The story of going to see my cousin who used to be a truant, my aunt, and my great-uncle with terminal cancer

"It's okay. Everything will work out. You have me here as a senior who used to be a truant but turned out just fine."

That's what my aunt said, calling out gently from behind me while I was driving.
Sitting next to her, her daughter, my cousin, looked embarrassed and smiled at her mother, saying,Well, about that time......

Me too.
I wonder if we'll be able to look back and laugh about it together someday.
I hope so.

Keeping that in my heart, I saw them off this morning.

My aunt and cousin came to visit

My aunt and her daughter came to my house the night before last.
After finishing a concert in Tokyo, they arrived at my house around 10:00 PM.
My children, who had been looking forward to it, tried their best to stay awake, but they had all exhausted themselves and fallen asleep by then.

"Long time no see! Sorry for coming at such an hour."

As I told my aunt, "It's okay!", I immediately started complaining about the match that day, where I was dragged in because they were short on people for the team event. (How annoying of me)

"Oh my, that sounds tough! Thanks for doing that on a day like that.
Oh, here's a souvenir.
Wait, these pants are kind of damp. Could you dry them for me?"

My aunt proceeded to unpack while lightly brushing off my complaints with a nod.

I love this easygoing personality of hers.

My aunt has been like this ever since I was little, no matter when I see her.

Her daughter, my cousin who is much younger than me, is currently a third-year high school student.
She's still a shy girl, but I always find myself staring at her because she gets more beautiful every time I see her. (Still annoying of me)

My aunt is a single mother.
She raised her daughter while caring for her own parents at her childhood home.
A few years ago, my father (my grandfather) passed away.
My grandmother, who was very close to my grandfather, suffered a sharp decline in her dementia after that and is now in a nursing home.

My aunt, who was struggling with caregiving and her daughter, looked miserable for many years.
When I heard via LINE a few years ago that she had developed depression, she told me,

"I don't want to worry my daughter, so I haven't told her. Please don't tell her either."
And now.


Everything has finally settled down, and she seems to be enjoying her life once again.

Forming a band with her daughter,
standing at the front as a representative of the PTA,
and talking about her favorite manga. (I can feel the genetics)
I'm getting energy from such an aunt.

My great-uncle's lung cancer was already terminal

The reason the two of them came to my house was,
while attending the concert was one of the purposes,
there was another major purpose.

My great-uncle.
He is my aunt's uncle,
but we came to see him after receiving word that he had been struck by terminal cancer.

I received the news at the beginning of this year.
At the time, I was busy informing all our relatives, gathering information from the hospital, and in the midst of all that, processing my return to work from maternity leave.
I was so frantic that I didn't have the luxury of immersing myself in grief.
Perhaps that is why I was able to avoid taking it too seriously at the time.

Or one could say I was just looking away.

I have had to say goodbye to people close to me many times in my life.
Even so, it goes without saying that one never gets used to it.

The great-uncle who cried with me that day

At the beginning of the autumn of my second year of high school.
I lost my father.

It was sudden.

I won't go into the details of that time.
I cried every day,
anyway, I cried endlessly.
Even after a while, tears would suddenly well up.
That is still the case even now.

If it weren't for my boyfriend at the time (now my husband),
I don't think I would be able to smile like this today.

The following year, in the autumn of my third year of high school, right in the middle of exam season.
Although I had a mountain of things I wanted to do,
I put everything on hold,
and returned to my hometown where our family graves are for the first anniversary of his death.

In the living room of our country home, where the traces of summer still lingered,
a monk was chanting a sutra.

Even after a year, I was still sobbing.
Hearing the sound of the sutra seemed to bring back memories from a year ago, and it was painful.
I wonder if my two older brothers and my mother also had tears streaming down their cheeks.
I didn't have the composure to notice.

In the midst of that.

There was one person who was sobbing just as much as I was.

It was my great-uncle.

Clutching a crumpled, slightly yellowed handkerchief,
my great-uncle continued to cry, interspersed with sobs, throughout the entire sutra.

Seeing that, I cried even more.

The sutra, myself, and my great-uncle's sobbing echoed through the room.

When the sutra ended, the monk said, "Now, let's go visit the grave."
My mother quickly started preparing, saying, "Yes, understood."
I tried to stand up by leaning on my mother, but I couldn't.

"…Ah, my legs have fallen asleep…"

With a tear-stained face and a raspy voice, I spoke.
It was a gravelly voice that even surprised me.

“Haha, are you okay?” Beside my brothers, who were laughing with slightly red eyes,
another person

THUD!!!

fell onto their bottom with a loud noise.

It was my great-uncle.

“Oh no... my legs have gone numb too!! You guys go on ahead!!”

My great-uncle said that without even trying to hide his wrinkled face.

“See? That happens, right? Haha...”

