Please Look After Mom

When you call out “Mom,” you want to believe that she’s healthy. That Mom is strong. That Mom isn’t fazed by anything. That Mom is the person you want to call whenever you despair about something in this city.

Even if everyone in the world forgets, your daughter will remember. That your wife truly loved the world, and that you loved her.

Mom, who liked to buy socks for everyone in the family, had in her dresser a growing collection of socks that her children didn’t take.

Everyone was slowly becoming the son, daughter, and husband whose mom and wife was missing. Even without Mom, daily life continued.

Did Mom know? That I, too, needed her my entire life?

When spring comes, please plant some flowers in the yard, and rub down the floors, and fix the roof that collapsed from the snow.

Oh, I don’t know where to stop these memories, the memories that are sprouting all over the place like spring greens. Everything I forgot about is rushing back. From the rice bowls on the kitchen shelf to the big and little clay jars on the condiment ledge, from the narrow wooden stairs to the attic to the pumpkin vines spreading thick under the dirt wall, climbing up.

old things are all mixed in with current things, and current things mingle with future things, and future things are combined with old things; it’s just that we can’t feel it. But now I can’t go on.

I will let go of you now. You were my secret. You were in my life, someone whose presence would never be guessed by anyone who knew me. Even though nobody knew that you were in my life, you were the person who brought a raft at every rapid current and helped me cross that water safely. I was happy that you were there. I came to tell you that I was able to travel through my life because I could come to you when I was anxious, not when I was happy.

I’m going to go now.

I could feel that it was approaching, the day when I wouldn’t be able to recognize anything because I would be numb.