A way of calling Love

So, I called Obaachan because every weekend I call my Japanese grandmother. Apart from the past three weekends, because one weekend I had a sore throat and, on the others, I’d been doing flat viewings and/or parties. I called her on Sunday and caught up with her news. She’s been trying to snack less and thinks it’s working because her face looks thinner. I think she just cut her hair, framing her face differently, but I didn’t say that – got to be encouraging. Mid-way through our conversation, she told me that my aunt’s husband, Toshiya, had gone back to his family home to visit his old mother.

‘Oh, that’s good’, I said. Toshiya had been saying recently that he should visit his old mum. His father passed away a year ago.

My aunt Mariko said, ‘You should go.’ Of course, he should: what a good idea. So, Toshiya got the car ready for the weekend and headed up North. His hometown was a five-hour drive away towards the Snow Country; icy temperatures mean you have to put snow-chains around the tyres. My aunt refuses to drive up there anymore, because one time she skidded and almost hit a telegraph pole.

His family were all there to greet him. He went inside and sat around the kotatsu, a warmed-up low table, with his brothers and their wives and their children, and the sickly looking cat and his nephews. Food was dished-up and everybody ate and drank and did what families do. In the adjacent room (traditional Japanese rooms are tatami; divided by partitions you choose to leave open or slide shut, depending on what you’re using the room for) was his mum sleeping in a futon. When Toshiya arrived, she was tucked up in her futon next door with the door wide open, and she greeted him from there.

 ‘Mother. Are you sleeping already?’ She didn’t stir but told him she was glad he had come and that she was tired, and only wanted to sleep. He didn’t want to disturb her so, kept on with the rest of the family. He presented the standard gifts you bring home from the city, like nicely packaged cookies with almonds and vanilla essence; and them being country folk, brought out the homebrew saké and freshly grown delicacies, you could never purchase in a store in Tokyo.

The next day Toshiya had to make his way home, as it was only a weekend trip and the drive was a long one. His mother was again laid out in her futon, and she didn’t get up all day. Toshiya went into her room and kneeled beside her soft cotton mattress. It was layered over with heavy blankets and shawls, like a cocoon. His mother’s wrinkled face peeked out from the pillow, and when she opened her eyes, she smiled a warm, toothy smile. He asked her if she was feeling well.

‘You haven’t got up the whole time I’ve been here Ma. Is anything wrong?’

‘I’m fit and fine, I tell you. Only I’m tired these days.’ Toshiya didn’t speak and looked patiently down at his mother, who blinked twice. ‘I’m so pleased you came. Travelling all this way. You must take some apples.’ He turned the engine on to heat up the car before he left. Family who were still there on the Sunday came out to see him, bowing until they were out of sight in his rear car view mirror. Toshiya made his way, across small country roads that cut through long stretches of paddy fields.

I ask, ‘Is Toshiya’s mum OK? Is she really ill?’ Obaachan continues. When Toshiya got home, Mariko asked him how his mother had been, and he told her that she hadn’t got out of bed the whole time he was there, and so, Mariko had asked the same question as me.

She was clearly worried, ‘What if there’s something wrong with her heart?’

Toshiya didn’t know. In five days time he got a phone call. It rang after work hours, but not too late, a considerate time to be receiving a phone call out of the blue. On the other end of the line was his old mum.

She said, ‘I want to apologise. You made your way up here and I was asleep the whole time. The truth is, when I heard you were coming, I went out early to the fields to pick the best vegetables and pulled my back. Then you arrived.’ Toshiya, held the phone receiver tightly against his ear and bowed many incremental nods, listening carefully.

‘Wait! Why didn’t she tell Toshiya that when he was there beside her?’ My question hangs in the long-distance fuzz between me and Obaachan.

‘Mmh. I only heard this from Mariko. Probably, she didn’t want him to feel guilty.’

‘But… he went all the way up there. Five hours there and back in the snow!’

