The Meaning of Life, and the Reason Not to Die.

#20250516-528

Friday, May 16, 2025
It was at the end of March that my mother first spoke those words.

It was when three of my mother's relatives visited our family home to pay their respects to my father, who passed away last November. The relatives living in the north had said, "When spring comes," worried about the disruption of transportation networks. Among the three, my aunt, who is my mother's older sister, is quite elderly at 93.
My husband and I, my mother, and the three relatives—a rare gathering of six people—met at the family home.
From stories about my father when he was alive to updates on our respective lives, voices overlapped and spread. I don't think that living room had been that lively since my father passed away.
Suddenly, my mother fell silent.
She looked at my husband and me, and at the son of my niece, who is the youngest among this group—though he is in his 40s.
"This might not be something to say to you young people."
My mother's gaze dropped, moving between the teacups lined up on the table.
"I don't know the meaning of life"

My mother continues.
It is different from what she felt when she was young.
My father passed away and she is living alone, but she tries to go to places that interest her. Even on days she doesn't go out, she finds something to do and tidies up.
I am moving, I am moving, but I don't know what I am moving for.
Right now, the inheritance procedures for my late father are not yet finished. I am the one mainly handling them, but my mother is the one who actually knows where everything is. If I ask, she brings out the necessary documents from cupboards and drawers.
Until the procedures are finished, my mother says, keeping her spirits up.
Even after that is done, since my parents don't have a grave, we have to decide how and where to inter my father's ashes.
There are still things my mother must decide for a while longer, but once all of those are completely finished...
My mother's eyes look into the distance.

Ah.
Perhaps "life without father" truly begins once things have settled down, rather than immediately after he passed away.
I realized that my mother's feelings were strained.
It wasn't just the wariness and tension of having no man in the house and living alone.
She has started taking lessons, going to department stores, and doing various things, but seeing that, I must not think she has recovered from my father's death. I must not jump to conclusions.
By putting it into words, my mother became aware of the feelings she had been carrying, and perhaps they swelled up instantly; her moist eyes look as if a tear might fall with a single blink.
My mother, who rarely cries, has tears that feel like something I shouldn't be seeing, and I feel shaken as well.

Perhaps it became easier to talk about once she said it out loud. Since that day, my mother has often said, "I don't know the meaning of life."
Over the phone.
When I visited the family home.
When we met outside for the procedures.
"I don't know, I don't know," my mother pleads.

"You say it's easy to just do what you want, but that's difficult, too."
"If I started something now, and managed to do it, how many years would I have left? What would it even amount to?"
"It's not that I think it's meaningless unless it amounts to something. But can you be passionate about something that amounts to nothing?"

That is what my mother insists.
And I cannot offer my mother words that she can accept.
Whatever I say, it's not right.
After all, I have a husband.
My mother and I don't know how much time we have left, but there is also a difference in physical and mental strength due to our age gap.
Perhaps time will settle everything where it belongs, but while waiting for that, what on earth should she use as a support?

The meaning of life.
In other words, the reason not to die, what is it?