A Short Love Story
My dad, John, was stationed in Korea in the late 1970s.
He met my mom, Mi Cha (she goes by Micha now) and they began to date. Micha was living with her roommate, Inho, who did not have a boyfriend at the time. John decided that his friend Bob and Inho should meet, so he introduced them. The introduction proved to be a great match, with Bob and Inho eventually marrying. John having seen that his matchmaking endeavor was a success, started his own path to realizing how much he loved Micha.
My parents would marry in September of 1978.
Later in the 1980s, John, Micha, Bob and Inho would be reunited in Okinawa, Japan at Kadena AFB. Inho and Micha along with other Korean wives would often spend afternoons together. Her son, Nicky, would share his toys with me and I remember looking up to him as the older boy that he was. At this time, I was too young to understand the dynamic of our moms’ history. The Korean culture is very communal, the people manage to find each other and share resources. Most of my friends were because our moms would always congregate somewhere on base, and bring the kids.
Fast forward to March 2, 2021 — I found out through social media that Inho had passed away on March 1. She and I were not close, my memory of her so brief, she would leave the occasional comment on my wall telling me how beautiful my daughter is, and how beautiful she remembers my mom to have been. Time and distance performed their usual disintegration of close relationship, and it was remarkably rare that either of my parents would connect with Bob and Inho.
Today, I visited with my Mom and Dad and informed them of Inho’s passing. Honestly, my connection to this part of their past is faint, my initial feelings of general sympathy and sadness were out of respect and courtesy for people I knew to have meant dearly to them. I severely over-estimated the degradation of sentiment inflicted by time and distance.
I’ve seen my share of thousand yard stares. Military families are generally close knit during tragedies, some resilient acceptance of this being what our fathers/husbands/mothers/wives do, and that everything must continue forward in spite of all that. We grieve, but we do not stop. Not even in retirement. Life becomes a mission, and that mission comes first.
Since my Dad retired so many years ago, I have not been able to experience this type of empathy for a very long time.
My mom’s eyes immediately went to a thousand yards. My dad’s as well. For a few brief moments, I felt very disconnected from them, as though they had emotionally went to a place I could not follow. They did.
I knew their connection to them had some depth, but for the first time I witnessed my mom and dad share a few moments of solemnity that I have never seen for anyone else.
“John, how did you find out?” my dad asked.
”Facebook, I’m friends with Nicky. He followed up today and let us know what happened. Aren’t you and Bob on Facebook?”
”John, I haven’t used Facebook in several years. I just don’t have any interest there. I’m not even supposed to have an account anymore.”
”Except that you do, because you and I are not friends and Facebook insists that we know each other.”
My Dad logs into Facebook and sure enough, his profile is a lot of nothing. He really did strip it bare as much as he knew how. However, I saw that his Messenger had a notification on it.
“Dad, you’ve got a message in there.”
He opened it, it said “Bob”
Around 8:45am this morning, Bob wrote my Dad to let him know that Inho had passed away. The final sentence putting everything into perspective.
I’ll forever owe you a debt for having introduced her to me.
Rest in peace, Imo.
