Some reflection on 2013

2013 was a year when I think a lot happened, especially in its second half.

In April, I had a chance to visit Myanmar, which I had been thinking about going to for years because of my father’s stint there as a soldier. There it was almost all about work and sweat under fierce sunlight with the temperature over 40 degrees.  Yet I had a chance to have a brief visit to Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, burning my soles.

Then in July, I had my first visit to Japan in more than four years. Only to Tokyo for my work, yes. But it was definitely something to me. This trip led to two more visits there, eventually totaling more than five weeks, including three consecutive weeks from mid August to early September.

Early August, I received an email from brother, telling me that he was looking for a nursing home for mother whose dementia had progressed so much making it unable for him to support anymore.

I know I had been trying to avoid contacting my family because it was always bad news about this and that.

I had heard from brother in May by email, about my renewed credit card linked to my bank account in Japan. And it was my first contact with him since 2009, when I received a letter from him. The feeling I had when I read the email from him about mother’s condition was one of resignation. I had not talked to her for two years and at the time she was already strange though her stubbornness was still there with her. No doubt talking to her a few times back then reinforced my hesitation to initiate to contact her.

Soon after she started her life at the nursing home, she got hospitalized contracting pneumonia, potentially fatal at her age.

I decided to see her, and it became reality in October, by which time she was discharged from hospital.

Brother and I arranged to meet at the nearest station from his place, and instead of going to see mother straight away, he invited me to his house. It was more than 10 years since our last meeting. His was an old-fashioned Japanese house, not very tidy I found but not uncomfortable either. There and through our walk to the nursing home, he briefed me about her condition though he had given me some information by email.

“She is now wheelchair-bound and needs diapers,” etc.

It was a shock for me to see her in a wheelchair. I remember asking her on the phone a few years ago, “Are you using a stick (to walk)?” She said, “I need no such thing as a stick.”

More shocking was the fact that she didn’t recognize me at all while remembering having a son whose name is the same as mine. Four years since our last time made her a different person. That empty stare. She was talking like a small child.

I had scanned some old photos to show her not really trying to bring memories back to her but to “entertain” her in a sense. It seems it was a good idea.

I was back with her the following day too. We talked about the same set of photos again.   

I was back in Tokyo in late October for the last stretch of my more-than-five-week job. A three-day holiday during this period allowed me to have another visit to see her. I showed her different photos and she recognized a few and told me about them. Still, for her, I was a visiting guest, not her own son.

Returning here after concluding my job in Tokyo, I had several jobless days. Then an avalanche of work started coming down on me. It lasted for a month.

On December 1, I attended a wedding party of someone I’d known for more than a decade and about whom I’ve written here once or twice. After the party was officially over, drinking was still going on and he was drunk, behaving in a disgraceful way. Mimicking a sex act with another idiot, he was saying, “Fuck you, man,” one of the two phrases he had learned while in the US. (The other is “You know…” The man stayed there for seven years.) To me, it sounded “I’m stupid.” Back in September, he said about me, “He starts speaking in English when drunk.” No, I’m not that superficial toward my first and second languages, far more principled. It is this guy who begins speaking in English: “Fuck you, man.” Shame on you.

At the party, I met Him too. I should’ve left there earlier before “Fuck you, man” started. But I stayed on until late. He also did, because I believe He wanted to be with me. I, by then drunk, was with a group of a few people. He was sitting almost with us, looking at me from a short distance without uttering a word. It was scary.

On December 31, I stayed home though almost every year it is a day when I go to CC. One reason of not going there was that I wanted to watch another episode of “The Second Russian Revolution” and another, probably bigger, reason was that I wanted to avoid seeing Him who most likely was there, looking for me.

Very quiet these days, and I spent my time by re-reading two books, “Inventing Japan” and ”Wages of Guilt,” by Ian Buruma and reading two books by Kondo Koichi, and editing “The Story of English” and “The Second Russian Revolution,” which I had finally found on YouTube. I had been looking for these documentaries, both made in the early 1990s, on Amazon.com and other online retailers, believing such excellent TV programs were available in the VDV format.

Last night, I watched the last episode of 2RR, “Coup”. I have yet to start watching TSOE.

Two days ago, I opened again “America’s Boy” by James Hamilton-Paterson, the first book I bought here over 13 years ago.