Postcards and my mother

My response to learning of my mother's illness was not the most adult of all reactions to such news - I did my typical 'ostrich' and did not do anything apart from spend that night in tears. As her illness does not always manifest itself constantly, I also had a convenient excuse to turn away from a horrible problem, so I ran away from it, rather than face up to it. But of course, these things have a nasty habit of returning. When the time came for me to deal with it, the situation was much, much worse, my mother's condition having signficantly deteriorated. I shudder when I think of last winter and the days spent at the hospital, and the heartwrench I felt as I left Seoul to go back to work (for what is the use of work, one wonders in such circumstances) in London.

I was looking around for a couple of photographs in my desk drawers a couple of nights ago when I came upon the postcard my mother gave me when she learned I had graduated from law school with distinction. I'd forgotten about its power to reassure and soothe me. The picture on the front of it is rather distinctive - it has the Sanskrit (I think) for 'wisdom' written on a circle emanating red rays (of enlightenment?). On the back my mother's neat Korean handwriting says: "Jeong-A, [I am] proud of you. I'm grateful you do well." She has marked the date, and written "In the evening" next to it. Every time I read it, I feel cheerful - I treasure the fact that she had made the effort to tell me that she is proud of me.

I think that my initial botched response to my mother's illness was because no one wants to think of their parents as in need of their help - up until a certain age, afterall, your parents are your world, your rock. You want them to look after you, not the other way round. I didn't want to think that a change in my relationship to my parents was already due. But it was. And since then so much has changed.

Nowadays I try harder to show my mother how much I love her. I sent her a postcard last week - she phoned to say she had received it today, and she sounded quite happy. It was just an Ikea postcard telling her that I'd had a long day in the office, that I'd been to a yoga class and what I'd cooked for dinner that day. But it made her happy. I look back on the many days I did not even offer her this small gesture and hope that I can only make up for lost time from now on.