‘Mmh.’ Obaachan agrees with me slightly. To her this seems plausible, simple, yet to me it’s inexplicable. I think of all that time and opportunity wasted, when they could have had a proper conversation. And now we’ll never know what they didn’t say to each other, truly.

The Funeral (Part 1)

I asked my Obaachan (grandmother) when we got home, ‘Was that a normal Japanese funeral?’ and she replied, ‘Yes, but the bath is optional’.

Arrived into Narita and got a train to Kasukabe my home town. When I got to the house where I was born everyone was dressed in black, just in time for the funeral preparations. I put on my black clothes and was asked about pearls but I wasn’t listening because my Ogiichan was lying still on the floor of the hachijou (reception room). All wrapped up in white cloth. A white veil covering his face. The light filtered in through the paper windows. There was piled up snow outside.

Obaachan spoke to him kindly, said that I’d come home.

I knelt on a cushion and she lifted the veil; he looked asleep and I looked on; lit an incense; hit a bell that rang through the silence.

Hurriedly my mother did the same and then a cute little man dressed in a suit came to the front door donning gloves and a sympathetic smile. Lots of bowing. Lots of apologising for existing. They had come to move him, so obviously I let them and it seemed so logical that I didn’t question why. Another man appears soon after also suited and gloved and stooping under the pressure of solemnity, then the two of them move Ogiichan’s body onto a stretcher out in to the snow and then in to a BMW. The cute little man askes us to hold our hands together and bow until the car has gone out of sight, so we do, and then I go and get ready.

The family arrive dressed in black at a place called The Grand Ceremony, this is a brand name for a building/service I am not sure how to describe as it is like a professional undertaker-cum-funeral-wake-type-reception-hotel. It’s like what you’d expect for a wedding but for a funeral. Chandelier lights, soothing music and soft furnishings. Then things start to get surreal. We’re seated as close family in front of Ogiichan’s wrapped body and we watch him get a ritual bath. A woman and a man wash him with warm water out of a shower head (the type you get at salons). The woman gently says what she is doing like I am shampooing his hair now, or the man says stuff like I am sure he will appreciate the bath, and they clip his finger nails and make him just clean. One by one we have to do things too, like wipe his cold face with a warm towel. But I like that, it makes me feel part of the process.

After the bath they dry him, and let me just say the soothing music is still playing and we see nothing indecent and the corpse is never treated once like a corpse but like a living person getting ready for a long rest. It’s relaxing though cathartic.

Ogiichan then gets or is prepared behind a screen to be presented to us (again) but this time clothed in a white silken kimono with a light blue trim. Serene. The family have to help with various clothing rites, like putting on his tabi, his long socks, his gloves and each item is tied to him with a neat small knot. We also help move his beautified body into the coffin by lifting him then gently laying him down on his bedding.

Nothing that can’t be burned must go into the coffin because in the end he’ll be cremated, so a slip of paper representing money (6000 Yen, I don’t know why?) gets wrapped up in a white cloth purse that Obaachan places in to his breast sleeve pocket. Point Of Interest: This is the fare Ogiichan(‘s soul) will need to cross the River Sanzu, the mythical river of the dead resembling something like but not quite the River Styx, and the ferryman will only help Ogiichan cross it with the correct fare.

There’s other things made out of wicker or grass, unsure, that we place in the coffin beside him. A pair of sandals one for each foot, a walking stick, and a hat that will keep the snow off his head and the shade across his brow. It’s like he’s about to go on a journey. What an adventure? He looks peaceful but also totally ready. I wish I was that ready. What a dude.

I keep crying throughout the day as more random Japanese people come up to me to talk and pay condolences until they realise I am the equivalent of a dumb child who doesn't have more to say than ‘Thank you’. The jetlag and the sorrow produce confusion in me and I still don’t know what to think of Ogiichan being dead. It’s still not right is it? At least he’s had a bath, which is more than I can say for me. Tomorrow we start at 7am.

The Buddhist Monk as he chants long and lowly sounds like he is saying ‘pie jesu’ in long drawn out breaths interspersed with knocks of bells. How funny. How familiar.