A Prayer For A Warm Sunny Day
12 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in English Posts, Family, Life
My grandmother passed away on February 7th, Tuesday, which is five days later my grandfather’s death.
I just describe for my record.
We don’t know why and how that could happen. She was just recovering from burn injury. In the morning of the day, her doctor reported that the result of her examination shows that she was going to die in a day or two. But she was watching TV and talking to my mother and even walking down to the bathroom by herself. It was difficult to believe. In the last moment, she suddenly lost her breath.
Two of my grandparent’s photos are in front of the Buddhist altar next to each other in their small house. We ask to nowhere why, now and then, but no one knows an answer. The priest lightly joked “I couldn’t prepare two different speeches in front of the same family in such a short notce.” A staff of the ceremony hall said “This is the very first unusual case I have ever encountered in my professional life.” A staff of the crematory said hello to my cousin’s little daughter, “Do you remember me? We met last week, too.” While we were having lunch in the ceremony hall, my cousin brother joked out, “Am I having a deja vu? I think I had the exact same lunch box last week.”
Everyone is still puzzled and shocked. My bigger aunt thinks after all my grandmother thought that she was the only one who could take care of my grandfather even in an afterlife. It could be so. After my grandfather’s death, my grandmother was on her bed actually telling my smaller aunt, “Grampa is calling me.” For God’s sake, why did he try to pull her in, why on the earth did she listen to him?
We don’t know who could influence the timing of her death; is it her will, is it God’s will, or is it my grandfather’s will? Or it’s a mixture of all, or maybe no one’s? In the confusion, I think I started believing in an soul and an afterlife. It all makes sense now.
But we try to get into the phase that we don’t question why anymore and accept things as they happened. We had a very small funeral with close family. Everyone cried, everyone had many vivid memories of her. She was one of women who were meant to be born as a mother. She took care of literally everyone; her husband, three daughters, the daughters’ husbands, the daughters’ husbands’ siblings, friends, grandchildren, grandchildren’s wives and kids. She was worried about everyone surrounding her. We wonder how she could do, and whether any of us could ever live like that. She had so many friends, too.
She expected me a lot. I was the only girl grandchild of her and she had so much dream on me. I wonder how good I was as her granddaughter. I might have dissapointed her being away from home. She wanted me to be a master of dressmaker or a kimono maker. She also trained me to be a master of tea ceremony, a good cook, or a decent wife with all these skills. I tried, but they didn’t interest me in deep after all. Although she kept complaining that I didn’t come back to Japan so often, I knew she was also very proud of having a grandchild working in India. She wanted to visit me once, but she was already too old to travel abroad.
We have to live life without her. All of us. We all have to be a little stronger.
I don’t know how to conclude here, so I don’t try to make a conclusion yet. On the way to Narita airport leaving my family behind, I saw the electric board on Nozomi Super Express showing the weather forecast of tomorrow. Without checking the actual forecast, I just started praying for a fine sunny day in Aichi tomorrow. I think I will always pray it will be a warm sunny day in Aichi that will make all my family a little happy and peaceful every day.
Family Affair (5) – Life Goes On
04 Feb 2012 Leave a Comment
in English Posts, Family, Life
It’s a bit long story.
My grandfather has passed away. After I left Japan in January, he was immediately admitted to the hospital, and my mother called me up telling me “It seems like he might not come back home.” His death happened after a month. 95 years old. Not bad, at all.
I learnt a human life is unstable in the last period of life. He was close to death twice in the last three months, and somehow miracurously came back, and then gone finally. It happened when my grandmother passed away because of cancer. If we get chance to grow old as ninety or so, we get weaken our life and is gradually going out from the body. When he came back, we joked like “Oh, the evel king of the hell didn’t want him to come to his land!” But after all, I believe Buddha forgive and welcome him to his nice land. There comes my grandpa, all Buddhas up there!
When I met him an hour before leaving home to the airport, his mind was pretty clear. He asked me to get a bottle of alchohol secretly. That was his last wish to me. He asked me to kill him having him drinking a whole bottle of sake at once, because he doesn’t have power to open a bottle and drink by himself. Getting drunk once again, and die sleeping with no pain. My brother was there with me, and my grandfather shouted to him “You stupid may fail to do it so I don’t ask you, but Ai can do it properly till the end, right Ai?” He asked me to promise me, so I said okay and smiled. That was all I could do, and left the room crying.
