Fall 2022 | Occasus | Issue 12

Long Live
On Monday night, I got the call from my father. It was all over the news by Tuesday morning: Another COVID-19 assault. Tracy Kim, 61-year-old woman, killed after getting hit multiple times in the head with a rock. Witnesses say that while Kim was on the ground, the unknown assaulter called her a “Chinese bitch,” and told her to go back to where she came from. By Tuesday afternoon, I was reading that headline on a flight from Toronto back to New York. I was sitting in the middle of two men on the flight, hyperventilating into my mask, tears pouring on my phone screen. And all I could think was, she was fucking Korean.

There is something so horrific about reading about your mother’s death on such a public platform, where everyone else can read about it before you can process what has happened.

When someone you love dies, the objects around you stop being objects and are instead reminders. I realized that the second I entered the apartment, I grew up in. The dusty candle sitting on the bookshelf brought me back to the time when my mother and I went to a Winners three years ago and decided it smelled great. The texts on my phone made me think about how I would never receive another text from her again. Everything around me was there to keep me from forgetting. And maybe, that was a good thing.


As I bent my elbow backwards, behind my back, pulling up the zipper on the new black dress I bought yesterday. I realized that this dress would also eventually become a memory connected to her.

I looked at the dress in the mirror of my childhood bedroom. I didn’t even remember choosing it. I jumped as I saw the reflection of someone entering my old room.

“Sorry,” Liam, my brother, said to me from the door. “We’re leaving in twenty.”

“Okay. I’m almost ready.”

I looked around the room and picked the papers I had scribbled on last night. I used to hate writing on paper but sitting there with my laptop last night felt wrong. It felt like I was a journalist typing another story about my mother’s death. I wasn’t here to write about her death; I was writing about more than that.


I stood there staring at the barely legible words. Half of the lines were crossed out. They reminded me of the manuscripts I had studied during undergrad. I put the papers down and started to eat some of the juk I had heated up earlier. I felt my eyes burn and put the spoon down as I swallowed. I picked up the papers again and went downstairs. 
Later that day I walked into the reception hall with my brother and father. The large room was filled with friends and family, some I knew, some I didn’t. It was hard to tell with the masks. Many of them were crying as they spoke to me. Others looked at me in pity. Even behind their masks, I could see the hurt in their eyes. However, it was most shocking when I saw old friends from high-school I hadn’t seen in almost fifteen years. I could hear people talking, but I wasn’t entirely there.

“Are you ready?” Liam asked.

“I’m not sure. I guess so.”

“Thank you for doing this.”

“Thank you for letting me.”

As the hall started filling up and fewer people were walking in, I sat down in the front row with my family. The wordless mumbling voices drowned out the quietly playing Beatles song, Yesterday. I glanced around, and it seemed like over a hundred people had arrived. I began to feel nervous. I tried not to think about what was happening, and instead waited until the officiant invited me to speak. When he said my name, I grabbed the sheets of paper and walked up to the podium.

“Thank you all for coming both in person and all of you who are here over Zoom. I know it has been hard because of Coronavirus. I want to begin by asking you all to wear your masks and try to keep a distance from one another. There’s hand sanitizer in the back. I know that if my mom was here, she would want me to say that.” I looked at Liam. The crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes helped me push forward. 

“My mother was born here in New York. As most of you know, she was a New Yorker through and through. She hated driving; it was always a bike or the subway. She was very active, ‘a granola,’ as Liam always called her.” I waited for people to laugh. “In her last moments, she was on her way to a yoga studio, the one she went to every Monday. Typical. Even though she was sixty-one, she was always running marathons. Always doing something to stay active. When I was in high school, I remember we were at a gym, and she beat the instructor during a wall sitting competition. She held it for six minutes. Six minutes.

She was also a music lover. She loved everything from The Beatles to Taylor Swift. When she used to drive me to university, we would be screaming the entire Speak Now album. I’m the worst singer, but my mother had a beautiful voice. Every time I hear the song Long Live, I can hear my mother shouting out all the lyrics. I know that sounds ironic, but I am so grateful for that shitty Taylor Swift song.

My mother was also a great cook. She had mastered everything from homemade pasta to brilliantly spicy Korean food. Even though she was born in New York, every weekend she would go to H-Mart and re-stock all the Korean groceries her mother taught her how to cook. Every time I was sick as a kid, she would make me juk. When I came home a couple of days ago, I found a whole batch of juk in the fridge. It was as if she had known I was coming, and she made it for me. It was like she knew I was going to need it.

