#148 [Pirika Library] A Cheer from My Wife

It's about time you needed some white mesh sneakers, Towako.

I look up at the built-in shoe cabinet. I estimate that the summer items are on the second shelf from the top. Yasuo's hand, searching blindly in the back, touches something before the sneakers: the red sandals Towako had tucked away.

I hook my finger into the heel strap and pull them out.
At that moment, sand spills out as if in slow motion.

Since you insisted that you really wanted to try it...

*

Two years ago, to celebrate both of them reaching the age of seventy, Yasuo and Towako traveled to the Mediterranean.

While strolling along different beaches every day, they realized one day that they had wandered into a nudist beach they had only heard about.
At first, the two were confused about whether they should be in such a place, but their eyes gradually grew accustomed to it.

Young people with tanned bodies shining in the sun.
Families who had just arrived, their skin still stark white and seemingly painful under the sun.
People who were topless and people who were completely naked.
Couples where only the woman was wearing a swimsuit.
Every skin color and hair color...
The scent of coconut from sunscreen oil, vaporized by the blazing sun, tickles their noses.

No one there was belittling their own body shape.
They even saw elderly men and women walking hand in hand along the beach.

It was dazzling to see people of all ages and genders affirming themselves and standing tall, regardless of whether they were sagging or misshapen.

Maybe I should take mine off too...

Since this was an unexpected thing for his modest wife to say, Yasuo stared back at Towako with wide eyes.

No one cares about a wrinkled old lady like me.

Yasuo had always thought that even at this age, his wife belonged only to him, but he decided he wouldn't be the kind of boorish man who would say, 'Don't do it,' out of such possessiveness.

If I don't get naked now, I feel like I'll regret it when I die.
Resigned to his wife's follow-up words, he gave in.

The two of them held hands and stood up with a 'Here goes!'
That was the intention, but it might have been closer to a 'Heave-ho.'

Had they ever swum in their birthday suits before...?

A sensation of becoming one with nature that they were experiencing for the first time.

Even the sagging fat and loose parts of their bodies were forced to feel the resistance of the water. That was, if anything, delightful and liberating.That experience naturally softened Towako's cheeks and made her think of the preciousness of life.

Yasuo vowed in his heart that he would forever hold onto the image of his wife laughing innocently amidst the spray and the light.

"Perhaps I have lived a cramped life, I..."
Embraced by the warm Mediterranean, Towako felt something within her begin to unravel.

After the trip to Costa Brava, she wanted to travel to a place where this red would look good again sometime.
She wanted to wear these sandals once more before her back became bent. Towako's heart leaped, wondering when she had become such an adventurer.

And then, as if cherishing them, she put the sandals away.

*

"I am sorry to say this, but Towako's cancer has metastasized to several areas. I believe she has at most six months to live..." The doctor's voice echoed in his head.

He could not bring himself to tell Towako.

In their 47 years of marriage, Towako had been a woman who never knew illness, to the point where she was slightly exasperated with Yasuo, who caught colds so often.

Thinking back, one could say there were signs.
She might have felt short of breath when pushing herself a little, and the fatigue after a day out might have been unusual.
He remembers the profile of Towako, who would always shrug her shoulders at such times, saying, "I guess I can't beat my age."
He was surprised by her forgetfulness, but he vaguely tries to trace back his memories, wondering if it had anything to do with the cancer having spread to her brain.
Even if he did that, it wouldn't rewind Towako's life...

Yasuo could not stop trembling at the fragility of life.

*

Towako, who was hospitalized at the beginning of the year, passed away before the cherry blossoms bloomed. She didn't even wait for their golden wedding anniversary.
The red sandals, which had stopped time deep in the shoe cabinet, just like Yasuo's stopped time.

Towako's mischievous expression from that day they went shopping floats into Yasuo's mind.
"Hey Yasuo, do you think people will laugh at me for wearing such bright red sandals?"

It was Yasuo who had encouraged her when she asked, saying they would surely look beautiful against the Mediterranean.

He gently strokes the suede with his fingertips.

The moment a tear traced down Yasuo's cheek, he hugged the sandals, still slightly covered in sand, with both arms and collapsed in the entryway.

Since learning of Towako's illness, he had been shedding tears alone, but even at the funeral, he had managed to wipe away his overflowing tears.

((((( Towa...ko... )))))

Yasuo confirmed the sound of his own voice, over seventy years old, raised like a toddler's as the dam broke.

"If I had known she would be that happy, I should have taken her sooner..."

That summer, the image of themselves, stark naked except for sandals on sand hot enough to burn, is seared into Yasuo's mind.
The body Towako called 'withered.' To Yasuo, who felt he had put her through so much hardship, it was nothing if not precious.

His wife, who had set herself free in the midsummer sea, had also given Yasuo a cheer to 'look forward' to his future.

"If I don't pull myself together, Towako will scold me..."
Muttering that,
Yasuo carefully swept the scattered sand into a dustpan.