Alright, it was a wild last wish, just like what he would ask for. We weren’t dissapointed till the last.
After I left Japan, my mother called me up and told a story that he asked for a piece of paper and pen in the hospital. He wrote “Gratitude” on the paper and gave it to my mother. She was moved and told me “It looked like he became a nice man in the end.”
This had an after story that my mother was surprised and immediately called my aunt, her elder sister, and reported her “Hey, our father finally became a good man!” My aunt was surprised and came to the hospital for her turn in the same day afternoon, but the good man moment was over, and he was already back to the old mean and scary father. She called my mother back saying, “What’s the difference?”
My grandfather had six grandchildren including me, my brother, and four cousins. We grew up together in my grandparent’s house, and six of us sitting toghether in front of my grandfather’s TV to watch cartoons every Saturday evening. Many people hated his long story telling which normally went on easily for three hours if we didn’t cut it off and say “Sorry grampa, I have to go soon.” I was actually fond of his long story, and often challanged myself how long I can be hearling someone’s story with concentration and tried to find points and things to learn. My brother, who’s a writer, also enjoyes hearling such never ending story. After both of us spend like two hours patiently hearing stories, we both often agreed how we are happy having such a funky grandfather. “Ha, you can say it because you’ve never lived with him”, my mother used to continue then.
After the funeral, I talked to my mother and my grandmother on the phone. My grandmother was in a hospital because of her burn injury and couldn’t attend the funeral. They told me, “Grandpa is still floating around here and there and not yet gone.” In Japanese Buddhism custom, we believe a spirit of the dead stay in this world for 49 days, and on the 49th day finally invited to the heaven. So we continue praying during the period, and do a kind of grand fairwell praying ceremony on the day again. But yet, “He’s floating around here and there” is a too funiky expression and I pictured him floating around in the air of the office or riding his bycicle on the Bombay streets.
Sometimes I feel like I am swimming a way out to sea alone without a float. Maybe everyone does. But it is a wrong picture. A death of important person, an illness, and a crisis make us realize the bond and connection, fortunately or unfortunately. We talk, cry, laugh, and overcome. It’s the same for famly, friendship, community, anything. We overcome. That’s the basic belief. Life goes on including the memory of the life of people who left this world.
Family Affair (4) Family Puzzle
08 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
in English Posts, Family, Life
Family makes me think of time; time of the past we’ve gone through, and the time of the future that we are going to go through. While back in Japan for holiday season, I have been thinking of our family’s silent survival against time. We born, we glow up, we reproduce, and we die, such things.
My granfather got slightly demented after the bath tab insident, and started needing help. That gave our family a new twist. Nurcing care became the center of the family life. My mother and her sisters take turns every day to take care of him and my grandmother. I helped only a little during the stay, clearning, blushing his teeth. It’s not easy, mentally and physically.
My grandfather is in back-and-force. One day he doesn’t even recognize me, and another day he is a wise man and express his sick situation even quating lines from old good books. Some time he is weak and gentle, and wispers how I am a good girl, and another time he is strong and angry. It’s different every day and every moment, but it’s developping, gradually and certainly.
The grandparents start talking about their own death. My grandfather sometimes claims “I wish someone just knock my head off while sleeping” but other time tells “But truth is I still want to live.” My grandmother scares me off saying “If you don’t come back so often, I am not sure if we can meet each other again.” Right, that could happen seriously. It’s difficult to leave family if you know there’s a chance that it can be the last moment or conversation.
On the other hand, my cousin sister delivered a beautiful boy a month ago. The little girl became a mother, watching her own baby looking like wondering where it came from. It was a touching landscape to me. I was holding her baby scarily and thinking “Oh my god, I am holding a person squeezed from my little cousin sister…” A start of a new life of a tiny person is actually a fresh start of life of all family members.
We all get old and die. It had been a mystery why people want kids so badly for a long time, but I kind of came to an undarnding that,for a family, we are one life together and die and reborn again and again just like a whole family is one body with old and fresh cells mixed together. If a baby is born, our sadness of living and dying exclusively is a little reduced and cured.