Before she retired last year, my mother was a middle-school teacher. Her students absolutely adored her. I remember walking around grocery stores with her, and kids would run up to us. ‘Ms. Kim!’ they would say, with just the biggest smiles. Even older students she hasn’t taught in years would come up to her. She remembered every single one of their names. My mother was such a kind soul; she was so loving and compassionate. It touched everyone who met her. During the beginning of the winter breaks, she would come home carrying bags filled with gifts from her students. I remember my brother Liam and I would go through the piles of chocolates and gift cards, fighting over which ones were ours. My mother would stand there, smiling as she watched us. She was so excited to let us have all of it. She was such a giving person. Even when we would walk around in the winter, after I had stubbornly refused to wear gloves—as all kids do—she would take hers off and put them in my small hands. ‘Take them, take them,’ she would say.” I looked towards Liam. His eyes were glassy, and I quickly looked away. I could not cry now. Not here.

“I know how much of an impact she had on everyone’s life. She was such a happy person. She was always laughing and smiling. Her laugh was like a little kid’s, throwing her head back and clapping her hands together.”

I was crying despite myself. I wiped away my tears.

“I wish—I wish I could talk to her one last time. Hear her laugh just once.” I felt my stomach twist.

“We were absolutely robbed of the kindest and sweetest soul. I thought we would have had more time with each other. But even during these horrible times and this horrible event, we have to realize how lucky we all were to have met someone so pure and giving. She was truly a gift.

If I could talk to her now, I would want to tell her that we will be okay. Liam and I will take care of dad. And that I love her—we all love her so much. And that I miss her, and I am going to miss her every second for the rest of my life. The hardest part of knowing someone so special is losing them. It leaves a chasm within all of us that will truly never be whole again.

I wish I could have been there with her until the end. I wish I could have protected her, made her feel less alone. I wish I could have taken away her pain. I know all of you feel the same way. I know it’s hard to get lost in the hate and the anger, especially with someone so special to all of us. What happened was unfair and despicable and I don’t even understand it. But we cannot dwell on the sadness and bitterness—we must be grateful for having had the privilege of knowing someone so warm and loving. I know if she were here today, she would want us all to be happy. She would tell us to stop crying and get on with it. She would like us to laugh and smile thinking about her. So please, try to take care of one another, for my mother. And try to smile and laugh for her as well. Thank you.”

I looked towards my brother, whose eyes were shining. My father’s eyes were closed, his hands were white fists in his lap. I looked at everyone in the room, the tops of their masks stained with tears. Some of them dabbed away the grief in their eyes, and some of them let the grief remain.

I sat down between my brother and father.

“I felt like I should have said something more about it,” I whispered to my brother.

He shook his head. “She wouldn’t have wanted you to.”

“I felt like I should have.”

“No. That man doesn’t get to take her funeral too. This is about mom, not what happened to her.”

I just sat there, unmoving. My body felt like it was vibrating, and I wanted my mother so badly at this moment. There is an insidious kind of pain that occurs when the person you rely on to be there for you in these times is the one you are grieving for. 

On the other side of me, my father grabbed my hand. I squeezed it back.

“She loved you so much. She would have loved to hear that.”

​“Thank you, Dad.” 
For the next few days, I could barely sleep. I wandered around my parents’ apartment, going through old papers and photos of my mother while everyone else slept. The police had given her purse, with everything in it, back yesterday. Nobody had touched it. Nobody wanted to, not even my father. But when it was nearing just past five in the morning, when I was completely alone, I finally found the courage to pick her purse up. I went on to the balcony and sat looking over the city of New York. The air was crisp, and sun was peeking over the horizon. I pulled her phone out of the bag. I tried the password she had used while I was a teenager. It worked, of course it did. I stared at the home screen for a moment, unsure of what I was looking for.

Finally, I clicked the pink music icon. My heart pounded loudly in my ears. I saw the last song she was listening to and clicked play. I closed my eyes and put the phone up to my ear. I could hear my mother’s quiet yet angelic voice. It was as if she was sitting in the chair next to me, both of us singing Long Live.
Hanna Shore recently completed her third year doing an Honours Specialization in Creative Writing and English Language and Literature at Western University. She loves writing fiction that focuses on urgent injustices around intersectional oppression.