She married an African man at 21 and left us… but every year she sends us the same message”

editoron
She married an African man at 21 and left us… but every year she sends us the same message”

 

My Daughter Moved to Korea Twelve Years Ago. Then One Day, at Sixty-Three, I Bought a Plane Ticket and Went Looking for Her.

My name is Theresa, and I am sixty-three years old.

I became a widow while I was still young.

From the day my husband died, it was just me and my daughter, Mary Lou, facing the world together. I worked extra shifts, skipped vacations, and sacrificed more than I can remember to give her the opportunities I never had.

And she made me proud.

Mary Lou was smart, kind, and beautiful. Everyone who knew her said she was destined for great things.

For a while, it looked like they were right.

Then, when she was twenty-one years old, she met Kang Jun, a Korean man nearly twenty years older than she was.

I opposed the relationship immediately.

Not because of his nationality.

Not because of his culture.

But because of the age difference and the thought of my only child living on the other side of the world.

Still, my daughter had inherited my stubbornness.

There was a determination in her eyes that I recognized all too well.

Nothing I said could change her mind.

They married in a quiet ceremony.

One month later, she boarded a plane with her husband and moved to South Korea.

At the airport, she hugged me tightly and cried.

I cried too.

Only silently.

I told myself she would come back in a year or two.

She never did.

One year passed.

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