Spring Day

추운 겨울 끝을 지나
다시 봄날이 올 때까지
꽃 피울 때까지
그곳에 좀 더 머물러줘
머물러줘

“Past the end of this cold winter

Until the spring comes again

Until the flowers bloom again

Stay there a little longer

Stay there”

Spring season has come again for another year without amiss. Without it, and without the absence imposed by fall and winter, we flawed mortals might fail to appreciate the beauties around. So much of the wonder of spring is found in the return of what was absent.

Taking a deep breath as I breathe in the fresh smell of spring, the distinct smell of it where the wind carries the smell of fresh grass and blooming flowers. Closing my eyes as I breathe in to bury down the sorrow, and the longing in my heart. Walking down the familiar lane as I have familiarized for years now, as the pavement is still wet from the remnants of snow left, melting away under the sun as winter has passed on its baton to the fellow spring.

An odd day to come and visit but as always on the same time, same day, same date, for every month for the last 5 years, I have never failed to come and visit her, my beloved first love. With a bouquet of flower, she loved the most, I approach the familiar black coloured gravestone with carved wordings I memorised by heart.

“Don’t let your demons eat you away and love yourself

and those who loves you to the fullest”

Here lies,

beloved mother,

best friend,

and a faithful Believer

Love by all forever and always

It’s been 4 years since the faithful day where I lost a part of myself in god’s hands, faith was too cruel, I had just graduated from medical school and started on my residency nearby just so that I could spend more time with her, my family, my first love.

Cleaning the around her gravestone, and arranging some new flowers around it before offering a glass of soju to her. Closing my eyes as memories starts to swirling around in my head, numbing me from the current reality and relishing me back to the past. A hand grasped onto my shoulder, bringing me back to reality from drowning from the pain of loss, as I intertwined my fingers around her.  Opening my eyes as I tilted my head to see the beautiful pair of eyes I love the most. Jennie Kim. Asking me silently with her eyes smiling softly down at me, Are you okay?

My lips stretched into a reassuring smile, I’m okay, after years together, we have known each other well enough with just by the looks of our eyes, we could understand what we were feeling. It’s true on what they said about soulmates. Soulmates are brought into our lives so that we could grow and expand into the best version of ourselves. Love and pain exists, where there is love, there’s bound to be pain. Those happily ever after that exists throughout our childhood are just bull fantasies that misguided people into becoming delusional of what to expect in the upcoming years in life. You will just bound to get disappointed and hurt by it. To think that I almost lost her 6 years ago, made my heart clenched in agony as I remembered her frail form, ghostly pale complexion, her lost in confidence as she watched her hair lost, worsening her state of depression. I was never a devoted Christion but during all those times, I have never prayed so hard in my life, praying to save her.

Thank the heavens for her good prognosis and treatment response, with the support of my family and friends, she recovered well until the consultant gave the greatest news we could ever have, she was finally free from ovarian cancer and she’s on the road to recovery. I cried, we all did, my beautiful Jennie will be okay.

If you noticed, I said my family instead of our, well, Jennie’s family doesn’t deserve to have such a beautiful angel in their lives, abandoning their only child at a time where she needs them the most. They have never been a family to her, I don’t know how Jennie had grown and love to those people she called family. All her life, she had to struggle to meet ends meet for her school fees and rents. Her family had never cared of her, always calling her a burden when she lived under their roofs. I know this well because I’ve been to her house. Let’s just say that they should be glad that Jennie was there to calm me down or I would have been in prison from strangling their rich arses off to death.

Since, then I started to bring Jennie into my family, to let her see the real meaning of family and its worth. My mother, my first love, such kind heart had accepted Jennie the moment she laid her eyes on her, just like her son, she fell in love at first sight for the third time after my father and I. My father as well, a soft spoken man, had love her like his own daughter.

We were a small but happy family, for a year it has been a bless, the radiating exterior of happiness and joy from the four of us had blinded me from the truth, that my mother was actually suffering and that both my father and Jennie had respectfully agreed to my mother’s wish to keep it as a secret. I broke into a cold sweat and worry when I came across my mother’s unconscious body in the kitchen, alone as my father had gone out to work, only to find out later in the emergency room that my mother’s heart condition had worsen, she had suffered from ischaemic heart disease and I, her goddamn son who studies medicine for years didn’t even realise the signs and symptoms.

I felt betrayed, drunk in rage and fury as they filled throughout my system to the people I trusted the most. Now when I thought about it, I feel regret, for my rebellious act against them, for making the three most important person in the world as my enemies, for hating my mother for accepting defeat to a disease with such ease and refusing any further surgery. If I have thought rationally at that time, I wouldn’t have lost my way and drown myself with work. I could have spent more time with her, fulfilling every single wish of hers.

“Anyeong omma, how are you?” she crou