“Fine,” I replied offhandedly, looking to the urn reverently displayed on the altar. If we were going back to his place, I thought of leaving the urn there. She might be happier in the care of the Nishikawa family—even though they were total strangers to her—than being placed in a grave that no one would visit.
“What was your mother like?” he asked.
I turned the question over in my mind. My mother had died in March of the previous year. What came to mind first was her thin frame and her pale skin, her body ravaged by the sickness, but that wasn’t right. That wasn’t who my mother had been. She was cheerful and kind. She was more than she had been at the very end.
And yet, these were the words that came from my mouth:
“I don’t think she was happy.”
He listened without protest, without laughing. He wasn’t surprised, because he must have known. I really wished he’d told me everything he’d learned. That way, I wouldn’t have needed to say anything at all. That way, I wouldn’t have had to put those thoughts into words.
“Even if she hadn’t gotten sick, she would have spent her life being yelled at by my father.”
When they discovered her heart condition, she quit her job and then cycled between inpatient and outpatient care. We never had that much money to begin with, and it became increasingly difficult to cover her medical expenses. Those became the priority, and we cut back on just about everything else.
My father took it the worst. He was never the type of person to work hard. He never earned enough money. He expected all sorts of things from my sick mother while he spent his time getting drunk. He would often yell at her that we didn’t have money. “It’s all your fault!” he would insist. How many times had he said that to my mother? How many times had he said it to me?
“It’s your fault we’re poor.”
Yeah. Our lack of money was the root of all evil.
If only we had money, we’d be fine. If only we had money, we would be happy...
I never believed that.
With or without the money, things would have fallen apart sooner or later. No, in truth, our family had been falling apart for as long as I could remember. My mother’s illness was just the final push. Happiness had never been ours to keep.
My father stopped coming home a few days after my high school entrance ceremony. When I got home, he wasn’t there, and then I never saw him again. More than surprise or sadness, I experienced acceptance. I already understood it was just a matter of time. If anything, I thought it to be the most peaceful conclusion.
My father couldn’t handle it, though I don’t know if it was poverty or seeing my mother’s disease progress in the end.
I remembered telling my mother in a whisper that he was gone, like it was the greatest secret. She seemed sad. She’d been stuck in her hospital room, always waiting for him. Her husband would abuse her verbally and sometimes even physically, and she’d waited for him anyway. I couldn’t fathom what that felt like.
Ever since that moment in her hospital room where she shrugged and smiled at me, blaming herself as I rubbed her pale hands, I’d been thinking...
What was love anyway? What was it supposed to be?
Was it something I had? Was it something I received? Was it something my father had given? Was it something my mother received?
My mother died roughly a year after my father’s disappearance. The last time I saw her alive was before her heart surgery.
A faltering heart rate monitor that eventually goes flat, a family that breaks down crying—I couldn’t imagine any of those things. When they brought her out of the operation room, there was no monitor, I was the only family she had, and I couldn’t cry anyway.
My mother’s eyes were closed. I didn’t know whether she was sad or distressed when it happened. Did it hurt? What was the last thing she thought? Could she even think in those last moments? What would she tell me now that she was leaving me all alone? What did she want to tell her husband who never showed up?
Had my mother really loved my father?
Had my father really loved my mother?
If they had, why did their love end so wretchedly?
All alone, not knowing if anyone would come, she waited in the mortuary for someone to pick her up.
I had no reason to love the world.
I’d seen what love does to a person.
But I kept working, kept living while chipping away at my sanity because I had to do something with her ashes. Once I finished that final item of business, once my mother’s funeral was over, I’d have nowhere to go—nowhere I wanted to go, nowhere I wanted to stay.
My trash bags would likely be found tomorrow and disposed of. I knew I wouldn’t be there to pick them up.
The rain had eased up some, but it was still audible. I suspected the rain would continue for the rest of the day.
My mother hadn’t been happy. That was the undeniable truth. She’d been forced to endure all sorts of abuse from her husband, and then she suddenly died. Even after her death, her remains didn’t get treated much better. I was never able to give her the happy life she deserved, so I hoped to give her the best send-off I could manage.
That was my responsibility.
“You know, Sacchan,” my employer said out of nowhere, breaking me from my thoughts. His beautiful, clear voice reached me and warded off the cacophony of the rain. “You’re really kind.”
“I’m really not... This was just something I had to do.”
I couldn’t cry when my mother died, and I couldn’t cry now. Grief was something distant, and even though I sensed its presence, it never got any closer. I knew it was heartless. Having me as her son was one of my mother’s misfortunes.
“No, you are kind. I can tell you’ve always been. You deserve to be loved, to be happy.”
His candid words came as a shock, which was why I reflexively replied with something equally unexpected.
“Love can eat shit.”
I tried to interpret what I even meant by that. I had blurted it out without thinking. Perhaps I was voicing my mind.
Love can eat shit.
Love never existed in the first place.
I couldn’t start building a sandcastle if I knew its fate was to collapse. If one day something would fall apart, I was safer never experiencing it in the first place.
“You still haven’t cried today. Is there something keeping you? If you started bawling, then at least I could comfort you like a gentleman.”
“Cut it out.”
“What do you want for dinner tonight?”
What a change in subject.
“Nothing in particular... We haven’t even had lunch yet.”
“By the time we’re done, it’ll be that awkward moment between afternoon and evening. Mom said she could get us sushi.”