Karma

In the terminal stage, my husband's ammonia levels were at 119. Medically, he should have lost consciousness at any moment, yet the moment he was discharged and returned home, he began waking up and living his life as if nothing were wrong. Furthermore, at lunch, he would choose whatever ice cream or junk food he liked and eat it with gusto.

“I wouldn't mind if you passed away at any time...”

Exhausted from caregiving, those honest feelings spilled from my lips. I wasn't doing any hands-on nursing care. I was just making dinner. Even at lunch, I would push him away, telling him, “Eat whatever you want.” Yet, my husband didn't get angry; he spent his days in good spirits.

Why is my husband so obsessed with the simple daily routines of “being at home” and “eating what he likes”? The answer lies in his upbringing, in a family history burdened with such deep karma.

When my husband was six, his biological mother committed suicide. It was said she suffered from mental illness. His father remarried immediately, but my husband could not get along with his new mother. There was no place for him in that house. He lived with his heart closed off, never trying to fit in with those around him.

When he was taking high school entrance exams, his academic ability was at a level where he could have passed prestigious private schools like Waseda or Keio. This should have been his one hope to carve out a life for himself. Yet, his father, who was not lacking in money, told him, “You are only allowed to go to a public school,”and he wasn't even allowed to take the exams.
My husband looked back on that as “the greatest trauma of my life; I died once back then.”
The despair of having his sovereignty over his own life unreasonably trampled by his own father became a curse that would never fade for the rest of his life.

However, karma arrives when you least expect it.

When his half-sister reached her third year of high school, the time when expenses are highest, his father passed away suddenly from esophageal cancer. If he had lived, she likely could have gone to a private university, but the remaining mother told her, “We have no money, so you can only go to a national university,”and the sister ended up experiencing the exact same despair my husband had tasted. The father's selfish karma was completed by striking directly at the future of the new family he perhaps loved the most.

Perhaps it is because my husband has survived such a turbulent life that he now fiercely rejects the hospital—a place where he is “managed by others and stripped of his freedom.”

Now, in his own castle—our home—he takes no orders from anyone, is not controlled by me, his wife, and eats unhealthy things that would normally be forbidden, all by his own will.

I believe that by not being under anyone's control, he is saying, “I am living my life the way I want to,” which is his lifelong, ultimate revenge against his father, and the image of his final, perfect victory in life.

I will no longer provide attentive, over-the-top care.

I only need to calmly watch over him in this house as he stands on his own two feet and freely crosses the finish line of his own life. Because my existence was a single ray of light.