I attended a funeral last Saturday and put away the mourning dress right after getting home. Usually I'm lazier so I'd leave it hanging on the wall for a few days then would put it away to the wardrobe but this time I did it right away. Then I need it again now...
This morning, when I was having a piano lesson with my private student, the phone rang and it was my "aunt". She said her younger brother, my "uncle" had passed away early in the morning.
I put quotation marks with "aunt" and "uncle" because they are not real aunt and uncle.
My mother became an orphan when she was small. Her parents disappeared somehow and she was adopted to a relative family, I believe it was her distant uncle's family or something. The family members were the father, the mother, the elder daughter and the younger brother. She took care of the children when she was early teenager and left them at the age of 15 or 16 to the Osaka city center. After she got divorced with my father, she couldn't raise me up because of her job and perhaps for my health reason (I had delicate lungs because, my mother told me, she took me to the lung tuberculosis hospital when I was a baby, where my father was hospitalized.) She asked an elderly lady to take care of me for a few years. I was raised up by this lady at the age of 1-3 in Kochi prefecture, Shikoku Island.
Then my mother asked her adopted family to take care of me. So I moved to the family when I was three and lived with them until I got 10 or so after the mother and the father both passed away in six months. I called the son "my brother" who was 12 years older than me and the daughter "my sister" who was 16 years older than me. I called the father "my grandfather, and the mother "my grandmother".
The life with them was not so sweet. The father was in bed all the time due to the after effect of stroke. He needed to be cared all the time. The mother was suffering asthma so cannot go out for grocery shopping.. The children just started to work when I was there and they were in the negative period so came home late and barely were at home. It was my role to do grocery shopping in the mornings and evenings, to go to the doctor to receive the medicine for the mother. I actually enjoyed the roles as a calculation game or something.
They were my family then. All of them were important for me.
After the daughter got married, I often visited their new apartment and took care of their children like my younger brother and sister, fed milk to the babies and played with them.
The son lived with my mother and me for a few years and then had some trouble with my mother and left home.
As I got older, I became away from them more and more because of several reasons...... family troubles, religious troubles, money... perhaps. There are ups and downs with every life and some times it hinder you to keep in touch with each other.
More then 5-6 years passed since I last talked with the daughter, "my sister" this morning and the message she brought was so sad. The son, "my brother", passed away. He was only 60 years old and was so fine till last night. He had dinner with his family and then didn't got up this morning. His family found him dead in the bed. So sad....
I need my funeral dress again, so soon. It'll be held in Wakayama, 2-3 hours train trip from here.
God, please give comfort to the family.
How unpredictable a life is.
OK I have to keep my energy for tomorrow.
Good night from Osaka, Japan.
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