The continuation of life, the coming and going four seasons and all; I wanted to be out from this track, maybe. I was looking for a way to get out. I never wanted to have a moment I know how I live and die, the schedule, so I kind of chose a life that takes me somewhere I can’t imagine but valuable, exciting, and new. But when I go back and observe the sequence of life that I used to live, I find it is also very beautiful.
Family life is like a puzzle. We don’t know how the picture turns to be till you fit the last piece in. Which piece of the picture I am supposed to be, and how that colors up and fill the whole picture in the end, I don’t have idea yet. What we will see in the end is maybe something that is far different from what we expect. Whatever I would be, or whatever I do, I simply wish I add a beautiful and vivid color in it which gives a punch in the whole picture.
Family Affair (3) – The Selfish Gene
10 Dec 2011 10 Comments
in English Posts, Family, Life
I called up my grandmother, who is the woman of the entire family of mine. After some innocent convesation and gossips, she started talking about me. The 85 years old woman said “You should make kids, with whoever that doesn’t matter to me. Don’t bother to get married if you don’t want. Be a single mother or whatever.” My old grandmother is encouraging me to be a single mother? That’s radical. Shocked, I told her “No kidding, being a single mother is not easy, especially in India.” She said, “Ok, just make a baby with someone and send it to home. You can stay there and I will take care of the baby here, don’t worry.”
Indian friends sometimes ask me if there’s no social pressure for marriage or baby thing in Japan, which is, indeed. My family is pretty respectful to me, yet they challange me now and then. To sum up, the family’s message to my love life and marriage has been drastically changed in the past two decades as following. Yeah, typical.
10s to early 20s: Don’t waste your time with someone crappy or bonehead
28 to 29: Enough for quest, get marred with whoever you got
30: Get married with literally whatever, we are ok with even someone who commited a crime in the past (it’s the literalistic translation)
Passed 31: OK, no bother for marriage. Have a baby; it’s definitelly easier than finding Mr. Right.
Hmm, tragic.
I usually don’t mind or even enjoy when people push me. But I finally needed to think what all this is actually about, seriously. If they don’t care about who my future husband is, don’t care about who the hell their grandchildren’s father is, or even don’t care about me deliverying a child alone and is apart from my child in different countries, how the child is grown up without having a proper parents, what is that they really care of? Is it the fact that they have a new generation? Possibily.
My family is generous, good, and intelligent people. So comparatively I see a truth in it; the truth that is a kind of The Selfish Gene by Richerd Dokins type of truth, that they want the satisfaction and self realization from what their children turn to be or produce, and that is a kind of instinction more than a social moral. On the other hand, I have a different kind of selfish desire and dream of life. Who is selfish, everyone, or nobody? What is the end goal of one family, happiness or some other kind? It is getting deeper.
It may sound a little too cold, but it is getting quite interesting. Let’s see.
Faimily Affair (2) – A Running Away Couple
03 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in English Posts, Family, Life
A family is the weirdest thing, normally uncontrolablly weirdest. Love is an important element but there are so much more.
My grandmother, my father’s mother, was from a poor farmer family. Everyone was a poor farmer 70 – 80 years ago in Japan so it was pretty much common, but her family was one of the poorest. She was good in school, but her scary mother sold her out to a tea house when she was little, and she became a child labor, and later a Geisha, and worked for the tea house for her young age. It’s also a typical story. But the twist came after she met her husband.
My grandfater (which is a different grampa from the one who were drawn in a bathtab), was a newspaper journalist. He was a regular customer of my mother’s tea house, and he may have paid for her family debt to the tea house, or they ran away…, anyhow he took her out and got married.
They were poor, and borrowed money from all connections to save their lives. He was an over-enthusiastic journalist and was targetted by Yakuza because of his paper articles. In a fight, he shived and injured a member of Yakuza, and ran away from police taking Granma. From Tokai to Shikoku; Shikoku is the small island of South Japan, where there is a famous long pilgrimage route of Japanese Buddhism called Ohenro (Temple Lidging). They became a pair of Ohenro, and started wondering around.
For eight years, they were wondering in Shikoku alone either to avoid revenge from Yakuza or to wait the statute of limitations was to expire, I don’t know either. They moved here to there, a temple to another, did a begger, slept under the eaves of temples, and ate things given. My grandfather was a very good caligrapher, and he made money by drawing caligraphies (I don’t understand this part how, but I guess there were not many people who could write in the age, so it was obviously a small good business for days). Granma hated her husband after all, and I think that’s fair enough, but we believe they were so much in love at this point, because eight years is a long period that two of them survive a pair of homeless like that together.
