My father's 15th anniversary

On the way to the piano trio practice with my niece a couple of days ago, I have heard of her pleasant memories with her grandfather, that is, my father. She has stayed with her grandparents living at a town near Tokyo where she needed making a train ride travel. On Sunday, she attended a sunday bible class at the Salvation Army Hospital my mother had worked.

My father used to visit this place we are living now once in a while and to develop a land for a house. My father must think of spending retirement at this place which had been sold to the other people and was bought back by my father. That project has come true. He has taken niece here on a small truck. She laughingly told me he had served her curry and rice without any material in it. It was a really unforgettable memory for her.

It was my father's 15th anniversary yesterday. Recalling that, I have talked on him with my niece. This has reminded me of an aspect of his life I didn't know. It was almost 40 years ago when I had started residency at a med school hospital nearby here. I thought, as children always do, I had grown up by myself and had become independent from my parents. I had not spent much attention to how they lived and thought of things those days. Hearing stories from niece, I knew there had been the other aspects of his life which had been unknown to us. I told my niece she and her brother, still very young those days, had been a great comfort to my parents at that time.

As already written elsewhere in this blog, my father has met my mother at the sanatorium for tuberculosis patients which had been managed by our aunt on the Christianity belief at the very same place as we live right now. On the same day when I met my niece, my sister sent me a postal mail. She has told on her memory of our father for the anniversary and has mentioned of a small note book. My father has made it when he was deployed to the WWII. It included the extracts of the words from the Bible, some hymns and the farewell greetings by his Christianity friends and a leader. My mother, his fiancee at that time, has quoted the Psalm 46th in her short farewell sentences. Of course, he could not bring a bible with him to the war. This small notebook must have been a comfort during military service where he has experienced cruelty for himself, the other soldiers and the people in China. My sister told me he had repeatedly told what he had done and had been done there. That experience has lead him to, throughout his life, consider what caused that war and who was responsible for that. We were even bored hearing that story while he was alive. Looking back of his life since those days, I am sure we should take over his thorough consciousness of the problem and his wish for peace for the generation upcoming. Even if it would be gone away when family members remebering of him pass away.

Our parents used to attend to the hospital in their senile days wherever I worked for. I was surprised at that. Raising their children for workers of medical service, I realized recently, they seemed to want, even without saying that to us, to be cared for by us for medical problems especially in the last days of their lives. I have become a pediatrician and younger brother a psychiatrist. We could not do that by ourselves. I still regretfully remember of my father's last days. Oftener, I should have gone to his bed side and have listened what he thought, worried and hoped those days.

In the last part of his life, he could spend peaceful days surrounded by his grandchildren in Tokyo and later here. It is the only relief to me that I could help him living here with us while having much support from him and mother as well.

Even though he was not educated so much as he had hoped for or was not a perfect person with some bias of his character, he was sure an irreplaceable and respectable father for me and for my family.

I have spent the day of anniversary working in the garden farm as he used to do. 
My sister wrote that the epitaph of our tomb is a quote of the Psalm 46th, a choice by father. I could hardly believe it was just a coincidence.

A snap of my father with his grandchildren, that is, my niece and nephew. Almost 40 years ago. After cruel and disastrous years of life, he finally could spend peaceful time with them.