My great-uncle and I looked at each other and laughed.

I know full well that crying on the spot is not the only way to express the depth of one's grief.
My mother was prepared to take on everything that lay ahead, and
my brothers had their own thoughts as well.

In the midst of that, as the youngest and the spoiled one,
I could only embody everyone's sadness.

Meanwhile,

my great-uncle didn't care about those around him; he immersed himself in the grief and cried with me,
and he let his legs go numb from sitting in a formal position he wasn't used to, right along with me.

I remember that moment well.

The promise I made with my great-uncle who had terminal cancer

“Oh, you came, did you?”

My aunt and cousin. My mother and I.
We were told that only two people could visit at a time, so my mother and I entered that shared room during our second visit.

My great-uncle had become quite thin, and his hair had turned completely white. He was around 80 years old, so that was to be expected.

But I found myself searching for the man who always laughed boisterously, smoked constantly, and would rush anywhere in his white light wagon.

However, my great-uncle was still my great-uncle.

“I’m, you know, I’m doing fine.”
“This urinal thing, too. I told them it would be better to put it over here. It’s become much easier to use.”
“Mom (referring to my great-aunt) seems busy. She’s going to exercise classes, too. Curves? Was that it? She’s also working a part-time job.”

We went back and forth on these kinds of topics.
Even though there were parts where I didn't understand his words, my mother and I were relieved that we were able to converse more than we had expected.

“Well, yeah. It can't be helped, though. It was a long life, and I kept busy. That was especially good; America was fun.”

Even in his hospital room, my great-uncle wore his usual cap,
and with his arms behind his head, he repeated stories from the past.

It seemed he hadn't heard the news that I had given birth to my fifth child.
His eyes went wide with surprise.

“Shiiimo-chan. You’ve done well.”

My great-uncle said that and smiled.
Just like we laughed together in the living room after the Buddhist memorial service.

When we stood up to say we were leaving, my great-uncle threw off his blanket and placed his hands on the bed rail.
He tried to move toward the rail little by little, but after a moment,
he muttered, “I can’t move.”

“It’s okay right here. I’ll come again.”

Honestly, I thought it was uncertain whether I could keep that promise, and it might even be impossible.
But by putting it into words,
I felt I absolutely had to do it again.

“Oh, I’m sorry. See you again.”

“See you again.”

We, who had cried together that day, know well the weight of those words.

Words from a senior who experienced “truancy”

My aunt and cousin stayed at our house for two nights.

They had said they would go to a hotel because it would be hard with so many kids, but
I also felt a sense of atonement toward my aunt, who had taken on the caregiving that should have been done in cooperation with my father, and had worked too hard.

My children remembered meeting them a few years ago, and they are naturally affectionate, starting with my twin sons.
My cousin, who is older and whom I love like a niece, and my children.
They started playing together right away.
“Watching my favorites play together...”
As Shiiimo watched with hands pressed together in prayer, only my eldest daughter, who is currently truant, kept her distance.

I had told them about my eldest daughter beforehand, but since she was the one who was closest to my cousin a few years ago, my cousin seemed confused by her behavior.

In the end, until this morning when they left, my eldest daughter only had a few brief conversations with them.

“I’m sorry about that. School has been tough for her again lately, and it seems she’s thinking about a lot of things...”

I said to my aunt and cousin in the car on the way home.
My aunt, in a tone that suggested she didn't mind at all, said,
“It seems that way, doesn't it.”

And then, she said what I mentioned at the beginning.

Extremely brightly,
as if it were nothing at all.

"You can catch up on elementary school studies quickly if you just do them. It might be like this for a few more years, but if something changes, it'll be quick. It'll be fine, it'll be fine."

My cousin, who doesn't say much, also
nodded slightly, a quiet 'yeah, yeah,' which I could see in the rearview mirror.

"That's right. That's right..."

I said it over and over as if to convince myself.
Each time, the two of them gently nodded in agreement.

******

Unless a miracle happens,
it will be difficult for my great-uncle to recover from this point.
This is equivalent to the laws of nature.

How we accept that fact from here on out
will likely depend on how those of us left behind choose to live our lives from now on.

What will happen to my daughter, who is a truant?
Neither she nor I know the answer to that.
But one thing is certain: this is not a story about waiting for a 'miracle'.

It is about how I will reach out to her from now on,
and whether I can show her the 'path' for how she will live her life.

To my great-uncle, who cried with me that day,
I want to be a person he wouldn't be ashamed of.

To my great-uncle, who gave me a new resolve,
and to my aunt and cousin, who showed me a light for the future.

With gratitude,
I will end my story, which has become too long.

Thank you to you, too, for reading this far.
I hope you have a good day tomorrow.

I am updating this little by little.

I talk about the G-route story from the photo here. I respect my cousin.