My brother and his wife visited here

A couple of days ago, my brother and his wife have come here to visit my parent's grave as they have done in this season for the past years. It took them 5 hours to drive from Iwate north of Sendai to here.

My brother looked fine even though he had lost most of his hair. Pretty skinny with bike riding. He is working at a big general prefectural hospital as a psychiatrist. He has been spared with the night duty due to his age, in mid sixties, and to his speciality. His work is a kind of laison psychiatry where he does with the consultation of probable psychiatric cases from the other speciality doctors. He also works at the outpatient for dementia cases. Without prospecting ample public pension, he is going on working for another few years or untul he is told to quit.

We have talked on our childhood days. We have shared the memory when our parents had raised us back in our elementary school days. It was in a suburb of Tokyo. He was a kind of nervous boy and, since both parents worked as hospital nurse/personnel, I or our sister, 4 years older than me, took him to the school. He seemed to hate going to school. I have forgot it completely. His story has still lead me to those days. In his mind, even though we shared the same event memories, the things have looked in a quite different way.

He has been a real book lover since his young days. He, together with us, has built a storage house in this property. His room there about 15 sq m in size has literally thousands of books. His aim to visit our home is to care for them and bring in or back some of book collection. Recently, he told me, he had read about the Nazis invading Chechoslovakia and the cruelty they had done to the people there. We have talked, in relation with that topic, about Bonnehoeffer and Arendt. It was surprising to me he had not read much about politics/economics in our country. However, he still shared my view of the present situation in our country. Looming economical and financial collapse.

He seemed to be happy with his faithful and kind wife. Like our father, he has been inherited with his belief in Christianity and a character of being easily moved by things. His wife has become a Christian and is learning piano at home. When I have given a bit of money for the travel to him, after having had a nice sushi dinner, he has been moved to tears. He wonders where his home town is and where he should be settled down in retirement. Having visited the place, a suburb of Tokyo as told above, we had spent our childhood, he seemed to be much disappointed. Nothing same as those days. It will have been half a century in several years since he started learning medicine and working as a doctor in Sendai. I told him he should spend his retirement there with company or friends through his profession. Or he would be welcomed here as well, I told.

It was a really nice visit. Forgot taking photos of the nice sushi and the others, my wife and his wife, at the great restaurant here. Heaven must be like this.