Life and death go side by side

Last night, I was reading a collection of essays by Mieko Kamiya, titled"Gaze of Caring" in Japanese. It was regarding mainly her experience as a psychiatrist at a leprosy sanatorium after the WWII. As she often did, in her essays in it, she compared our life to travel in impressive way. She has observed the patients as a doctor and stood close aside as a fellow traveler in life to them as well. Most of them have been burdened with leprosy which was not treatable those days or, in later years, kept them inpatient due to its complications until their death even after treatment became available.    

I was again moved with her attitude toward the patients. The patients were facing to apparent meaninglessness of life and death. All she could do was just listening to what they said. With heart problem, she was also confronting to death by herself. In later years of her life, she must be feeling just adjacent to death. However, she also noted some of such patients had made their lives glowing with such as composing poetry or serving others with some daily routine duties.

When I first read her essays and other works in my young days, I was on the side of her as a doctor. But at this age, I feel much closer to the position of the patients now. Life is a travel, no doubt about it. When we stand on the side of people facing to difficulties in life, the perspective becomes quite different from that as a care giver. Kamiya must have felt being on the side of the patients when writing these essays because of her health issues. Her coronary artery problem has eventually made her die later. 

Kamiya's simple biography is here.

Talking about the close relationship of life with death, I recall of the renowned composer, Toru Takemitsu. I might have mentioned of it before but he has told to Seiji Ozawa in a dialogue with him that life had been side by side to death for Takemitsu. Actually, Takemitsu has had an autoimmune disease as well as a cancer in the last years of his life. The latter has taken away his life at age of 65 years. His idea of the close relationship of life with death was memorable somehow. It was about 20 years ago around the time of his death when I read that dialogue. His words were deep in my mind. 

It was Takemitsu's 26th anniversary of passing yesterday. Mass media seem to have forgotten this anniversary of this great composer. 

One of his drama music I love so much.