Motherly Love

I wanted to repay them.

It had been several years. I found a suitable job and got married. 

I remembered my great-grandmother and my own mother who had enabled this life for me.

However, my great-grandmother passed too soon.

I felt great sorrow in my inability to make it back sooner.

For her well-being as well as my own, I tried my best to help my mother while she still clung to the world. 

My mother and father lived back in our countryside home.

Walking up the hill, the sky seemed to take on the azure hue that I had eaten homemade jerky and picked ripe chestnuts under. 

The soil shifted from a rich mahogany to a familiar dusty yellow. The fir trees seemed to have stood unchanged, dark red with green highlights.

However, I could immediately tell that my parents had changed.

The years had certainly not been kind to them.

I found my mother struggling to walk to the bathroom. 

My father tried to help but he was weak as well, and my mother adamantly refused him nonetheless. 

He retreated and sat frowning. 

I forced my assistance, walking her to the bathrooms and even gave her a proper bath.

Her eyes were defiant the entire time. 

My father looked on in embarrassment and forced a bitter smile. 

A sharp pain in my heart overwhelmed me as I realized my parents’ chapters were coming to a close. 

In retrospect, I should have been there to support them earlier.

In retrospect, I wish I had found a senior home for her in the city.

She would have been much more comfortable. 

In retrospect, I wished I had done a lot more for her.

She had always put our family before herself.

She had so many talents— sewing, singing, dancing— but she never had the chance to fully display them.

She was also very smart, but her father forced her to quit her studies. 

Her teacher visited to tell her father that he himself would pay her expenses if she kept coming to school, but the father refused.

He asked “what good does educating a girl do?”

He would often beat her if she went out to play. 

She did everything in her power to ensure I had a better life. 

She pulled me from the brink of death twice and never expected anything in return.

The day she passed, the tears flowed endlessly.