“I’m sorry to inform you of this, but your mom was killed last night in a hit-and-run accident.”
I can envision Chong slumping to the floor, overwhelmed by every child’s worst nightmare.
The police report said that Mom had mechanical problems in the blue Mustang I’d driven her to work in just about a month earlier. She was driving on Interstate 10 that night in Phoenix. After pulling over into the emergency lane, she stepped out of her vehicle. As Mom walked down the emergency lane, seeking help, a truck swerved into Mom, crushing her. The driver of the truck stopped for a moment, then saw what had happened and sped off, dragging my mom a distance on the freeway.
A highway patrol officer witnessed what happened. He reported seeing the whole incident, as he was behind the man who hit Mom. He was going to pursue the man who careened into Mom, but the priority was to give immediate medical assistance to her. The officer pulled over to attend to her. By the time he reached her and checked her pulse, Mom was gone. And so was the man who killed her. There was no license number. No identification. Soon the local news media was on-site, reporting the incident statewide. The officer shared that, most likely, the driver of the other car was intoxicated.
I can’t imagine how my twenty-six-year-old sister managed the news she received during those early morning hours. The shock and horror slowly set in as Chong wilted to the floor and wept. Her only advocate. Her safe place gone.
As I held the phone, Chong was still sobbing in the background. Pastor Bunt, who was with her, came on the phone and said something, but I couldn’t hear anything from that point on. I was in a state of shock and disbelief, even though I’d had that premonition.
The day turned into a blur. When the worst happens, your body goes numb. You’re trying to process what is real and what is not. You’re shocked the world didn’t stop. How could life keep going on like normal—my mom just died!
My friends and classmates would later tell me that the announcement in the chapel on the campus that day was about me going home to my mom’s funeral after the hit-and-run accident. I received many cards, notes, and gifts from the student body. One of these was from a close friend since childhood and roommate, Kevin Schaal. When he heard the news of my mom’s death, he wrote this poem. I read it on the plane ride back home.
NIGHT
The sky I view contains no touch of blue
The signature of God’s controlling reign.
Even for gray sky eyes now search in vain.
Oh, Lord, where is thy hand so blest and true,
To rescue me from agonizing hue,
Or this my life with sorrow ever stain.
Tis night I view that weighs down so my soul
Tis night that scared away the day
And with the day a loved one’s soul away.
Now my empty soul views sky so black as coal.
My Lord, can ever again come the day?
Son, sit and ponder what’s been done, is now the sky black or deepest blue?
Lord, it is the latter that is true.
Is my sovereign power then all gone,
Oh, Lord no, all that happens is by you.
And what more do you see way up on high?
I see a sparkling star there shining bright
That never I would see if not the night.
Yes, son, the wondrous star I placed on high
Is the reason for which I brought the night.
As I sat there on the plane and stared at the clouds through the window, I wept. The dark nights I’d felt from the day my mom locked herself in that Chevy kept turning in my mind. The tragic nature of my mom’s death wrecked me. I couldn’t see any light during this night. The darkness of the night rolled over me.
The chapel was packed with Mom’s loyal customers, friends from church, and many people I didn’t know. It was standing room only, and people overflowed into the lobby. My sister, brother, and I sat in the front row. Noticeably absent was my father. Absent from my graduation, absent now. Why would I expect anything different? The day that Mom died, on October 6, 1981, was Dad’s first wedding anniversary with his new wife, Carolyn—the woman he’d had an affair with and left Mom for. It seemed like a sad irony, or at the least poetic justice. I felt awful for even thinking such a thing.
Prior to the service, I quietly went back to the side room, where Mom was lying in state. It was surreal seeing her in the ornate shiny beige casket. She lay there in a royal blue dress, her eyes closed. She wore the necklace and rings my sister had found in Mom’s jewelry drawer. Makeup was caked on her skin to cover the bruises and traumas of the accident. It didn’t look natural at all. Her hands were obviously badly contused, folded over her body. These were the hands I had tenderly caressed just a few weeks earlier.
As I leaned in closer to her, I started to lose it again. The worst fears I’d had as a child were now realized. I kissed her cheek, like I had done a thousand times since I was little. Yet this time there was no warmth. No smile. No laughter. There was no response from Mom. Just the cold smell of a funeral home, excessive makeup, and death.
I remember thinking it was odd to see the funeral staff so comfortable around death. When someone so significant to you dies, it’s odd to see people carrying on with normality. There’s a personal reality check that life has literally stopped yet the world moves on. The living are quickly forgotten. I was even struggling to see the details of Mom’s face in my mind.
We buried Mom in Scottsdale, Arizona. My sister asked me to provide the words for her tombstone. How do you summarize a person’s life in a few words? You see the digits of a person’s birth and their death but that dash in between is filled with countless stories and people known and unknown. Pondering what to say, I remember what I prayed for Mom after her challenges with Dad. I prayed that she would experience joy again. Then it dawned on me that death was probably the only way my mom would ever get over her sorrow. She couldn’t get past the divorce. I settled on the phrase “Joy in His Presence” because all her life she was searching for joy. I know in her lifetime she had experienced joy meeting Dad, having us kids, making her clients feel beautiful. I had resigned myself to the reality that Mom would never recover from the wounds of her life. I couldn’t solve her problems. I couldn’t heal her. This wasn’t something I could fix. The thought of her being with God gave me some consolation, but the cruel reality of death lingers and doesn’t move on quickly.
You never get over the loss of someone you love. It’s an endless cycle of suffering and longing, a visceral yearning to be with them again.
After the memorial service, my siblings and I went back home. Most of the time, we didn’t say much. I think we were still in a state of shock. The house felt so empty without Mom. She was the life and energy of our home. But we had to keep taking care of details we were unprepared for. There were so many little things that needed to get done, like taking care of the rest of the funeral arrangements and sorting through her possessions.
Organizing her personal belongings was a slow methodical process, which helped us to deal with our grief. Mom’s best friend, Kim Ahjumma, came all the way from San Diego to be with us. She was the one who had babysat me when my parents still lived in Korea. She assured me every time I saw her, “Da-bid, I gave you my milk.” Then she’d smile with a maternal gaze looking into my eyes. By saying I drank her milk, Kim Ahjumma was saying, Hey, your mom and I are like sisters and you are like my literal son. It was her reminder of the important position she had in our lives because of her friendship with Mom. She was Mom’s closest friend since her early years in Korea. No matter how awkward that was every time she brought up her nursing me, I laughed and felt grateful for her friendship with Mom. Kim Ahjumma was simply trying to say she was family. She and Mom had gone through so much. Kim Ahjumma herself came from abject poverty, too. She also suffered through a divorce with an American. When she had been taken to Japan as a child, she was forced to go to a Japanese elementary school, where the Japanese children called her terrible names you never forget. Kim Ahjumma rarely smiled unless Mom made her laugh or when she’d tell me I drank her milk. I wondered how much of her stoicism was her natural self, or was this who she became after the relentless teasing and bullying she endured as a child in Japan. Her presence was calming, as she was like a second mom to us. She would just look at us and cry. She’d look at me with earnest eyes, grab my hands, and hold them. Later she would cook us Korean food, sit down with us, and just stare at us with empathetic eyes. She’d sit in silence but her presence filled us with compassion and love. Without words, she wanted us to know she truly loved us and that Mom loved us. Having Kim Ahjumma with us brought all of us comfort. She and Mom were so close that I could feel Mom’s presence through her.
