Father

I dreamed of my father for the first time in a long while last night, so I think I'll write down some memories of him.

He was a man who was always joking around. He had a thick Kansai accent, was a heavy drinker, and loved the Hanshin Tigers with all his heart. He drank a lot, no matter what. A flushed face, bleary eyes, and slurred speech. I suspect he was drinking from the morning on his days off.
Even when I say "days off," as a child, I had no idea when my father was off or when he went to work. I never once saw him in a suit with a tie. When I was in high school, there was a period when he seemed to be doing quite well, and when I asked my mother, she told me he had started working as a "pachinko nail adjuster" through an acquaintance's introduction. That was the first time I ever knew such a job existed in this world. It seems it was profitable, but since modern pachinko machines are computer-controlled, there might not be a demand for craftsmen who subtly adjust the angle of the nails stuck in the machines. In any case, the only jobs of my father's that I can clearly identify are the pachinko nail adjuster and the taxi driver he was in his later years. As for the other years, I have no idea what he did to earn the money that raised me.

My father was a gourmet. Despite living quite modestly in a housing complex, he would sometimes take his family to his favorite restaurants. What I remember is a yakiniku place that brought scissors with large kalbi meat, and a small Western-style restaurant run by a couple. I loved the handmade vanilla ice cream the wife would serve at the end of the course meal at this restaurant. Unlike the pure white cup ice cream I always bought at the candy store, the handmade ice cream was egg-colored. The moment I slid a square spoon, which we didn't have at home, into that ice cream scooped into a silver bowl, I was filled with the greatest sense of happiness. When I was full and sitting in the back seat of the car, there were several times when I realized the driver had changed to a stranger without me noticing. I never felt scared of the man who took off his cap and smiled, but I did find it strange that my father, who had disappeared somewhere, wouldn't come home for a long time.

My father separated from my mother when I was 17. I was the one who encouraged my mother to divorce him. My father's drinking habits were only getting worse, and I decided to defend my mother, who was completely exhausted from taking care of him. I had come to hate my father. When I found out that just six months after leaving home, he had remarried a woman with children around the same age as me and my younger brother, I resented him even more. He must have been staying with that woman, which explains why he hadn't been coming home much even before the divorce. On the day I turned twenty, my coming-of-age day, at my father's suggestion, the original family of four gathered at a high-rise hotel restaurant. Faced with the luxurious food lined up on the large table, I barely spoke a word to my father. He gave me a necklace with a small heart-shaped ruby stone. I shuddered at his cheesy behavior. From that day on, for more than ten years, I never met my father again.

I was going to leave Osaka with my current husband. There was a high possibility that I would never return. I had inherited my father's blood and had become quite the drinker myself. I thought about the strange behavior of my father I had seen as a child. Perhaps he was lonely. When people are lonely, they drink. Those who can drink, drink too much. I had treated my father very coldly. I should see him before I leave Osaka. Once we reunite, I probably won't see him ever again. My father has his own family. I had my younger brother, who I heard was in occasional contact with him, mediate, and we met at a coffee shop near the house where my father lived. My father, dressed in a jersey and sandals, was younger than I had imagined. At the table with my brother and me, my father and I talked for two hours. We hit it off. My father was surprisingly a good guy. He was someone I could talk to. "From next time, just meet up on your own," my brother complained as we parted ways.

Even while moving from Kagoshima to Fukuoka, following my husband's job transfers, I occasionally talked to my father on the phone. About once every six months, my father would answer my calls. He would always tell me ridiculous stories, like how he was slacking off at work because he was annoyed with his young boss at the taxi company, or how he wanted me to draw a flyer for him because he was going to make money by creating some interesting "fluorescent sashes" after he retired. One day on a holiday, when I was drinking with a friend near Hakata Station in the afternoon, my father called me. I excused myself to my friend and listened to my father's story outside the shop. "Lately, things just aren't interesting." "Is that so? Why? Did something happen?" "Nothing in particular, but I just don't find life interesting anymore. What are you doing now?" "I'm drinking with a friend." "Drinking in the afternoon? You really should take it easy." "I don't want to hear that from you, Dad." "I've become a weak drinker now. I don't drink much anymore." My father's voice was unusually low. It's rare for him to be so weak. I said, trying to cheer him up, "Dad, let's go for a drink together sometime. We've never had a drink together, have we? I'm coming your way at the end of the year, so let's have a year-end party together." "Yeah, that sounds good." "It's a promise." "Yeah, I got it." Four days after this phone call, my father passed away from a stroke.

At 6:00 PM, he apparently collapsed after drinking one glass of beer with dinner and lost consciousness right there. With his family watching over him, he was taken by ambulance and became a person of the other world three hours later. Four days before he left, he went out of his way to tell me "life isn't interesting," and when I received that call, I was wearing the ruby necklace. Before the coffin was closed, the funeral director said, "Let's give him one last drink of the beer he loved," and poured a can of beer over his white burial clothes—there's a limit to how much you can make someone laugh. My father, who appeared in my dream for the first time in a long while last night, asked me for 3 million yen because he wanted to start a business. I don't have that kind of money, and there's no way I'd lend it to him.

Perhaps my father, who passed away while tipsy, was loved just a little bit by God. I hope to end my life just like my father.