A Letter from Your Cleaners – 29
Meetings and Partings – Part 2
On the absolute final day of our cross-country train journey, our flight departed from San Francisco a full one hour and forty minutes late. Because of that unexpected delay, my wife and I found ourselves stranded inside the transit hub at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, forced to sit helplessly for four long hours to wait for our connecting flight.
While waiting for the boarding call back to Philadelphia, my eyes became completely locked upon a dark-skinned elderly American couple sitting across the terminal. The elderly lady was continuously, tenderly handing various snacks to her husband, and the grandfather was accepting them with a quiet, expressionless face. Watching them back then, my spirit was suddenly transported back to Korea, feeling as though I was gazing directly at an old rural couple sitting together at a dusty clay-road bus stop in the countryside decades ago. Judging by the fact that their entire luggage consisted of mere two small, faded backpacks slung over their chairs, I quietly estimated that they were likely on their way back home after traveling out to see the faces of their independent children living in a distant city. Gazing at the deep, carved wrinkles lining their faces, my mind began to calculate the countless, silent narratives buried within their shared years, and that meditation seamlessly drifted straight back to my own family—thinking deeply of our couple, of my beloved son, and of the young woman he cherished with his whole heart.
Yes, it was true. At the final close of any long pilgrimage, the everyday routine that welcomes you back must always be a place of pure joy.
A mere few days after our feet safely stepped back inside our own house, my wife and I hosted a warm dinner gathering to sit side-by-side with Mr. and Mrs. Washington—the precious parents of the young woman my son loved so deeply.
And just like that, the summer rapidly faded away, and an entry carved into my private diary during the final, fading edges of a brutally brief autumn—a sudden November evening of that same year—reveals the landscape:
<The daylight saving time has officially drawn to its final close, and following that seasonal shift, the dark hours of the night have become profoundly long. I briefly closed my eyes to rest for a passing margin, and the moment I forced them back open, the world was already completely enveloped in midnight. Gauging by the crisp, freezing gusts howling outside, the outer temperature must be punishingly cold; inside the house, free from any distraction save for the rhythmic, dull thrumming of our central heating unit kicking on from time to time, the silence is absolute and the entire home rests in total, heavy solitude.
My wife, accompanied by her eldest brother who has flown in all the way from Seoul, has driven her mother straight to the hospital; yet, my phone remains stubbornly silent, with zero calls arriving from her side. My son and his brand-new bride, who have just taken flight to enjoy their honeymoon, or my daughter, who packed her bags immediately after her brother’s wedding ceremony to sprint straight back to her professional career in a distant city, have absolutely no reason to dial my number tonight. Sitting completely alone inside this dense solitude, the singular notification I am waiting for with a heavy heart is the official confirmation of my mother-in-law’s emergency hospital admission.
This happened just yesterday. When we finally walked back through our front door late in the evening after completing the wedding reception banquet and dialed her number, her voice over the phone lines was still extraordinarily clear and sharp. “My dear son-in-law…” she had whispered, her breath trembling with an immense emotion, “my heart carries such a deep sorrow, and I am so completely, entirely sorry… I truly, in my wildest dreams, never could have imagined that I would be physically unable to attend my beloved Han-wool’s wedding ceremony…”
From the very second he opened his eyes to take his first breath until his small feet successfully learned the art of walking, my boy was raised almost entirely inside the protective shadow of my mother-in-law’s hands, and he harvested a boundless, magnificent love from his eldest maternal uncle. Throughout yesterday and today, my soul has been completely overflowing with a profound, unpayable gratitude toward my eldest brother-in-law for making that long flight from Seoul to stand by our side. My mother-in-law, who had spent the preceding years fiercely, bravely wrestling against the ravages of cancer with an unbroken spirit, has suddenly begun to collapse into complete physical ruin over the short span of these last few days.
And this was an event that had unfolded directly inside the sanctuary during the wedding ceremony just two days prior. The grand venue was an ancient, historic church structure that boasted a deep heritage. The very second our elder parents—my father-in-law, my own mother, and my own father—stepped through the front entrance, all three of them almost simultaneously expressed an urgent necessity to seek out a restroom. It was a thoroughly aged building. The public restrooms were located exclusively on the second floor, meaning that to reach them, one had to conquer a steep, narrow wooden staircase that took a sharp, right-angle twist right in the middle.
One by one, in precise order, I offered my physical frame as a human shield to guide them up and down those treacherous steps. My mother was first, followed carefully by my father-in-law, and finally my own father. When I was supporting my father-in-law and my father, both of whom relied heavily upon thick walking canes to move their fragile bodies, the labor was intensely slow and heavy; yet, when it was my mother’s turn, her steps felt remarkably light and 수월 (effortless) . In all honesty, among the three elders, my deepest anxiety had been centered entirely upon my mother’s fragile health; yet, unexpectedly, she uttered not a single word of complaint, wrapping her hand tightly around my arm and hand to march up and down those steep stairs with an absolute, unbending straightness .
