You Know What?

By Namoo Chae Lee

Sometimes you just need one memory to remember someone. Just one. 

She didn’t speak Korean, but she said she could understand. We were not really friends, but she held my hands when I was homesick. “You can tell me in Korean, and I can understand you”, she said. 

So I did. 

The warmth of her hand around mine, stayed with me. 

Until I could reach out to her across fifteen years. She asked me how to become a Korean shaman. We were talking about making a show. She said she wanted to heal people, and herself, as a shaman. I told her off. I argued that theatre-making is already similar to be a shaman and no need to become one. A few months later, I read her obituary in a Playbill.

Now I’m back in the US, reading a play about the dead, and I see her name in the credits. Was it the play, or her name in the credits, that made me cry? She was not really my friend, but she held my hands eighteen years ago, and that stayed with me.

You know what, Diana. 

I don’t know. The only thing I am certain of, as I get older, is how little I know. I become less certain of things, more cautious, more doubtful of what seems obvious.

I am sorry for not holding your hands back. 

You already healed me eighteen years ago by holding my hands. 

You were already a shaman to me.