My daughter married a Korean man at 21 and left the family, yet every year she sent the same message

The second room was totally empty.

Unsplash
Then, I opened the third door at the end of the hall, and my jaw dropped. The room was stacked with heavy cardboard boxes. A few were taped shut, but the open ones were filled to the brim with neat, banded stacks of American hundred-dollar bills. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, just sitting in a dark, empty room.

My mind raced through the worst-possible scenarios. Was my daughter involved in any criminal activities? Was she in danger?

And then I heard someone opening the front door.

Someone asked a question in Korean, and then in English. “Who’s there?”

When I turned around, I finally saw my daughter. She was then 33 but looked like a 50-year-old woman.

“Mary Lou, what is this?” I asked, unaware of what was going on. “Where is your husband? What is all that money?”

And then she collapsed on the floor and started crying before telling me everything. The first year in Korea, she learned her husband was a gambling addict. Not long after that, he vanished and was nowhere to be found. She was left to pay for his debt.

Mary Lou didn’t even speak the language. She was scared and completely lost.

“Why didn’t you come home?” I kept asking, and she said she didn’t return because she knew I was right when I opposed her marriage. She was embarrassed and didn’t know how to tell me that she made a mistake marrying that man.

“Oh, mom, I remembered how stubborn I was. I couldn’t bear the thought of crawling back home to our small town as a total failure, letting everyone say they told me so. I couldn’t do it.”

Pexels
She cast a glance toward the room with the money. “And I wanted to take care of you. I made a pledge to myself that no matter what happened in my life, I would fulfill my promise of giving you a wonderful one. I took three jobs, Mom. Worked sixteen hours a day, everyday, for twelve years straight. Everything I earned I spent on you.”