Late that evening, after every layer of the wedding celebrations had drawn to a final close, I turned to my wife and shared a light reflection: “You know, honey… after personally supporting all three of our parents up and down those steps today, it filled my heart with such a deep relief to realize that my mother still possesses the most robust and healthy frame among them.”
My wife immediately shook her head, her face filled with a gentle, knowing sorrow as she corrected my blind assumption: “No, no. My perspective is completely different from yours, honey. Mother was simply exercising an absolute, fierce willpower because she refused to burden her son with even a single drop of worry on his boy’s wedding day. She was throwing her whole body forward to deliver a silent, powerful message to your soul: ‘Look at me, my son! I am still this robust and healthy, so you must never carry a single shred of anxiety regarding my health inside your heart.’ That was her true, unspoken intent. Do you honestly know what Mother whispered to me the exact second she stepped out of that restroom? She slumped against my shoulder and cried, ‘Oh my goodness, my dear daughter… my two legs and my two arms are shaking so violently from head to toe that I can barely stand!’ That is what she endured for you.”
Meditating deeply upon those words shared by my wife, a fresh surge of profound gratitude toward my eldest brother-in-law pours back into my soul. For I know with absolute certainty that solely because her own son is standing right there beside her hospital bed, my mother-in-law will find the strength to hold on and beautifully endure this trial.
And let me archive one final narrative from that historic wedding sanctuary.
It was a specific, extraordinary program that had been completely absent during our formal wedding rehearsal just two days prior. It unfolded near the absolute close of the sacred ceremony, right during the scheduled pastoral praye . Throughout our practice runs, that slot had been designated strictly as a standard, objective prayer to be delivered by the presiding minister. Yet, stepping into the reality of the service, Reverend Manuel Ortiz suddenly broke away from the script. He commanded the two children—the bridegroom and the bride—to walk over to the altar and drop flat onto their knees directly in front of the small prayer stand where they had lit their unity candles. He then gathered the four other ordained pastors who were participating in the service, instructing everyone to stretch out their hands to rest them heavily upon the heads of the two children, and prepared to launch the blessing.
I naturally assumed that the pastors who had laid hands upon our children would take turns delivering a series of grand pastoral prayers; yet, Reverend Ortiz abruptly turned to the kneeling couple and issued a direct command: “Now, you pray. Speak your own prayers to God.”
The raw, beautiful prayers that poured out from the mouths of my beloved son and my brand-new daughter-in-law, Rondaya, instantly pierced through the sanctuary, beautifully soaking my entire chest in a wave of profound, tender tears. And Reverend Bae Sung-ho beautifully sealed that sacred moment, offering a final, echoing benediction: “O Father God… let every single word of the prayers these children have just offered be perfectly, split-votedly fulfilled in their lives…”
The moment the wedding drew to its final close, my wife and I playfully entered a light bet. My stubborn stance was absolute: “The children’s prayers were far too mature and flawless; it’s simply that we were kept in the dark, but it was undoubtedly a meticulously pre-planned part of the program.” My wife, on the other hand, stubbornly championed the opposite theory: “No, it was a pure, spontaneous inspiration born directly inside Reverend Ortiz’s soul, demanding the children to offer their raw, real-time prayers straight to the Creator.”
The final verdict returned with my absolute, complete defeat.
In the final analysis, every son on Earth is nothing more than a heo-dang (a clumsy, beautifully flawed soul). Yet, when I stop to realize that both Reverend Ortiz, who commanded those children to pray, and Reverend Bae, who powerfully connected their raw whispers straight to the heavens, are ultimately sons in their own right… just as I am a son, and my boy is a son…
A profound truth takes hold of my spirit: perhaps the very title and existence of a “son” was designed by the Creator solely to serve and comfort the hearts of our mothers.
— Written on the day I welcomed my beautiful daughter-in-law into our family: May every single line of the prayers our children offered be flawlessly fulfilled…
And then, December arrived. To honor my deeply beloved mother-in-law, who had been an irreplaceable pillar of my soul for over thirty-five consecutive years, I sat down to compose a poem—indulging in a rare, literary hyung-nae-jil (clumsy imitation of a true poet) that I almost never allow myself to execute:
🧥 Wings of Garment (날개 옷)
Backed by thirty full years of immigration’s relentless routine,
My technical craft with the iron has become second nature.
