Grief is when the things that should be there are no longer there. My mom should be in the kitchen, sitting on the step stool. She should be filling our apartment with smells of food — 미역국, 볶음밥, 부침개, 김치찌개, 된장찌개. She should be folding the clothes that I left on my desk. She should be hanging my jacket in the closet. She should be taking the dog out for walks. She should be doing the dishes. She should be cleaning the floors, crouching down. She should be cutting fruit. She should be going on her morning walks and coming back around 9:00 or 10:00 am. She should be going to the grocery store to pick up bananas or grapes, whatever we're running low on, before we run out. She should be here driving me nuts. She should be here. I've been living with my mom since June 2023 — the longest time I've lived with her since I was a kid — which makes this separation hard. Her leaving has reminded me of what it felt like after 아빠 died — my whole life as I knew it, disintegrated into dust. Everything reminded me of 아빠, of what he should be doing that he will never do again. Everything I did felt like it had a massive hole in it, where 아빠 should be. My mom leaving is triggering a second massive grief. I'm doing better today, but it's still hard.

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