When I turned 91

At 1:00 AM, the bedroom door was opened, and I was shaken awake.

The lights in her bedroom were blazing bright.

I had no idea what had happened.

She came toward me while talking loudly on the phone.

"He is here. He is right here."

She came right up to my bedside.

My mother-in-law, who was hospitalized, had been desperately calling her daughter. She is 91 years old.

She said that her second son, Y, had come here from Kyushu, brought by his nephew.

And that I was showing the two of them around.

And so, my mother-in-law insisted that the three of them were standing outside her hospital room, soaked in the rain.

She said that since she couldn't stand up and open the window herself, she wanted me (her daughter) to call me, who was outside the window.

She wanted her to call me outside and tell me that they couldn't come inside.

Three people standing outside a third-floor window of a hospital located halfway up a mountain??

Even though she kept saying, "He is here. He is right here,"

my mother-in-law pleaded with her to call me.

When she said, "Mother, that's the third floor, so no one can be standing outside," my mother replied that they must be using a ladder.

After a while, I could hear the voice of a nurse who had entered the room on the other end of the phone.

"Come now, it's already night, so let's go to sleep."

My mother-in-law insisted that three people were standing outside in the rain.

The experienced nurse replied, "There is no one outside, now let's go to sleep," and closed the curtains before leaving.

For about ten minutes after that, my mother-in-law was mumbling and rustling around...

We couldn't bring ourselves to hang up the phone either.

And when morning came, it turned out that my mother-in-law had been calling everyone.

She had called her own family and her grandchildren one after another, pleading with them to "call me."

The story she told actually made sense, in a way.

Her second son, Y (who is always a source of worry for her), had come to visit her at the hospital in the rain.

He was standing outside the window.

She herself had bad legs and couldn't get out of bed.

Even if she could get up, her rheumatism meant she couldn't move her hands or shoulders, so she couldn't open the window either.

She must have thought that if she could call the three people outside, they would understand that they couldn't enter the hospital room through the window.

If she didn't hurry, the three of them would get soaked in the rain...

Since one of the three people outside must have had a mobile phone,

she must have thought she would have them contact her daughter, her sister-in-law back home, or her grandchildren.

But mother-in-law, it's one o'clock in the morning right now.

It's not visiting hours, and no one can stand outside a third-floor window...

So-called delirium was occurring.

My mother-in-law does not have dementia, but her brain function is declining.

Besides, there is no stimulation when she is in a private room.

For a long time, there has been no input into her brain from her body, her ears, or her eyes.

When that happens, the brain starts to drift...

Panicked, she believes in the events she thinks she saw and tries to make sense of them.

What I thought was that all three people who appeared were men.

Moreover, my mother-in-law is somewhat worried about each of those characters.

Without exception, those men must have been the source of my mother-in-law's worries.

I see... as for me, the characters made sense.

Not a single one of the women who had taken care of her stood outside the window.

Information (commands) going from the brain to the body accounts for 30% of the total.

Information going up to the brain from the eyes, ears, internal organs, and muscles accounts for 70%.

The brain is not some cool command center.

The brain is a system that becomes active through internal and external stimuli.

If you are alone, sitting still in a hospital private room where input stimuli are drastically reduced, your brain will likely not be able to maintain normalcy.

So, it arbitrarily connects things that are on your mind to create a story.

Oh no... the three of them are going to get wet in the rain!

Actually, my mother-in-law was in and out of the hospital last year too, and while hospitalized, she was terrified by severe delusions.

She claimed that the curtains surrounding her bed would sway in the middle of the night.

And that the Grim Reaper would bring his face right up close with the wind, and that it was incredibly scary.

Last year, she suffered terribly from a volvulus, so the Grim Reaper even made a guest appearance.

This year, it is just some steady bleeding from her intestines.

Since she is not suffering as much as last year, she is limiting it to the three of us close family members. I see.

When I called her this morning, she responded completely normally and did not remember calling me repeatedly.

What are you talking about?

Oh... I never thought I would get to experience a live-action version of 'What are you talking about?'

In the live-action version, we are the ones who interpolate the parts we don't understand to fill in the gaps without contradiction and rationalize them.

The brain won't even let us leave contradictions as contradictions.

It's a bit boring.

No, it's a late-night theater, so I'm quite sleepy.

P.S.

I am going to the hospital now to visit.

I am thinking of asking my mother-in-law, "Please keep the television on full blast all day long."

The presence of people, the sound of voices, the swaying of the woods and the wind, the chirping of insects...

No, even the twinkling of the stars has been with us for hundreds of thousands of years, after all.