I'm glad I made that decision back then

A year has passed since my parents moved into the facility.
Time flies.

Every time I hear or see news about natural disasters like earthquakes or heavy rain,
I feel relieved, thinking that I'm glad I made that decision back then.

My parents and my eldest younger brother used to live in a depopulated village deep in the mountains.
They relied on day services and home-visit nursing care,
barely managing to get by day to day.
It was a precarious existence, like walking a tightrope.

Even then, my biggest concern was how to handle a disaster.
Although my eldest younger brother lived with them, his workplace was in the next prefecture, a 40-minute commute one way.
My other younger brother and I live more than an hour away by highway.

If some kind of disaster occurred and the main roads were cut off, I couldn't even imagine how long it would take to reach my parents.
In the first place, if we were affected by the disaster ourselves, it was doubtful whether we could even get to them.

If they were at day service, we might have been able to get help from the facility.
But if they were alone at home, there would be no way to contact my parents, who could no longer use mobile phones.
We might have had help from neighbors, but we couldn't rely on that too much.
Even if I could reach my parents, there was a possibility that I would be separated from my own family.

July 2025 was a time when many people started thinking about preparing for the worst, triggered by a certain prophetic manga.
I didn't have the luxury of laughing it off as just an urban legend.
What if a large-scale disaster were to happen...?
The more I simulated it, the more helpless I felt, and I just had to be prepared for the worst.
You could say that the commotion gave me the push I needed to tell my parents, "Let's go to a facility."

Sometimes, I remember that hot July morning.
My mother got into the car that day with her eyes full of tears.
Honestly, there were times when I thought, "Maybe they could have managed a little longer at their old home..."

However, I was reassured of this during the recent Kumamoto earthquake.
I thought, "That decision back then was the right one."

The earthquake shook quite a bit, but when I checked with the facility, they gave me a reassuring reply: "Everything is fine, there are no problems."
My parent said nonchalantly, "I didn't even notice."

This year's heat is also extraordinary.
They don't like air conditioning and turn it off right away, so
if they had been at home, they probably would have suffered from heatstroke.
Now, they laugh and say, "Here, I don't have to worry about the heat or the cold. It's comfortable."

The facility's newsletter, which arrives every month, features photos of them with big smiles.
Maybe they only make those expressions because a camera is pointed at them.
But at the very least, it is certain that such moments exist.

What is good or bad, and for whom is it good or bad,
is something that surely no one will ever know until the very end.
But with that decision, the weight of the problems we would face if a disaster occurred has become much smaller.

They may not be aware of it themselves, but it has led to peace of mind for us, their children.