I remember, too, that a vigorous baseball game went on while we ate, and I heard again and again the sharp click of bat against ball, the sounds of running feet, screams and clapping hands. In the midst of all this Miki kept a lively eye on the game and every now and again she shouted instructions or approval.
When the meal was over, Miki told me a call had come for me from overseas. She went with me then into a small room and closed the door and handed me the receiver. Across the thousands of miles of earth and sea I heard my daughter’s voice again as clearly as though she were in the next room.
“Mother, we have planned everything but we want to know if you approve. The service will be day after tomorrow and our own minister, of course, will take charge. We thought it would be best to have it in the library because he loved that room, you know. He could — the casket could be set in front of the fireplace — and nobody there except the people from the farm and the house — and the nurses who took care of him — and all of us. Then we’ll take him to the family cemetery — no flowers, we thought, but asking people to give the money to Welcome House.”
The children had planned everything as I would have done and now it remained only for me to get home quickly. I said yes, yes, yes, over and over again and gave my love and thanks to them all. Then when I had hung up the receiver, it was suddenly all too much. For the first time I let myself feel, and acknowledge, that it had all been too much from that day, seven years ago, in a sunny park in Sheridan, Wyoming, when the first blow had fallen. Such a little blow it had seemed at the time — no more than a mild heat stroke, we thought. We had planned for several years to take a family summer trip through the West, to Yellowstone Park and then into Oregon and Washington. It had been a comfortable and happy time, all of us in a big air-conditioned car, driven by our tried and true chauffeur. “The trip will be good for him,” our family doctor had said, “if he does not do the driving.”
So it had seemed, until that sunny day. The next day we were to go on to Yellowstone. The next day, instead, he and I stayed in a pleasant ranch house while the children went on and came back and we all went home, still thinking it was nothing, but that we had better go home, at any rate to be near our own doctor. The Sheridan doctor had not been quite sure it was a heat stroke. Later we knew it was not. But he seemed as well as ever, as vigorous, still carrying on his busy life in the New York offices and in the country office at home.
I hid my face with my hands when I put up the receiver and struggled with myself. And Miki, with that delicacy so natural to Asia, ancient and accustomed to human sorrow, sat beside me in silence, not putting forth her hand to touch me, knowing that all comfort was vain, except the comfort of a friend sitting quietly beside me. I struggled through and wiped my eyes and Miki rose.
“The children are waiting for us,” she said.
Those were her words, but what she really said was that I must live and begin now to live. Death must not interrupt life. There were others waiting for us. I followed her out of the small room and she led me to the theater.
The audience was the older children, the staff and ourselves. The entertainment was dancing and music, the music a jazz band and folk singing. What interested me was the children. They were strikingly beautiful, without exception, and obviously talented. The girls in kimono did Japanese dances with fans and flowers in the ancient style. The jazz band was made up of boys, many of them half-Negro, and they were handsome indeed.
I confess on that day, when I sat looking at Miki’s children and listening to them, it seemed to me that I could never smile again. Yet the children brought me their own comfort and in love and determination I decided that, insofar as I was able, I would help Miki to find families for them.
The afternoon came to an end. It was time to go back to Tokyo and time to go home. Miki refused to leave me until the last moment.
The jet took off at midnight. Friends came to see me off and their kindness and affection wrapped me around. But they had to return to their own lives and I had mine to face, and there was a certain comfort in being at last among strangers, to whom I need make no response. I found my seat, fastened my belt and leaned back and closed my eyes. It was the first moment that I had been totally alone since the moment that morning when the world had changed. Long ago, when I knew my child was to be permanently retarded, I learned that there are two kinds of sorrow, one which can be assuaged and one which cannot be assuaged. This one was different, yet alike in that it, too, was not to be assuaged. Nevertheless, years ago I had learned the technique of acceptance. The first step is simply to yield one’s self to the situation. It is a process of the spirit but it begins with body. There, belted into my seat while the aircraft rose into the black sky of night, I consciously yielded my body, muscle by muscle, bone by bone. I ceased to resist, I ceased to struggle. Let come what would, I could do nothing to change what had already happened. The aircraft contained me, controlled me, and isolated me.
In a curious way spirit must sometimes follow body, just as at other times spirit leads. Now as the body yielded itself to the will, the spirit found it easier also to yield to the same command. Life can be inexorable but death is always inexorable. The next step is to recognize inexorability. The past becomes static. It is history and the facts of history cannot be changed. What has been done is done. One can learn from the past, one can treasure the past, but it cannot be changed. Twenty-five years had been lived in happiness, but they were lived. The End had been written. One does not go on writing a book after those two words have finished it. Another book has to be begun.
It cannot begin at once. There has to be time for total relaxation, total recognition of inexorability, total realization that the life of the past is over. Only then can new strength be summoned. I doubt even that it can be summoned. It has to grow from the very sources of the being into a new will to live. As far as the will could go that night, as the jet darted its way among cloud and stars, it was only to command the body to yield and the spirit to withdraw. At last I slept.
I looked at my watch. It was three o’clock in the morning. Time was meaningless in this swift flight and the sky was already light. I had left Tokyo the night before, Sunday, but I would reach New York on Monday morning, after another day and night of living, if not of time. I was beginning to understand the relativity of time to space and speed. What miracle that Einstein was born in coincidence with the practical experience of jets and rockets in space! My mind, unable as yet to face the profound change in my own life, explored the meaning of eternity, time without beginning and without end. Whatever exists now, has always existed and always will, the universal and eternal law only that of change. And yet change can be frightening. If death is only a change, then what is the change? He knew and I did not. At a moment in his sleep he had died. He was at one instant alive and at the next instant dead. That is, at one instant he had been this, and at the next instant that, the same and yet different.