Importance of Young's mother/Umma

In both timelines of Part II, Young is caring for his mother, who has been battling cancer for over five years with some periods of remission. Young calls his mother Umma, which is the informal Korean word for mother. Over the course of this section, Young struggles with his feelings about his mother, who was abusive to him in the past. She is devoutly Christian, and when he was a teenager she sent Young to a mental hospital after she saw him kissing another boy. He explains that, at some point, he made a "dark, toxic promise" to himself that "when that woman I lived with under the same roof was old and weak, I would leave her out in some neglected forest of Gyeonggi Province so she'd be eaten by starving wild animals" (73). He was clearly unable to keep that promise, though, choosing to dutifully care for her during her illness instead.