With that hard-earned skill, I stand here today,
To dry clean and meticulously press my mother-in-law’s su-ui (burial shroud).
First, I press her traditional cotton socks.
During those final, fading hours when her spirit drifted,
Stranded somewhere between the earth and the heavens,
Or wandering lost between her yesterday and her today,
My mother-in-law would continuously call out for her mother.
“It breaks my entire heart to watch my own mother crying out desperately for her mother,”
My wife whispered, her eyes completely overflowing with sharp tears.
The tragedy of national division did not merely slice our peninsula into North and South .
When the fires of war ruthlessly severed her from her family in the North,
Leaving her stranded completely alone in the South,
My mother-in-law’s age was a mere twelve years old .
Yet, she hadn’t been destined to walk that path entirely alone from the start .
It was simply that her beloved twenty-year-old brother,
Who had proudly enlisted into the National Army vowing to march back to their hometown,
Never once managed to return to her side .
From that devastating dawn onward,
My mother-in-law permanently ceased calling out for her mother .
Yet, inside the dense silence of her final threshold,
Her spirit must have witnessed the form of her mother,
Stepping toward her in those very white cotton socks .
Now, I press her traditional long skirt .
That skirt was my mother-in-law’s absolute, unyielding dignity .
It functioned as a heavy, protective armor,
Beautifully shielding the absolute isolation of a girl left entirely alone since the age of twelve .
Uniting her destiny at the tender age of eighteen,
She shared sixty full consecutive years of marriage beside my father-in-law—an only son .
Waiting to receive her was a fierce, tiger-like mother-in-law and three sharp sisters-in-law .
And though she had permanently buried her own cry for her mother,
She quietly, beautifully transformed into a magnificent mother herself .
Bringing one daughter and two sons into the world,
Our household was a spectacular gathering where every single soul, without exception,
Possessed a brilliant intellect paired with an overflowing storm of creative passion;
Yet, there was never a single crisis .
For the breadth of my mother-in-law’s traditional skirt was extraordinarily vast,
Possessing a boundless, gentle generosity capable of enveloping every single layer of our lives .
Nevertheless, the profound, uncurable loneliness that could never be shielded within that skirt,
She must have kept strictly hidden inside the secret chambers of her chest .
Now, I press her traditional short jacket .
“A day will surely dawn when I will confidently hold you back in my arms…”
The mother who had once gently tied her clothing ribbons and meticulously straightened her collar—
My mother-in-law’s lifelong dream to reunite with her was ultimately never realized on this earth .
Yet, at the absolute brink of her final departure,
My mother-in-law quietly shifted her ultimate dream .
She resolved: “Now, I will become that very mother.”
During the final, fading month of her seventy-eight years of life,
She was, to the absolute core of her being, simply a mother .
To her husband, her two sons, her daughters-in-law, her daughter, and her 사위 (son-in-law) .
She delivered a silent, powerful message commanding our souls:
Never allow her memory to weigh down upon your chests in bitter, crushing sorrow .
Live your days with a light spirit .
You, the living who remain on this earth—
You must never dare to carry that agonizing tumor of absolute isolation and burning homesickness
Deep inside your own spirits as you walk through your today .
Willingly tucking our collective share of grief deep inside the hem of her jacket,
She stepped out into the wind .
Finally, I press her traditional long overcoat .
Choi Yong-ok—a proud, dignified woman hailing from Jeongju, North Pyeongan Province .
True to the legacy of Jeongju, revered across history as the sacred, ultimate holy land of faith
On the entire Korean Peninsula,
My mother-in-law spent her whole existence elegantly wrapped in a grand overcoat of absolute faith .
Relying on that faith, how else could she have successfully dissolved that crushing isolation?
Anchored in prayer, how else could she have sustained that long, grueling stretch of waiting?
Sustained by sacred hymns, how else could her feet have conquered that immense, exhausting road?
Now, in the quiet of my right now, I begin to dream a grand dream .
And that dream seamlessly transforms into my most sacred prayer .
For every true prayer on Earth is a reality that has already been beautifully fulfilled .
The garments I have dry cleaned and pressed with my whole heart,
Evolve into a magnificent set of wings for my mother-in-law’s soul .
Soaring, soaring, soaring, she takes flight completely free ,
To finally lock her fingers tightly within the long-awaited hand of her beloved mother .
Ah! Look at them now !
The mother and her daughter have beautifully stepped through the permanent gates of heaven .
My technical craft with the iron, honed like a disciplined monk over thirty years of immigration,
Has finally executed its ultimate, most magnificent purpose .
And as she slipped away into that eternal peace,
My mother-in-law looked back to gather our collective prayers,
Delivering them straight into the hands of the Almighty .
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