🎶 Dean Lewis - How Do I Say Goodbye

A relationship filled with the flutter of meeting the one I wanted. A marriage swelling with hope. A time of happiness that filled that hope to the brim.

And so, our love became the blessing of a family. Our first daughter, Hae-eun, now fourteen, and our seven-year-old son, Ha-jun.

Happiness wasn't anything grand. A normal day flowing by without worry. A daily life where the family eats, laughs, and sleeps together safely today. Those trivial day-to-day moments were happiness, and they were something to be grateful for.

But people say that misfortune always waits for its moment in the closest proximity to happiness. I truly didn't know that those words would find us, too.

At first, it was just an ordinary day. I brushed past my wife's back as she moved around the kitchen preparing for work, and Hae-eun grumbled about being late while putting on her school uniform. Ha-jun dropped his spoon while eating and burst into sorrowful tears.

It was perfectly ordinary. That's why it was even harder to believe.

"We... need to perform one more biopsy."

The doctor was explaining something at length. But only one sentence remained in my ears.

'It can get better with treatment.'

That was the only thing.

"Honey, they say it'll be okay if we treat it."

When I spoke with a trembling voice, my wife silently squeezed my hand. Then she smiled slowly. I didn't know then that the smile would vanish so quickly.

No, I didn't want to know.

The first few months were bearable. My wife was a strong person. Even while undergoing harsh chemotherapy, she never once said it was hard. Even when her hair started falling out, she grinned in front of the mirror and said:

"Don't I look kind of cool? Like a movie star?"

Knowing she was forcing a smile, I smiled along. We left the children at my mother-in-law's house. I couldn't bring myself to tell seven-year-old Ha-jun that 'Mom is very sick.'

The eldest, Hae-eun, matured faster than anyone. Seeing her try to fill her mother's empty spot without a word broke my heart even more.

Still, we believed. That it was just a temporary brake on a life that had been running too fast. That if we just endured a little longer, we could laugh like before. That was the last hope we believed in together.

But reality was cruel. Our hope collapsed so hollowly before just two words: 'Metastasis.'

"...It would be best to discontinue treatment now."

The moment the doctor finished speaking, I knelt before him for the first time. The title of professor I had maintained all my life, my dignity—none of it meant anything.

I clung to the doctor's trouser leg, begging him to save her somehow, to find a way just one more time. I will probably never forget the memory of that day.

I knew the doctor wasn't a god. I knew better than anyone that even the most brilliant doctor couldn't defeat every disease. Nevertheless, at that moment, I wanted to believe.

That because he's a doctor, he could save her. That there must be another way.

But in the end, a miracle did not come. My wife, who had never once said it was hard while enduring the long and grueling treatment, said to me for the first and last time:

"...I want to go home. I want to see the kids' faces."

That wasn't a request. It was the final wish of someone who had already made up their mind. The doctor carefully recommended the hospice ward, but my wife chose home instead of the hospital. The place where the children were. The place where we had lived together.

It was a choice to remain my wife and the children's mother until the end. Ultimately, we returned home, carrying a span of time whose length we did not know.

An adolescent daughter who matured too early. A seven-year-old son to whom his mother's changed appearance was only strange.

And I, who loved my wife more than anyone. A happy family of four who had been so ordinary now had to prepare, little by little, in their own places, to say goodbye to Mom.

Even though Mom is still by our side. We had to learn, far too early, how to keep Mom's traces as memories.