Crying in H Mart Chapters 13–15 Summary & Analysis

Summary: Chapters 13–15

Chapter 13: A Heavy Hand

Two days after Kye leaves, Michelle’s mother emerges from her drug-induced haze to shout out in pain. Michelle and her father give her opioids and she falls asleep. They continue to keep her sedated with painkillers and spend the following days obsessively cleaning house and lying in bed with her. Michelle’s father says he thinks about suffocating her mother to end it quickly, and that he knows Michelle wishes it was him dying instead. She denies it but acknowledges that she expected he would be the one to die first. Peter arrives, and the next morning Michelle’s father tells them that her mother has died. Her father gives Michelle her mother’s wedding ring, and asks Michelle to change the clothes on her mother’s corpse. She struggles to do so and laments over the horrible situation. Workers arrive to remove the body, and Michelle goes with Peter to an apple orchard, where they feed goats and Michelle feels the shock of her mother’s death.

Chapter 14: Lovely

Michelle is tasked with picking out the cemetery, headstone, and epitaph for her mother’s funeral. She decides that the headstone will read “lovely mother, wife, and best friend,” for her mother’s fondness of the word “lovely.” At her childhood desk, Michelle struggles to write a eulogy that encapsulates the depth of her mother’s love and humanity. She is comforted by the arrival of Nami and Seong Young, who come the day before the funeral. Michelle gives Nami the matching necklace that she and her mother used to wear in honor of Eunmi, and Nami thanks her.

At the funeral, Michelle feels the same discomfort she remembers her mother expressing at Eunmi’s funeral. She delivers the eulogy and is surprised at her own composure. Afterwards she goes out to dinner with friends and family, where she breaks down at long last, letting out all the emotion she’d kept in during the funeral and its planning. The next morning she resolves to make a recipe from Maangchi’s YouTube channel, a Korean comfort food that she cooks for her relatives before they leave. That evening there is a knock on the door. When Michelle opens it she finds a gift and a letter from her mother’s art teacher, addressed to her mother. The gesture moves her, and she decides to look through her mother’s portfolio. She begins to realize that she will no longer be able to continue growing her relationship with her mother in the same way.

Chapter 15: My Heart Will Go On

Michelle begins clearing out her mother’s things, feeling antagonized by the constant reminders of her around the house. She and her father decide to take a trip to Vietnam, where they travel luxuriously despite their numbness. Michelle begins to feel embarrassed by her father’s way of interacting with the locals, exaggerating his speech and being overtly condescending. In a restaurant one night they get into a fight; her father says her mother warned him that Michelle would try to take advantage of him, and instead of replying she gets up and leaves. Not wanting to see her father, she walks to a local bar where she meets Quing, a young Vietnamese woman who tells her she comes to the bar every night to sing karaoke. Michelle says that her mother has just died out loud for the first time, and Quing encourages her to sing a song. Michelle chooses “Rainy Days and Mondays,” a song she and her mother used to sing, and feels lighter after spending the evening with Quing. The next morning she meets her father for breakfast and they continue on without addressing their fight.

Previous section Chapters 10–12 Next section Chapters 16–18