They came back to their hometown after it’s over, and back to be a poorest farmar couple again. My granfather was retired, but Granma was still young, had two sons, and worked as a farmar and a cook of a school kitchen to let the boys eat. The long tough life got them into a terrible state in relationship, and they were deadly fighting to kill each other everyday, but at the same time, both of them seemed loved the sons deadly. Granma’s dream was to have two sons get into university and make them teachers, and it was what exactly happened. Both of them became school teachers and had a decently wealthy, and happy peaceful life. And the grandsons-and-daughters deadly loved her, too.
All the couple’s life story came to the light after Granma has passed away. One of the far related uncles came to the funeral and told the story to us for the first time. Nobody of my family knew it, even my father. I believe that my parents don’t have such huge stories behind, but who knows, as nobody knows what story is behind me (though fortunately or unfortunately, there’s not much story behind me, still it would be).
I loved my grandmother more than anyone else in my whole life. I loved her hidden passions and mysterious isolation and solitude. She was the only person who hugged and kissed me everyday when I come back from school (Japanese family don’t kiss or hug each other so much). After all, in the end, we die without revealing our whole life. No one never know. But still, maybe, something remains to the next generations from the way we live and love kids and others. I want to leave a good successful story, but yet, I want to believe that my family or whoever next generations will be people who understand the depth of life and enjoy hearling it irrespective good or bad insidents of the history.
Family Affair (1) – The Weird Grampa
03 Dec 2011 Leave a Comment
in English Posts, Family, Life
My mother called me up on Saturday and excitedly said “There’s a big news!” What’s the big news? There’s never be a real big news from my home town, so maybe it’s enough to be someone got married or something, I thought. But she continued, “Hear me out, your Grampa got drawn in the bath tab!” … I was like a stop motion with a big open mouth. “Ｗhat do you mean by drawn in the tab. Did he die of what?” She said “Yeah, I thought he’s totally dead, but he survived after all!”
My grandfather is 95 years old. He seemed falling a sleep while taking a bath and just went into the water without himself noticing it and didn’t even wake up. Mother called ambulance and got him to the hospital. He was saved, but his lung was filled with the bath tab water, and needed to be hospitalized for the very first time of this entire life (He never gets sick.)
Why my mom is so excited in a bit funky way is actually quite difficult to explain to others. My grandfather is a bit, or quite.., no, a lot weird man. He’s basically a all time major drinker, and somewhat very crazy with or without alcohol and the aging effect. So whenever we talk about him, there’s an inappropriate funny tone that we can’t really help. “Oh load, he’s survived! What a lucky stubborn guy!”
How he is weird is also difficult to explain. He dones’t stop talking once he opens his mouth, he tells a bit inappropriate sexual harrasment thing to a cafe weitress, he cuts his breakfast bread into small tiny dises with a pair of seizers and eats each piece with chopstics. He eats a dozen eggs a day, he cuts newspaper articles everyday, underline and write comments at all sentences, and create books sticking them. He is often lost on the way from a bar, and found in a ditch unconscious. And so on.
People think that he is a little too far from a lovely person, but I like him and enjoy having such a strange guy in my family. Despite his unsocialized elements, he is basically a very smart person, and even published a Ditch-Japanese dictionary when he was a university student. He fought for the World War II and was prisoned in Soviet, and tells me the full-color stories of the age. He has been a serious Haiku poet for a long time after retirement.
I sometime wonder how the 1/4 of his blood is affecting my life. Actually I have many elements that are similar to my grandfather. I mark and write my review in each page when I read a book, so I can’t normally rend my books to others, and I cut books and news articles and file and paste on my notebooks. I love eggs, and I can eat a lot of eggs at once, too, though I care about coresterol. I like inappropreate sexual harrasment talks though only to people who I feel relax with. I am not doing so bad so far, and though I have so many personality problems, I am not very far from being a lovely person. Let me say it at laud. I am a lovely person…, yet.
We have to help ourselves with whatever we got, gene wise. Nothing else but enjoying and making the most of it is the only solution. Our third generations would say “the grandmother was a weird bitch!” after 50 years ago. Yeah, ok, whatever. Let me be the weirdest lovely bitch after 50 years.
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