Remembering my father when he was healthy

This time, I would like to look back a little on my father from when he was still healthy.

After graduating from a local commercial high school, my father got a job at a department store in Nagoya. I have heard that he was a hard worker who would increase the efficiency of his deliveries and then take his juniors to the public bath in the time he had left—he was like a reliable older brother figure.

One day, while my father was at work, a telegram arrived from his family home.

“Mother in critical condition. Return immediately.”

Although he rushed home due to the urgent news, what he found there was his mother moving around energetically. My father, thinking, “I’ve been tricked!” tried to return to Nagoya, but his boss said something unexpected.

“Cherish your mother. You don’t need to come back.”

This became my father’s “reason for resignation,” and from then on, he began a life of juggling farming and self-employment at his family home.

He worked hard at rice planting and harvesting according to the season, and went fishing or traveling during the off-season. I think he enjoyed a free and easy life. He was sociable, had many friends, and was a person who acted cheerfully when he was out.

However, it was different at home.

He was, in any case, a “shouter.” At the dinner table, he would immediately react loudly to anything my grandmother or mother said, and a tense atmosphere was the norm. Once I reached junior high school, I started eating alone at different times. Even if I wanted something, his catchphrase was “Just endure it.” After I became a high school student, we hardly spoke to each other at all.

I started to face my father again around the time my mother passed away and I began to think about inheritance.

Parent and child relationships are strange, aren't they?
Precisely because we had spent so much time keeping our distance, I never imagined that we would end up involved with each other again in the form of caregiving.