pyeonji (letter)

The house has been quiet... I just hand-wrote three pages of a draft of a letter to Korean relatives-- in Korea-- who still don't know what's happened to Mom. I dropped the ball on this one; they deserve to know, but they've been out of the loop this entire time. I'd also rather not call them right now; I don't trust myself to be able to explain the situation well enough in Korean, and I don't really want to handle more stress from the stressed-out. When people get flustered, they start taking the conversation in all the wrong directions; by writing things down (in admittedly poor Korean), I'm sure to cover most of what needs to be covered. After the relatives have read my letter, they can call me. I may also end up passing them off to better speakers of Korean who have kept up with our situation.

Anyway, the letter promises to be long. These relatives don't read English (well, maybe one or two of the younger cousins do), so there's a lot to tell them. In three pages, I've gotten them as far as the first surgery on April 21. I don't want to write a novel, but I also don't want to provide them with a terse summary that comes off sounding like a cold recitation of only the most salient facts. They deserve better.


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