My father passed away in June. He lived an active life: playing golf, going fishing, playing “Go” the traditional Japanese board game and walking every morning. Even after the diagnosis of the stage four prostate cancer, he stayed active. But of course, everything is bound to end sometime. Once you’re born, you’re living towards death. This is the destiny that no living being can escape from.
I was very sad when my mother died twenty-six years ago. She was fifty-six. I was sad for her and myself, the moments in the coming years that we were looking forward to spending together were lost forever. I lost so much weight that some suspected that I was gravely ill. I was doing okay health-wise. I was just sad, deeply sad.
But when my father died, it was different. I was glad that he didn’t suffer very much or for very long. Towards the end, he called for my late mother and late brother, probably asking them to come and take him to the other world so that he could be with them. I almost wished I could have sent him there sooner so that his suffering and heartache would end. My brother seemed to want to keep him on the living side of the world as long as possible. I secretly resented him for that, it seemed selfish. Our father had a good life. Please let him go. But I didn’t say anything to my brother. Life and death are not something anyone can control. Life emerges when it wants to and disappears when it’s time.
I thought I was doing relatively well as I’d accepted this fundamental truth of life.
Then, I started to feel as if my heart was trembling inside me. It actually had started when I knew he would die soon. But I expected it would end as I went through the ceremonies. First of his cremation ceremony where his close relatives in pairs picked up his bones and put them in an urn, and then his funeral and finally burying his bones underneath the grave stone where his name would soon be carved, next to my mother’s.
Three months after his death, however, my heart is still trembling. At night, I lie down in my bed and place my palms on my chest and belly so that I could feel my own breathing and try to calm myself down. It is actually nice to feel the warmth of my own hands and the movements of my chest and belly, going up and down. I am alive. Confirming it, though, doesn’t calm me down. I started to ask myself a while ago, is this what people would feel when they have anxiety?
I hear more sad news as I get older, and each death reminds me of the fragility of life. I now acknowledge that I didn’t really face my mother’s death until my father passed away. He kept living in the same house where the four of us had lived together. I knew my mother didn’t live there any longer in physical body, but I felt as if she was hovering there, in my memory, and sometimes in the air.
Several months after my mother’s death, she showed up in my dream. She lived in exactly the same house where I lived growing up, except that her house was empty. She told me that she was waiting for the furniture delivery. When her house was furnished, she’d invite her relatives and spend time together with them. I was happy for her.
I woke up and interpreted this dream as her message that she was doing well in the other world, and that I didn’t have to worry about her.
When my husband and I gave up on trying for a second child, I had another dream. A woman and a little boy were playing in a sand box, she didn’t turn around to me, so I couldn’t see her face. Then, they were leaving together hand in hand for somewhere else. I woke up and thought this boy would be going to some other family, now that we decided not to try for another baby. And soon after, I found myself pregnant. He seemed to have strong separation anxiety from the day he was born. I thought he missed playing with my mother. I thanked my mother for spending time with him, and named him with “-zo” that is the ending her father had in his name, Genzo.
I’m not sure about this, but I think my father’s death hit me hard as I didn’t really say goodbye to my mother. So now I’m mourning for my father’s death, and mourning anew for my mother’s true transition to the other world.
The house the four of us lived will be demolished soon. I have a lot of good memories there. Celebrating New Year’s Day as my brother and I grew up. Enjoying little hand-held fireworks in a small front yard as a child, and then as mother of two young children with my husband and my father.
When the house is gone, and the land flattened to bare soil, the trace of my life there will be gone. Surprisingly, that image doesn’t shake me that much. When it happens, it’ll give me sorrow, but it won’t be that painful. I realize now that what I miss the most is the connection or imagined connection with my late mother and now with my father too.
And this new phase of living in this world without the mystical connection with my parents who now live beyond the river that divides this world and the other world may be the cause of my trembling. Should I work on getting rid of it or learn to live with it? I’m not sure.
So for now, I’ll just let it be. I feel as if I can get somewhere if I live with it. Trembling can be a sign of my body trying to compensate for the lost connection. It may be caused by my cells’ attempts to fill the void by creating new connections. I trust the wisdom of a human body. This may be something human beings have been doing since we started to live as a family. If so, this may be a ritual to join all the ancestors before me. I just hope that I’ll reach somewhere warm and bright when I get through this.