Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
It should come as no surprise that Crying in H Mart was a freezer book for me.
If you’re not familiar with the Friends reference, Joey and Rachel read each other’s favourite books and out of fear and devastation end up locking them in the freezer for safety purposes. While locking The Shining in the freezer is the emotional equivalent of hiding underneath the covers, shutting away Little Women is protection from a much deeper internal threat: grief.
In her memoir, Michelle Zauner, well known for her work as musical artist Japanese Breakfast, writes about her Korean-American heritage, her complex relationship with her mother, and the heartbreaking experience of dealing with her mother’s death at twenty-five.
I soon discovered that Zauner and I are about the same age and both grew up in the Pacific Northwest obsessed with music, so there were many small points of connection that deepened this book for me, with the greatest one of course being losing a mother to cancer.
Personally, it was strange and somewhat shameful to read about the most heart-wrenching days of someone’s life and envy the tender aspects of it. Zauner’s mother, Chongmi, was not a “mommy mom” as Zauner puts it. She didn’t drop everything and warmly validate every one of her daughter’s needs, instead focusing relentlessly on nitpicking to perfection the child at the centre of her universe. However, in their last few months together their relationship softened.
They quickly planned Zauner’s wedding after she flat out told her boyfriend, it’s now or I’ll never forgive you. The wedding gave mother and daughter a shared purpose and after it was over, they let go and embraced each other and the inevitable: “We let ourselves weep fully then, gently clinging to each other the way we did for twenty-five years, our tears seeping into each other’s shirts.”
At this point, I hit pause in teary frustration, cursing myself for lacking Zauner’s foresight. When my mom passed, I was with a partner of nine years, the same wonderful man I married this past summer without her. Though most of all, I deeply yearned for that devastating release of collective emotion Zauner and her mother had before the end.
But one of the greatest lessons of retrospect is seeing the past with a new perspective while resisting the urge to change it.
I had to remind myself that rather than softening, the mom who used to lie next to me for hours reading or envelop me with hugs when I walked through the door disappeared the day she was diagnosed. She drew up the covers tightly over herself and hid from her emotions. On my mom’s last night with us, my sisters and I laid in bed with her for only a few minutes before she told us it was time to go. I put my hand on her arm and she moved it away. Sunglasses shielded her eyes as she took her last breaths.
I tried at every opportunity to create little gaps from which we could sincerely express our love and grief, but sadly she locked that part of herself away and there was nothing I could have done differently to open that door again. Had I hastily married before she died, she wouldn’t have really been there. While Zauner couldn’t have imagined getting married without her mother, I only appreciated the true meaning of marriage after going through her loss with my partner.
There are, however, certain universal harrowing rites of passage that can’t be escaped by anyone losing a parent to a terminal illness. As Zauner writes, “For the rest of my life there would be a splinter in my being, stinging me from the moment my mother died until it was buried with me.” No matter how they go, they take with them a part of you. A foundational reference point that leaves you floating adrift for some time. This opened up a pain I have kept quite private, but it reminded me of how healing reading people’s stories can be, even if they tear you apart.
Ultimately, the most important part missing from the Friends episode is a scene where Joey bravely retrieves Little Women from the freezer, faces the pain, and has that final moment of catharsis that we all desperately need.
But this is what we have close friends and good therapists for… so back to the book.
Zauner balances all this heaviness well, punctuating significant emotional moments with her love of Korean food and a compelling exploration of her identity. She also writes with enough distance from this period in her life that we are left with a satisfying and optimistic conclusion. She notes, “If there was a god, it seemed my mother must have had her foot on his neck, demanding good things come my way.”
Experiencing loss yourself is definitely not a prerequisite for reading and enjoying this book. In fact, being able to connect to this story before grief finds its way into your life may quietly prepare you to confidently show up for yourself and your loved ones when tragedy strikes. I hate to say this, because we have probably all been this person, but from the other side of grief, you do not want to be the friend who says, “there are no words,” avoids eye contact, and then never mentions it again. Or, worse yet, the person who says nothing at all.
The greatest gift of stories is the ability to develop empathy for people you’ve never met from places you’ve never been–it is as close to an instructional manual as you can get without having lived it yourself. Do not miss the chance to cry in H Mart with Michelle, to sit with grief before it arrives. Through her richly detailed descriptions of the ingredients that got her through, Zauner’s favourite dishes may even become your own comfort food.
Despite having dissolved into a bowl of emotionally restorative soup, there really isn’t anyone I wouldn’t recommend Crying in H Mart to so long as you have an open heart and room in the freezer.