My name is Theresa, and I am sixty-three years old. I have been a widow since I was young, and I raised my only daughter, Mary Lou, completely alone. She was intelligent, sweet, and beautiful. Everyone said she had a great future, and for a time, it seemed so.
But life has a way of surprising you.
In the nineteen seventies, Mary Lou met Kang Jun, a Korean man almost fifteen years older than her. I objected, not out of prejudice, but because of the age difference and the distance. I worried about her being so far away from home, from everything she knew. But my daughter was stubborn. She had a determination in her eyes that I could not change.
They married in a simple ceremony. Later, he took her to South Korea. At the airport, I hugged her and cried. I cried silently, thinking she would come back in a few years. She never did.
The Money
A year passed. Then two. Then five. I stopped asking when she would come home.
But the money kept coming. Every year, exactly eighty thousand dollars arrived, accompanied by a brief message: Mom, take good care of yourself. I am fine.
That word, fine, was what worried me most. It is the word people use when they do not want to tell the truth.
Sometimes we had video calls. She still looked beautiful, but her eyes were not the same. They were always distant. Always guarded.
When I asked why she would not come home, she hesitated and said, I am very busy, Mom.
I did not ask again. Sometimes, mothers become cowards out of fear of hearing the truth.
The Lonely Years
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