Claudia

“Why hadn’t she waited for me to answer the door? Clearly, my mother’s art teacher knew she had passed, yet she kept this letter addressed to her. And if it was for my mother, I wondered, why hadn’t she written it in Korean? Had she translated it specifically for me? There was a part of me that felt, or maybe hoped, that after my mother died, I had absorbed her in some way, that she was a part of me now. I wondered if her art teacher felt this way, too, that I was the closest she could get to being heard.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“That night, lying beside her, I remembered how when I was a child I would slip my cold feet between my mother’s thighs to warm them. How she’d shiver and whisper that she would always suffer to bring me comfort, that that was how you knew someone really loved you. I remembered the boots she’d broken in so that by the time I got them I could go on unbothered, without harm. Now, more than ever, I wished desperately for a way to transfer pain, wished I could prove to my mother just how much I loved her, that I could just crawl into her hospital cot and press my body close enough to absorb her burden. It seemed only fair that life should present such an opportunity to prove one’s filial piety. That the months my mother had been a vessel for me, her organs shifting and cramping together to make room for my existence, and the agony she’d endured upon my exit could be repaid by carrying this pain in her place. The rite of an only daughter. But I could do no more than lie nearby, ready to be her advocate, listening to the slow and steady beeping of machinery, the soft sounds of her breathing in and out.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“Even nowadays, children are often left at home during funerals, like dogs. Why should children be excluded from funerals when they’re so welcome at christenings and weddings? Not only can their presence be therapeutic for other adults and useful reminders that life, whatever death may do, goes on; not only is it unlikely that very young children will be upset, simply because they have only a vague idea of the concept of death. But not attending the funeral of someone close can be tremendously damaging for some people in later life. Middle-aged people who were not allowed to attend the funerals of grandparents or even parents, can still feel full of rage and sorrow.”
― Virginia Ironside, Youll Get Over It: The Rage Of Bereavement

“Her art was the love that beat on in her loved ones, a contribution to the world that could be just as monumental as a song or a book. There could not be one without the other.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart