He passed away early this morning.
The words that involuntarily poked out of my mouth as I faced my wife on the other end of the phone were the same words I had used when my father had passed away a month earlier. For the past 15 years, I have been going to a weekly morning information program in Osaka. Never in the past had I received a phone call early in the morning from the hotel room where I had stayed the night before. When the phone at my bedside rang, I knew instantly, even in my sleep, that it was not good news. My wife seemed to have made the call around the time I woke up, as she was concerned about my inability to rush to the hospital in Tokyo. It didn’t make any sense to me that my mother had passed away. It was the night before my father passed away about a month ago, and in an effort to cheer up my mother, who was feeling down, I visited the nursing home where she was staying with her favorite pudding. Normally, I would not be allowed to visit her during the Corona period, but the facility was kind enough to allow me to meet her in person. I brought four small puddings with me. She ate two of them in succession right in front of me. It seemed like only a few days ago that I lightly shook her hand and parted from her, saying, “See you later,” as I always did. I often hear that when a companion dies, men become weak, but women, on the contrary, get better. I have four sons. I have four sons and seven grandchildren. My mother left all of us behind and quickly went to be with my father.
When I was still a small child, I hated the sound of the front door buzzer echoing through the house in the middle of the night. My mother would slip out of the bedroom where she and my siblings were at peace. I, who had not yet fallen asleep, followed my mother and quietly left the room. I watched from the second floor stair landing as my mother took care of my father when he returned home. I missed my mother calling out to me from downstairs, “Get into bed and go to sleep.