I'll Be Right There Read Free Page B

in the case. I crumpled up the discarded papers covered in underlines and tossed them in the trash, removed the paperweights from the thick books that I had shoved aside in the middle of reading and gathered them off to one side, and returned the books to their shelves.
    For some reason, straightening up my desk always reminds me of death. Once, I had tidied up and was heading out of the room when I glanced back at my clean desk. Suddenly frightened, I went back and messed it up again. Growing old does not make us any better at loving one another or understanding the meaning of life or death. Nor does knowledge come with the passage of time. Compared with when I was young, I am worse now at loving another person, and news of someone’s unexpected death shocks and upsets me each time. Nevertheless, I hope that when I die, I will be writing or reading a book at my desk late one snowy night and I will simply put my head down and close my eyes forever. I want that to be the last image of me on this earth. I brushed away the traces of death that clung to my fingertips each time I put a book on its shelf and finished tidying up. To get ready to go to the hospital, I lathered my hands with soap and washed my face, changed into clean clothes, and checked the mirror. On my way out the door, I paused involuntarily and glanced back at my desk.
    As if it had been waiting for me, the telephone rang again.

CHAPTER 1
    Parting
    W hen I turned twenty, I returned to the city and made five promises to myself:
Start reading again.
Write down new words and their definitions.
Memorize one poem a week.
Do not go to Mom’s grave before the Chuseok holiday.
Walk around the city for at least two hours every day.
    My mother passed away before the end of my first semester of college.
    The first thing she did after she found out she was sick was to send me to live with my older female cousin in the city. I was in middle school at the time. For my mother, sending me away was her way of loving me. She said I was too young to be tied down to a sick mother and that I had too much to livefor. Everybody has to say goodbye eventually, she told me, so you may as well start practicing. I cannot say she was right. I think that if we all have to say goodbye eventually then the best we can do is try to stay together as long as we possibly can. But it’s not that one of us was right and the other was wrong. We just saw things differently.
    Up until her illness took a turn for the worse, I used to get her medication for her at a big hospital in the city, where she had once been admitted. Every Wednesday, I ordered her prescription at the pharmacy, sat in the waiting room, and waited for the number written on the piece of paper I was given to appear on the electronic display. When my number popped up with a ding, I pushed the slip of paper through the window. After a brief wait, a basket with a week’s worth of my mother’s medication was pushed back to me. I repeated this trip to the pharmacy every Wednesday to purchase my mother’s pills and mail them to her. Each time I called to tell her they were in the mail, she said, “That’s my daughter!” Always in the same unchanging voice. Good work, daughter! Thank you, daughter!
    Four days before she died, she sent me a package. It contained a ring she always wore and some perilla leaf kimchi.
    “Perilla leaf kimchi is your favorite.” She sounded cheerful over the phone. “I’ve looked forward to leaving that ring to you!”
    I didn’t know she would die so soon.
    Whenever I thought about the fact that she had packed perilla leaf kimchi for me and then took off her ring, wrapped it in paper, and sent it to me before dying, I rubbed my eyes hard, as if to dig them out. There was no more medicine forme to pick up on Wednesdays, yet every Wednesday morning I could be found sitting in the waiting room of that hospital. It was my Wednesday routine. I no longer had a number to wait for, but each time the pager