Oto-san
Hello everyone,
As you all know, I write a lot. As a writer, I'm kind of always narrating my own life to myself in my head. If the story sounds good, I want to share it with everyone. I'm constantly finding connections, or looking for the beginning, middle, and end in things. When you read a good book, you can look back and say, "Oh that's why that happened!" "Oh that part led into the next part!" And it's exciting when your own life can have a narrative like that.
Death doesn't fit into a life's story.
Death rips apart the narrative. There's no "That's why" about someone's death. There's nowhere it leads to. We can't attach a reason or a story to it. When I was in the restaurant and Yossi got the call about his father, my first thought was, "No, this can't be, this doesn't fit into my story!"
We all want our own lives to make sense. We try to make sense of the things that happen in our lives. That's what a life narrative is.
At the morgue, Yossi's brother was standing over his father, looking at me in the eye, and trying to explain why this happened. The last thing I wanted was for someone to explain this unexplainable thing. I just wanted to give Oto-san a hug one more time, not listen to some man explaining things. But I realized that the brother needed to explain this. He needed to weave it into his narrative. He needed to find his way through the middle to the end. This thing that happens, death, it just tears apart the logic. The brother was trying to piece it back together, to give his own soul a little rest. I let him explain at me, and I can't recall a single thing he said. Then he left and I gave Oto-san my hug.
Now the brother has to make a story for his kids, something that feels like a real story, so there won't be questions in their souls. He is feeling such a weight on his shoulders. They decided to leave the kids at grandma's house until they could come up with what to tell them. The kids stayed there until the next day.
The police came to the house and looked all over for a story. A sudden death. Could there be criminality involved? They interviewed us one by one and sorted through every trash bucket, looking for their own version of the story. Eventually they found their own version of the beginning, middle, and end. They left around 8pm at night.
They never told us what story they found, what made them satisfied that they'd reached the end. Yossi's brother laid prostrate on the floor and cried. For all the explaining and story weaving he'd done,
It snowed that night. In the morning, the world was this beautiful wonderland of lightly sugar-dusted pines and rooftops, with hazy clouds half covering the mountains. How can the world still be so beautiful when there is so much pain in your heart?
Someone told me not to go to the funeral because I'm pregnant. There's a lot of taboo about death in Shinto. If someone dies, you become impure, you cannot enter the sacred ground of a shrine, you cannot celebrate a Shinto holiday. Pregnancy, and life, is celebrated at Shinto shrines. No one wants Death to interfere with my Life. And I was worried about attending anyway. I don't feel comfortable sitting in a sterile room, listening to some Buddhist priest drone on solemnly about religion. I wanted to just walk around giving everyone hugs and crying openly and noisily. I couldn't imagine fitting in with the Japanese traditions. So I was prepared to use this excuse to get out of something uncomfortable.
But his family never mentioned this taboo. I was invited to all the ceremonies, the wake, the funeral, the cremation, and all the Buddhist rituals before and after. I wasn't able to attend all of them, but I was surprised that no one cares about taboo when it comes to sharing our love and feelings together.
When I arrived at the wake, there were three children running around the funeral home. Everyone attending was eating snacks and sushi. Someone had made us all oden which was being warmed up in a back kitchen. It wasn't the solemn affair I'd imagined. There were traditions and rituals, but they were intertwined with snacking on crackers and speaking noisily to each other. As different people took off their shoes to enter the tatami space with the coffin, the kids would often get curious and follow along. While someone was shedding tears, there was always someone else a few feet away laughing about something. Outside, the silent snow fell in the cold night, but inside we were warm.
Oto-san was treated like a living person up until he became ashes. There was a big discussion about whether Oto-san was coming home from the hospital or not. I thought I must be hearing things. The conversation came up again and again. "Maybe Oto-san will come home tomorrow." "Do you think he could come home tonight?" Then I realized they were talking about his body being put into the house for the wake. Eventually they decided on the funeral home, but when we still didn't know yet, my Mommy-In-Law gave me some blankets to "make a bed for Oto-san" and I again had to remind myself they're talking about the body. Yossi asked a neighbor when the last time was he saw Oto-san. The neighbor said, "That doesn't matter. I'll see him tomorrow." I wanted to say, "Don't you know he's dead?" but then I realized he meant at the funeral.
I wrote Oto-san a letter. I cried the whole time I wrote it. Yossi hugged me, crying too, and said, "Thank you." I feel like that hug and that Thank You was from Oto-san. The tears I shed are a manifestation of Oto-san's love for me, and my love for him.
I realized at a funeral, there is so much love. We all just share our love for each other, through the whole process. Love is so beautiful, which is why death is so sad. The inability to share a certain direction love on this plane ever again.
We won't be celebrating New Year's this year, but instead we'll be celebrating Oto-san.
I've been recommended not to celebrate Christmas either. Instead, I wrote an explanation on the meaning of Christmas for all my in-laws, and how it's a holiday of goodwill, comfort, generosity, charity, and love. I hope the message gets through, and everyone can understand why I continue to say "Merry Christmas," despite the death which has ripped all our life stories apart.
Jennifer