Happy Birthday, Mom

She would have been 68 today, this little woman who meant so much to her family and friends. I'd be lying if I told you that the passage of more than sixteen months has blunted the pain of Mom's loss. I look at all these photos we have of her, and feel as if they had been taken just yesterday.

It was just yesterday-- when we all sat down to a Mother's Day meal at a super-expensive restaurant in northern Virginia, enjoying a rare extravagance; when we stood on the deck of The Maid of the Mist and got soaked by Niagara Falls; when we sat at a trestle table behind my French exchange parents' house in Carquefou, France, and enjoyed one of many family meals together; when we watched with pride as Mom spoke to a crowd in her capacity as Korean-American Women's Society president; when we listened to her tearful stories about the horrors she endured in the Korean War; when we were kids whom she helped get dressed for Halloween or school or church or an overnight with friends, running happily out of Mom's reach while she stood and smiled.

She would have been 68 today, and now all we have are these memories.

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