A Man of Heart

The other day, on the telephone, my mom asked if I wanted to hear a funny story, so I said sure. The story she told was about a friend of her acquaintance.

This friend, whom my mom called simply, “an older lady,” married a rich general when she was still a young woman, and, immediately following their wedding, the couple moved from South Korea to America, where they opened a grocery store and began working on a family. They managed to create a son and a daughter and a couple of franchises, and could therefore be called succesful, but about the time the children became old enough to understand about boredom and adultery, the older lady had an affair with one of her employees. One thing led to another until, with the approval of her children, she divorced her husband.

A few years after that, when her son had become a lawyer and her daughter a doctor, the woman tried a second marriage to a man of position. However, it soon came to light that position was all this man had, and the woman soon filed for her second divorce, but not before this man of position had used up all the money she had gotten out of her first husband.

Much later, now seventy years old, with grandchildren under her care, the older lady met a man of heart. The man admitted that he didn’t have much money, but said that his big heart would never fail, and so she agreed to marry him. During their honeymoon, however, the man of heart revealed that he and his first wife, who was now deceased, had amassed a considerable fortune, but he mourned the fact that he was now seventy-five years old and had no heirs. He talked about how complete the older lady and her children and grandchildren made him feel, and he was so grateful that he bought homes and automobiles for each of his new wife’s children -- the doctor and the lawyer.

I didn’t understand the joke, and when I told my mom that I couldn’t see the humor, she grew quiet. Then, after a few seconds, she said that actually the story wasn’t a funny one after all, but a sad one, because the man of heart and his deceased wife had worked their entire lives, only to give away their fortune to a stranger’s children.

After hanging up the phone, I kept thinking about my mom, and how she would never cheat on her husband with one of his employees, and how she would never have a doctor daughter or a lawyer son, and how she would never marry a man of position or meet a man of heart.

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