Then I recognized the paving stones. I looked up and realized that I had reached the square where I met my old girlfriend the other day. I’d just run the same distance it took the tram thirty minutes to complete. I was too late. The feel of the cold stone pavement brought reality crashing down on me. I had eliminated cats. I had made Cabbage disappear from the world.
But just then I heard a meow. I thought I could make it out, coming from a distance. I stood up mechanically. Then I heard it again. I ran toward the sound. Was I dreaming? Or was it real? My head was spinning and I couldn’t think straight. I forced myself to run even though my feet felt like lead weights. Following the meowing I found myself standing in front of a red-brick building. It was the movie theater.
Again the same meow. Cabbage was there, on the counter in the movie theater. In the same position he always adopted, he was stretched out with his tail dangling over the counter’s edge. He jumped gracefully onto the floor and walked toward me, letting out another meow. I picked him up and squeezed him tight. Feeling his soft fur and hearing him purr gave me the sense that this was what life was all about.
“It’s good you two found each other again.”
There she stood in front of us. Of course. My ex-girlfriend. She lived here, after all.
“I was so surprised when Cabbage turned up here on his own.”
“Thank you. I’m so relieved.”
“And there you go crying again. You haven’t changed at all, have you?”
Only then did I realize that tears were streaming down my face. It was embarrassing, but I was just too happy for words. Cabbage hadn’t disappeared. He was back in my arms. I wiped the tears away and got back to my feet.
“Well, this must have been your mother’s doing.”
“What do you mean?”
She handed me a letter. It was addressed to me. It had a stamp, but no postmark, meaning that it had never been sent. Someone wrote it but then never mailed it.
“It’s from your mother. She had me keep it for you.”
“From Mom?”
“That’s right. Back when your mother was in the hospital I paid her a visit, and she asked me to hold on to it.”
I had no idea until now that my old girlfriend had visited my mother when she was in the hospital. I was finding it hard to believe, but took the letter from her anyway.
“Your mother wrote you the letter while she was in hospital, but she just couldn’t send it. She was afraid that she would never see you again once you’d read it. So she asked me to give it to you if you were ever going through a really hard time.”
“I see…”
“At first I turned her down because I had broken up with you years before, and I didn’t expect to see you again. But then she said it didn’t matter if you never got it. She just wanted someone to have the letter. And then, when I saw that Cabbage had turned up here today and that you were beside yourself in tears, I realized that it was time to give you the letter.”
“Now?”
“She did say to give it to you if you were going through a difficult time.”
“Right…”
“Your mother was really great. She just knew things. It was like she had magical powers or something.”
Hearing herself say this, she laughed.
I sat down on the sofa in the theater lobby and put Cabbage on my lap.
Then I carefully opened the letter. On the top of the first page in large letters (she had beautiful handwriting) it said: “Ten things I want to do before I die.” The title was a bit of an anticlimax. So both mother and son, without knowing it, had written the same thing. I couldn’t help but laugh and carried on to the second page.
I don’t have much longer to live, so I thought I’d note down ten things I’d like to do before I die. I’d like to travel, and enjoy delicious gourmet meals, and I’d like to kit myself out in some really stylish clothes. But then, as I wrote these things I began to wonder. Was this really the kind of thing that was important to me? Is this really what I want to do before I die? I started a new list when suddenly I realized that all of the things I wanted to do before I died were for you. Your life will go on for many years beyond mine, and in the course of that life there’ll be both good times and bad. You’ll experience joy, but there will also be times of sadness and pain. So I decided to write down ten beautiful things about you so that whenever you’re going through a difficult time, you’ll be given the courage and self-belief to go on.
So instead of a list of ten things I want to do before I die, this is what I wrote.
Things that are beautiful and good about you:
When people are sad, you’re able to cry along with them.
And when people are happy you’re able to share their joy with them.
You look really sweet when you’re asleep.
Your dimples when you smile.
Your habit of rubbing your nose when you’re worried or anxious.
Your concern for the needs of others.
Whenever I caught a cold you helped with the housework, and acted like you enjoyed doing it.
You always ate whatever I cooked as if it were the most delicious thing in the world.
How you’d think deeply and ponder over things.
And after all that brooding you always seemed to come up with the best solution to the problem.
As you go on with your life, always remember the things that are good in you. They’re your gifts. As long as you have these things, you’ll find happiness, and you’ll make the people around you happy. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. And goodbye. I hope you always keep hold of these things that are so beautiful about you.
The tears rolled down and fell on the letter like warm, salty drops of rain. I quickly wiped them off, not wanting to ruin a letter that mattered so much. But when I tried to stop I just cried more and more, and the letter got wetter and wetter, the ink beginning to smudge. Along with the tears, came a torrent of memories of my mother.
Whenever I caught cold my mother would rub my back. Once I got lost when we were at an amusement park and began to cry. I remember how my mother ran to me, and picked me up and held me. When I wanted the same kind of lunch box as all the other kids, my mother ran around town all day long to find just the right one. I always fidgeted when I was asleep, and my mother would come in and put the covers back on. She always bought me new clothes when I needed them and never bought anything for herself. She made the best Japanese rolled omelet. I could never eat enough of it and she’d give me her portion. For her birthday I gave her a voucher for a shoulder massage, but she never used it. She said it was too much of a treat for her and didn’t want to waste it. She bought a piano and played my favorite songs for me, but she wasn’t very good and always tripped up and made mistakes in the same places.
My mother… Did she have any hobbies of her own? Did she have any time to herself? Were there things she wanted to do, hopes and dreams? I wanted to at least thank her, but never found the words. I never even bought her flowers because it seemed cheesy. Why couldn’t I at least have done something small? It was such a simple thing. And when she finally left this world it came as such a shock. I hadn’t ever imagined that she would die.