An Amazing Woman

I realize you visit this site to be entertained, but sometimes events beyond human control will intercede and beg to be addressed. This event falls into this category as everyone who was ever born will experience it. The epiphany of life's utimate truth - death, especially to one of two of our closest relatives, our parents.

We had the burial service for my mother on March 29, 2001 - April fool's day - a day normally reserved for some innocent pranks and general horseplay. Except that, for that day, there was only sadness, meloncholy and a large sense of loss. A very bright light had gone out in my life and the lives of my loved ones. So, to help me spritually to heal, I created a small tribute that I am sharing with you, the visitor. In this way, maybe my mother's way of living will help someone she had never, and will never, meet to cope with life and its sometimes cruel nature. So I ask you to take a moment to read this personal eulogy before proceeding. And tell your parents that you love them each and every time you see or talk to them. I promise you won't regret it.

There was a young soldier, fighting in the Korean War, who met a small, pretty woman in Fukishima, Japan. They fell in love and married afterward, moving to the United States. He got a job at a glass company and she became a housewife. Things were tough at first, as she knew very little English, but she persevered and soon knew enough English to converse. They both made ends meet and soon decided to have children.

Their firstborn, a son, was premature and had to be kept in an incubator for many weeks before he could be taken home. Through this time, the father had to work a grueling job and she had to be alone at home. But she never complained and came to see their child each day, hoping he would be alright. Even then, she showed an uncommon bravery. As fate would have it, their first son pulled through, but then proved to be a sickly child who would be in and out of hospitals several times before his teens. During this time, between hospital vigils, his mother would also walk him to the children's clinic several blocks away to get blood work and sometimes transfusions. When he was three years old, the mother and father were blessed by another son. He was better physically, which was a relief to his parents.

There was another scary time when they thought their first son would not survive. He contacted double pneumonia and strepthroat. At the hospital, while his mother worried and fretted, his temperature got so high he was placed in a tub full of ice-cubed water. Luckily, this brought his temperature down before any brain damage could occur and he recovered.

Happily, the family was still intact and went through the normal things families do... except for some things which no family should endure. The parents had to put up with bigotry as half of the couple was Japanese. But they were strong enough to handle these things and tried to teach their children to be strong as well.

When her children had grown up into young adults, she began having some trouble remembering which son was which, calling each by the other's name. It became an inside joke to refer to the oldest as the "number one son" and the younger as "the Kidd". This didn't solve the issue as she still couldn't get their names straight, but it helped a little.

Soon, she started to get arthritis, which she dealt with as she had dealt with the other bad things in life - with a determined smile and a positive attitude. As she aged, she developed a more serious illness - scleraderma. The symptoms soon became quite noticeable, especially in her hands, the skin going glossy with tightness over her slowly disfiguring arthritic fingers.

As always, she met these things head on and kept up her determined smile and positive attitude. As if this wasn't enough, she developed cataracts, which had to be removed surgically. She then wore these thick-lensed glasses to help her see as her eyes no longer could do the work on their own. And still she went bravely on with her life, even as her legs began to fail her. Then she was diagnosed with diabetes and she started to waver in her resolve to go on. Her family came together to help her through her down period. Through all this, her husband was there to help her do those things which most people take for granted. Sometimes she would pass out due to her diabetes and her husband would take care of her and take her to the hospital whenever it was called for. And she would recover and display her smile and laugh it off. And life went on as it always did for them.

Until the last time she passed out - and couldn't be revived as before. Her husband rushed her to the hospital and stood bedside watch. Though early in the morning hours, her sons and daughter-in-law-to-be came to be by her side. It seems that the scleraderma had hardened her arteries enough to stop most of the bloodflow to her brain. She was effectively having a long heart attack, her brain starving for oxygen. As her family watched helplessly, her damaged heart's erratic rhythm steadied and started to drop. It kept dropping and after several agonizing minutes, the woman who left her homeland and everyone she knew, who learned English on her own, who struggled through a mountain of personal adversity to enjoy porcelain elephants, crystal bells, Tom Clancy novels and a good wordseek puzzle, took her last breathe at 6:31am, on Thursday, March 29th, 2001.

Good bye, mama-san, I love you and I'll miss you dearly... Number One Son

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