It was four years ago. I remembered that day clearly, running as fast as I could to the hospital. My mother had had another seizure. She had already been in hospital for a long time, and would sleep for long stretches, but every now and again she would be woken up by a seizure. The hospital would always let me know, and I’d run back to be with her.
When I got there on that day, she was sitting up in her bed, in pain. She was shaking and saying over and over again that she was cold. Seeing her like that scared me, and I called out to her. I’d never seen her that way. The whole time I was growing up she was always so bright and cheerful, and warm. She was always on my side. I always felt completely safe and secure when she was near. And now she was going to leave me. I was so scared and upset I thought I was going to pass out. She was repeating something under her breath, it was almost impossible to understand. “Sorry… sorry, I’m so sorry to leave you alone.” I was choked up—tears began to roll down my cheeks. I began to shake too, as I rubbed my mother’s back.
She suffered like that for an hour and then they gave her an intravenous painkiller, which made her fall into a deep sleep. Now she was sleeping peacefully. So peacefully it was hard to believe she had just been in so much pain. I was relieved and sat down in the chair near the bedside, bone-tired. Soon I fell asleep too.
I had no idea how much time had passed, but when I woke up, Mom was sitting up in bed reading a book using a small portable lamp. Suddenly she was back to normal.
“Are you OK, Mom?”
“Oh, you’re awake. Yes, I’m OK now.”
“Good.”
“… I wonder what’s going to happen to me.”
Mom examined her wrist. She had become so thin.
“I’ve become just like Lettuce.”
“Mom, you shouldn’t say that!”
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”
The window of the hospital room faced west, and the setting sun glowed bright pink, even brighter and more beautiful than it usually did. There was a photograph on Mom’s bedside. It was one of the photos we’d taken on our trip to the hot spring. Mom and Dad and me all facing the camera, smiling with our backs to the ocean.
“The trip to the hot spring was wonderful.”
“Yeah, it really was.”
“I was wondering what was going to happen when we didn’t get the inn we wanted.”
“Yeah, I really panicked.”
“Looking back now it seems kind of funny.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“The sashimi was delicious.”
“We should go again.”
“Yes, we should. But I don’t think that’s really a possibility.”
Mom spoke matter-of-factly, mentioning several times that she thought it wouldn’t happen. I couldn’t find it in me to respond to what she was saying.
“So I guess Dad hasn’t come, right?”
I couldn’t take the silence over that elephant in the room anymore.
“No, I guess not…”
“I told him he should come, but he just said that he’d visit after he finished repairing the watch he was working on.”
“Oh, did he…”
Mom had a favorite wristwatch that she wore all the time. It was that watch that Dad was repairing. It was the only wristwatch she ever owned… which was kind of odd when you consider the fact that she’d married a man who repaired clocks for a living.
“What’s so special about that watch?”
“It’s the first present your father ever gave me.”
“Oh, so that’s it.”
“He made it himself using antique parts from his collection.”
“So he actually did something nice for once?”
“He did. You know, he’s really very sweet. He just finds it difficult to express himself.”
Mom sounded so young when she talked about Dad like this, erupting in girlish laughter.
“Last week your father came to see me, and I told him my watch wasn’t running. So he just took it with him when he left, without saying anything. I guess he planned on repairing it.”
“But why decide to do it now of all times?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m happy you’re here, but people are different. There are different ways of showing you love someone.”
“I don’t know…”
“That’s just the way it is.”
It was the last time we ever spoke. Soon after that, she took a turn for the worse and within an hour she was dead.
I called the shop over and over again, but Dad didn’t come. He finally arrived half an hour after she’d died. He held Mom’s wristwatch in his hands. He hadn’t been able to get it going again. Mom’s lifeless body lay there, still, and I cursed him. Why now? Why at a time like this? I just couldn’t understand him, however Mom tried to explain it.
They took Mom to the funeral home, leaving the hospital room empty and still. Where Mom had been there was only a clean white sheet… It was more than I could take. On the bedside sat her wristwatch. She always had it on her. It was like a part of her body. And now all the life had gone out of it. The wristwatch had become a piece of useless rubbish. Suddenly I remembered Lettuce’s red collar, and the thought of it made the pain even worse. I picked the watch up and held it close to my heart, and found myself sobbing there, alone.
I never spoke to my father again, after that day.
Even now I can’t say how things got so bad between me and my father. We used to be a happy family. We were close. We would go out to eat together and go on holiday. But somehow over time, for no reason I could think of, the foundations that my relationship with my father was built on simply rotted away.
But we’re family. You just take it for granted that they’ll always be there and that you’ll muddle along somehow. I always believed that. I never questioned such an obvious assumption. But ironically enough, because we both believed in this unspoken truth, my father and I never bothered to talk to each other, to ask how the other was feeling, or what they were thinking about. We both went on believing that whatever we felt as individuals must be the way it really was.
But it doesn’t work that way. Instead of thinking of family as just being there, you need to think of it as something you do. Family is a verb—you “do family.” My father and I were two separate individuals who just happened to be related by blood. And because we accepted and lived with the distance that had grown between us for so long, eventually the last thread connecting us broke.
Even when Mom got sick my father and I never spoke to each other. We both put our own needs and what we were going through first. We didn’t think about Mom and what she needed. Even as Mom started to feel worse and worse, she carried on doing the housework, and though I think part of me knew, I still didn’t take her to see the doctor. I just blamed my father for expecting her to continue doing the housework, even in her condition. And I suppose he blamed me for not taking her to see the doctor. When the end came, I only cared about being by Mom’s side, while the only thing Dad seemed to care about was repairing her watch. Even Mom’s death couldn’t bring us together.
I ran and ran with no idea where I was going, and I still couldn’t find Cabbage anywhere. Had cats really disappeared from the world? Had I made Cabbage disappear? Would I never see Cabbage again? Would I never get to touch his soft fur again, to feel his warmth against my body, touch his dangling tail or his fleshy paws, or feel the thumping of his little heart?
Now both Mom and Lettuce were gone, and maybe Cabbage was gone too. I didn’t want to be left alone. I was grief-stricken, angry, anxious, and in pain. My eyes began to fill with tears. I kept on running, forcing my legs to keep moving, panting now, my mouth open and dry. I ran and ran until my head started to hurt again and I collapsed onto the cold stone pavement. I carried on, crawling awkwardly on the ground.