I love you. Bye-bye.”

Every time I listen to them, I weep.

In a flurry, junior year came and went.

The air was thick with worry about COVID-19. The dreary statistics plastered on headlines every day served as a constant reminder of imminent death and mortality.

Death and mortality have always been on my mind, perhaps more so than is healthy, but for a different reason. Witnessing my mother’s abrupt transformation from an able-bodied, clear-minded woman to someone whose physical and mental states had been flipped upside down by amyloid plaques and tangles in her brain made me realize how much I had taken health for granted. A human being could be perfectly healthy one day and dead the next. Disease could strike anyone at any time. No one — not kings, billionaires, the homeless — was immune to the clutches of illness and mortality. God gave but could just as easily take away.

I watched helplessly as my mother’s health gradually declined before my eyes. Overnight, it seemed, our roles had switched. I was now the caretaker, my mother the child. This became painfully clear when my parents came to pick me up from school for the summer.

The 2-hour drive from New Jersey to Pennsylvania left my mother practically inconsolable. When I ran outside to meet my parents where my dad had parked, to my dread I was met with chaos: my mom shouting with tears in her eyes, striking my dad — who was attempting to calm her down with little success — with her fists. Never have I sympathized more with the families of individuals with disabilities who cause a scene. The stares of bystanders who had stopped to watch bore into my back as I ran across the road to handle the situation.

Going out in public had turned into a full-blown ordeal.

What I hate most about this disease is the lack of regard it has for human dignity. How it will strip away what makes you human — your memories, your thoughts, your personality, your past.

Before my mother started taking mood stabilizing medications, she experienced many bouts of intense sadness and anger. After hearing a commotion one afternoon, I came downstairs and found my mother sitting at the dining table, clearly distressed, roughly rummaging through various papers she had collected from all around the house. A baby photo of my brother. Old bank statements. My 4th grade report card.

She kept repeating something. “왜?” She shouted harshly. Why? Why?

I looked into her face and saw eyes rimmed with grief and agony. I wish I could understand the depth of her pain, understand the thoughts running through her head that she couldn’t quite verbalize. I wish I could do something to alleviate the pain she felt. I wish I could feel her humiliation, her sorrow, and carry the burden in her stead.

But it felt like we were worlds apart. Language barrier aside, her mind was operating on a different spectrum. The days when I could have a normal conversation with my mother were long gone. She now felt unreachable to me; communicating with her felt as effective as rubber arrows trying to pierce through a metal breastplate.

That summer was the first time I witnessed my mother cry. Not the kind that leaves you sniffling, but the wailing, heart-wrenching kind that leaves you heaving for breath. All I could do was hold her, as sobs wracked her frail body, like she held me, many, many years ago.

Though I try not to dwell on it, I used to be plagued with guilt whenever I thought about what I would have done differently in earlier years, had I known about the storm that was to come. Would I have selfishly spent so much time hanging out with my friends and caring so much about my grades, had I known that I would only have a few more good years left to spend with my mom? Would I have taken the time to really get to know my mother as a person, and not just as a parent? These questions — though futile — hung like heavy clouds on my conscience.

The finality of the diagnosis and the irreversible nature of the damage left me reeling for months after my dad delivered the news. This battle would not be fought overnight, but painfully drawn out for many years to come. And yet, it often didn’t even seem like a battle; it seemed like defeat. I felt like I had already grieved the death of the mother I once knew — a mother who I could come to with any problem, no matter how trivial, a mother who loved me at my highest highs and my lowest lows, a mother who cared enough to keep calling even when I rarely picked up. My throat would tighten every time I thought about the future — future marriages, grandchildren, celebrations, my parents’ retirement — and how my mom’s condition would alter the reality that could have been.

Regardless of it all, I am still trying to be grateful. Grateful that I was privileged with two parents who continuously teach me how to love and serve with a heart of humility. Grateful that I’ve grown a deeper sense of empathy towards those who are suffering both physical, mental, and emotional afflictions. Grateful that I can place my hope in heaven, a place where my mother will be made new and live eternally separated from disease. This past year has been one rife with grief — everywhere I look, outside and inside of the home, suffering has made its mark.

But grieving is only part of the story.

My mom still has her good days. There are moments where her childlike demeanor feels reminiscent of her old lighthearted, playful spirit. She sings a lot, and sometimes bursts out in random peals of laughter. Even with her weakened body, I sometimes catch a glimpse of her fiery spirit peeking through, the spirit that drove her to accomplish nearly everything she set her mind to, like immigrating to the United States when she was younger than I am now. Her zeal and passion for life have never failed to inspire me.

엄마,

I’ve always thought about what I’d say to you if you could, just for a moment, understand me the way you used to again. If I could snap my fingers and you could be healthy again.

I’ve missed you, mom. I’m so sorry for all that you’ve had to endure these past few years. It must have been so exhausting, all the doctor’s appointments and medicines and pain.

I don’t know how, but somehow I graduated college. There were so many moments where I felt so lost, so hurt, so alone, and in those moments I missed your reassuring words of guidance the most. Whenever I used to have a problem, you’d always analyze it with a scientific gaze and confidently help me reach a solution. I always thought you knew everything — I remember when I was 5 or so, for fun I wrote out what I thought to be a very long number on a piece of paper, and asked you to read the number out loud to me. I was so impressed when you did.

It pained me to know that I couldn’t help take care of you when I was in school, but I knew that’s what you would have wanted. You always wanted the best for us. You sacrificed so much of your time and energy and comfort to raise us — all the while balancing a full-time job. Now that I’m about to start working I understand how difficult it must have been. And yet, you still did everything in your power to help us thrive, like making those thick, brown veggie smoothies for us that we always complained about.

I’m technically an adult now — except it still doesn’t feel like it. In less than a week I start my real job, and I’m scared I’ll have imposter syndrome again like I did last summer. I feel like I know what I’m doing with my life, and at the same time, I don’t have a clue. I’m excited for my future, but I’m also anxious. Even so, I’ll try to work hard at whatever I’m doing — I am your daughter, after all.

Thank you for teaching me every day how to be more selfless, more diligent, and more faithful. Thank you for showing me what it means to love and dream big dreams.

I love you, mom.

주희