< I >
"Hey, the sound is confused, it's out of order"
My brother whispered into my ears in a strained tone.
It was not long before that the sound of the electrocardiogram instrument signal stopped
in a room just across from the sickroom. The doctor rushed and felt her carpus pulse,
inspected her pupils by a pencil light and sentenced her death hanging his head. It was a
curiously hollow white moment like in a cave.
Laments, weeps, cries and even grievous expressions of the persons surrounding the bed
seemed to me as if those things had happened in a scenery far away from there. Is she
dead?, Oh, no, never ever! I was still believing so somewhere in my mind. It was when I
saw her face made-up, in peace, again that the tears streamed from my eyes and the sadness
paralyzed my brain.
<II>
I could not tell how I should advise the situation to my sister in Vancouver over the
phone, but I told her in a straight forward way. Ayako is suffering from cancer, although
she hasn't been told what it is. The doctor says she may last even one more month. I will
not return, even though our mother is dead, because I had already made farewells in my own
way to each of you when I was last in Japan as we are now at such aged stage of life. Her
voice was very clear and steady.
She that had said so came back one day suddenly to visit her sister in hospital,
encouraged her, washed her hair unwashed for a long time and left to her home town. The
next morning, Ayako's condition which looked not so serious changed all of a sudden and
she passed away like a tightly tensed thin thread cuts.
<III>
"It's inevitable, isn't ... it, but ....."
".......yeah, it ... is"
Those were all words to the best of our ability that we could exchange when we met at the
wake after a long time, admitting a kind of resolution that could not be expressed in
words in the lights of mutual eyes.
Finishing the funeral and completing her stay of about 10 days, she left Narita for her
country.
<IV>
Today, on the first Sunday of October, about two months since then, I took up a pen,
wanting to sort out something in my mind. Shifting my eyes to the garden of the next-door
neighbor, through the glass window, oh!, I find the cosmos flowers in full bloom, singing
a song in praise of life towards the sunbeams of beautiful early autumn.