Packages with seaweed and tea leaves. Letters that no one could properly translate. Black and white photographs of a family she couldn’t remember. These attempts at reconciliation were sent in the mail every few years. Traces of a family my mother could have had. But the young boys seated on her father’s lap did not bear familiar faces or even have names. They were just that, traces.
Finally, earlier this year my mom receives a message on facebook from a man claiming to be her half-brother. Eventually we verify that he and the rest of his family are indeed related to us. We scour his profile for photos. There’s an album of my cousin’s recent marriage, the perfect place to see all our lost family. While we’re unsure who is a sister or a brother and so on, the old man is unmistakably my mother’s father, the man who walked out on her life.
He had attained a great age and in the subsequent scramble of communication, it was heavily implied that my mom return to Korea to see him before he passed. A combination of finances, practicality and indignation prevented us from flying her over immediately. We at least agreed that the journey should wait until this coming spring. So we contented ourselves with befriending the younger members of our lost family.
But now he has passed. Now there will be no more chance to see him. And yet, I do not feel grief. His blood runs through my veins, but it is his mistakes that have meant more to our family than his heritage.
If he had not been an alcoholic and driven my grandmother away, she might not have been homeless, might not have been desperate enough to seek a refuge for her daughter. My mother would not have been sent to America to forge a new life, that came with its own challenges, but a better life. She would not have the spirit of competition or the inner ferocity that allowed her to succeed despite being the only Asian of her generation to grace a small beat-nick town. She would not have been able to pay her own way through college. Might not have met my dad at that college. Might not have married him and had a child. Might not have sought to create a happier, stabler family than the one she left behind or was raised in. Might not have been my mother.
On the night I heard the news, my mother said she could not stop crying. I wasn’t sure what spawned her tears. Love? Perhaps not. More like lost opportunity. A sense of unresolved tension. A chance to fill the void left. A chance to forgive, to leave the homeless little girl behind.
So grandfather, I cannot love you, but I am grateful to you. You gave my mother a life. You paid with thousands of miles separating you and your kin and years of mild resentment mingled with longing curiosity. We spoke of your role in our family as only a missing piece of the family tree. But at least for me, you were an outgrowth of a branch, a canker on the branches that really rooted me to the ground: my adopted grandparents. They were the faces I saw every day after school in childhood. They were the loving embraces I knew meant safety. Theirs are the scents I recognize from around the corner. They’ll be the ones I mourn when they pass.
How strange it is then that when I think on you, I cry. I think, it’s not for you. It’s for my mother. For what she thinks she could have recovered by meeting you. Or whatever it is that makes her sad. All I know is that your passing means just this to me: I love my mother and my family. You gave us that and you needn’t have given anything else. I won’t look back in regret of a missed opportunity. But I hope you find peace.
