Man. Jet Lag ain’t no joke, I can tell you. Miss me?
Seriously though, I was on a red eye Tuesday night, and last night the time change messed up Thomas, so he slept from 5:30 – 8:30ish, then i couldnt get him back to sleep until 11pm. I kept falling asleep myself, although that may have something more to do with me not sleeping at all on the flight home. :q
Anyway.
On the Tuesday before we left California for home, we went out to this really nice Peruvian restaurant on the ocean front to celebrate Taeko Shitama’s 95th Birthday. Taeko is Megan’s grandmother on her father’s side (and will be referred to as “grandma” from here on out.)
95 is an impressive age to reach, more so to see grandma in action. She is still spry, very active and barely looks out of her 70’s. She has three kids, twelve (i might need to double check my facts here) grandchildren and a plethora of great-grandchildren.
Her hearing isn’t so great any more, but on the flip-side, she speaks very well, in both english and japanese. She worries about a lot of things, perhaps more than is healthy for someone of her age, but on the other hand, it doesn’t seem to have diminished her life force any.
Grandma’s main problem is memory. Being 95, her short-term memory is pretty much shot. She will ask the same question at least a dozen times, and because she doesn’t remember when we make plans, and because she worries a lot, she asks a lot of questions. This can be tiring, to say the least, especially when you’re stuck in a 15 passenger mini-bus for four or five hours.
It can be easy to sigh or get frustrated or even irate at the constant barrage of questions and concerns. But when you stop to think about the events of her 95 years, it kind of puts everything in perspective.
Taeko Shitama (née Kihara) is a second generation japanese immigrant, born on the west coast of america. (again, im doing this mostly from my own memory, so some details might be hazy, or wrong).
During the second world war, she and her sisters were sent to live in Japan, on the outskirts of a small city called Hiroshima.
Yup.
On the 6th August 1945, Taeko was away in a neighbouring prefecture to get some rice from a friend of the family. When she returned the next day, she had to find her way home by following the tram tracks… the rest of the city had been obliterated. Fortunately the house she was staying in was outside the radius of the blast wave that levelled most buildings within a three mile radius of the detonation, although there was light damage from the shock-wave of the blast; all the windows had shattered.
Not only was it a miracle she avoided the bomb, but most of her family, too, survived. One sister, Nobu, had gone into the city that morning to work; she was never found.
After the war, Grandma returned to America, where she graduated from college and began working for IBM, and was pretty good at it, by all accounts. In addition to this she raised her two sons and daughter and kept up an amazing adventurous spirit that saw her frequently travelling all over the world, but also a powerful maternal instinct that see’s her as the matriarch of a large family; not just the Shitama’s, but of both her sister’s families too. The Kihara family reunite every two years, and every time they do the family is just that little bit bigger, her legacy just that little bit more impressive.
Whenever I think about all the stories I have heard of grandma and her long life, I am constantly amazed at her vigour, her enduring tenacity, and I fully believe she could go on to surpass her centenary. There is a grounded robustness to people like her, people who have experienced the world in the ways that she has. As I like to say, they don’t make people like her anymore.
So I, too, find it frustrating when her memory fails her. A woman as great as she, susceptible to the same ravages of time as we all are. It hurts, because I am reminded of my own grandma, my Nan, who in her later years suffered from PSP, a condition similar to ALS which essentially traps you in your own body and leaves you helpless as it slowly shuts everything down. My own Nan was a teacher and a matriarch in her own right, with a large family and legacy of her own, but in the last months of her life, we were little more than ghosts to her. But she was still there. I recall one of the last times I went to visit her, it was just me and her in the room. I hate to say that don’t remember exactly what I spoke to her about, but I remember expressing some kind of feeling that I had no idea what I was doing with my life and that I was a failure, and she sat up slightly and rebuked me in a firm, no-nonsense tone. It caught me by surprise, but I knew in that moment that my Nan was still with us, in some small way.
She died not too long after that, but I’ll always remember the strength of her spirit, even at the end.
Relevant tangent: I saw Disney Pixar’s Coco tonight on netflix. It’s a fun, if somewhat predictable romp, full of gorgeous animation and passionate music but at it’s core, like all Pixar movies, it is about the characters and the relationships that they have that take this “kids” movie and elevate it to the phenomenal level that Pixar is known and loved for. At the heart of this movie is a story about family, and about legacy, and above all, about memory; about being remembered, and remembering. It made me think of my Nan, who lost much of herself at the end, but held true to who she was and to her family. It made me think of grandma Taeko, who cannot remember what was said to her a dozen times five minutes ago, but still knows who she is, where she came from and holds dear her family to her heart. And after she’s gone, she’ll have scores of people who will miss her, grieve her, remember her.
And it made me think of my son, Thomas, and my own family, both those who have gone before and the many who have yet to come. It saddens me that one day I might not remember who they are or what they do, that I may be just another frustration to them. But I am also filled with a love and a pride for them and all they have the potential to be.
Remember me
Though I have to say goodbye
Remember me
Don’t let it make you cry
For ever if I’m far away
I hold you in my heart
I sing a secret song to you
Each night we are apart
Remember me
Though I have to travel far
Remember me
Each time you hear a sad guitar
Know that I’m with you
The only way that I can be
Until you’re in my arms again
Remember me-“Remember Me” from the movie Coco
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Anatopism 