An old mother cared for by daughters in Shinshu

I have a distant relative living in Shinshu. She used to live in the old sanatorium our parents worked and I was born, that is, exactly this place, immediately after the WWII. She is a faithful person believing in Christianity and went to get married to another Christian farmer living in a countryside in Shinshu, the mountainous prefecture far away,

at that time, from here, several years after WWII.

My mother and our other family members have been friendly to her and her family Ms, the initial of the family name M. In my university days, it was a routine for me to visit them on the way from or to the orchestra camp site held in Shinshu every summer. I have enjoyed hiking to the mountains nearby with Ms' daughters. The family members were all kind and faithful. The nature around there was so beautiful. I felt time was going on so slow I could forget things going on in ordinary life.

Ms' house is located on a slope of a big valley, a side of Great Rift Valley in Japan. Looking over the valley;  

    

M' old house, with the family having been engagd in farming for generations. This photo was taken 15 years ago. They have lost the husband and his sister since then. Now only that old lady, a distant relative for me, is living there. 

Precisely talking, that old lady aged 102 years now is living with the youngest daughter aged 70 years, who has own family in close neighborhood. The other day, when I gave a phone call to her wondering how her mother had been doing lately, that daughter told me that she had been caring for her mother at this home. I was almost falling from the chair. Her mother is now bed ridden but still is reading books etc on her bed. Three other daughters, each working away from home or having married at different places, are coming to substitute her duty for a day on different days in a month. I was truely surprised to hear that.    

In addition, that 4th daughter is still doing farming by herself. Except for an occasion of such as planting or harvesting rice plants which requires her husband's help, she said she had been doing everything by herself. She won't use chemicals for fertilizerc. Only organic compost. She told me she had been farming that way for 40 years. Of course, we have had the same interests in farming, even though I am much more junior to her. She told this story as if nothing special. She even told me to taste her organically grown rice.

Everything is thanks to those daughters' efforts but basically their mother and her husband have raised them that way. Or should I say their belief in Christianity has worked? I only wish they would spend peaceful days at this beautiful place.