The Story of My Parents' House Burning Down (Part 8)

I decided to open up the belongings my father had while he was hospitalized.
My mother felt a bit hesitant to tidy them up, but I was ready to open them up and toss things out one after another.


My sister and I sorted through the clothes, small items, and other things.
And then, we discovered my father's journal!
Speaking of journals, they're key items in games and things like CoC, too! There might be some important information in there.

Pffffft hahahahaha!

What was he thinking when he wrote this?
I was immediately struck by his word choice, which is not something you'd expect from an average person.

There's just too much to comment on.
By the way, it was written that after this, he got caught with alcohol on his breath during his hospital stay, which made my younger brother furious, and he was banned from overnight outings. Well, obviously.

Also, it seems he called an escort service during his overnight outings, and he appeared worried about having syphilis. It was all over the news, after all.
He's diligent about looking up things like this, at least. What an idiot.

The rest of it contained notes about his hospital stay, his childhood, and the time he went missing.
In my father's memory, his disappearance was because he became the ISO manager at his company and wanted to escape the pressure. He wrote that he had told my mother he wouldn't be home for a while, but then he was caught by the police at Sakurajima.
...Huh. I see.

It was a pretty interesting journal, full of the kind of selfishness you'd expect from an alcoholic.

My sister and I laughed our heads off, but we promised never to show it to our younger brother. He's serious, so he'd definitely lose his temper if he saw it.
My sister said she'd keep it for a while to enjoy it, then dispose of it.

It was full of nonsense, but the journal really was a key item after all!
Perhaps because he was trying to check his account balances, he had written down his banks!!! According to that, it seems he has three of them.

With this, my actions during this stay became significantly easier.
If I hadn't figured it out, I was planning to spend all day tomorrow going around to neighborhood banks. Honestly, it was a relief.

I showed this notebook to my mother as well.
She read it incredibly seriously, and afterwards, she said sadly, "Your father was suffering too, wasn't he?"

Are you serious?
To think that after seeing this notebook full of him doing whatever he wanted, she would say that—well, as expected of someone in a codependent relationship (my subjective view).
Knowing her, she's probably thinking something like, "He was so pitiful. I should have been kinder to him."

Besides the notebook, I also found a paper with life insurance policy numbers and benefit details in the bag.
Important items just keep popping up, don't they?
Fire insurance and bankbook-related documents didn't turn up, but the harvest was plentiful.

【Codependency】

Regarding codependency, I'll post a link to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare's page that describes it perfectly. I think our family had tendencies toward points 1 and 7.
Dealing with addiction is so difficult that there are even seminars on how to speak to someone about it. My mother and the others were told at a family seminar they attended that they should just watch over him without interfering and that it's better to leave him alone.
From my perspective, the way my grandmother and mother dealt with my father honestly felt like they were accomplices.

To be continued in ⑨