Last month my grandmother passed away. She was 89 years old.
Since I was the youngest in her grandchildren, she always treated me nicely as the ‘youngest’ girl.
“Aren’t you hungry? There are some sweets like Yōkan and Kintsuba. Have anything you want in my house.”
As I didn’t like traditional Japanese sweets, I always had a difficulty in answering this question.
She had some great-grandchildren as well, but after she got dementia, she often called them by my name.
Probably I was always ‘the youngest girl’ in her memory.
When she nearly reached the end of her life in the hospital, my parents and I could somehow see her before she passed away.
She calmly expressed her gratitude to my parents repeatedly. But when she saw my face she started terribly shaking.
“Aren’t you hungry? Aren’t you hungry? Are you alright? Aren’t you hungry?”
She gave me the same question again and again.
I said “I’m alright, quite full now. I had lunch just minutes ago.”
Listening to this, she felt relief and calmed down.
Dad said “Mum, there was Youkan in the kitchen shelf wasn’t it? She had it so she’s alright now” with tears in his eyes.
“Oh there was Youkan there. Then she should be alright.......Aren’t you hungry? Are you alright?”
We repeated the same conversation a few times, and she fall asleep
She never woke up.
Dad told me that she lost one of her children due to the poverty during and after the war, and her weakened child (my dad’s older sister) survived because of the Yokan given from the chief of the village.
“Aren’t you hungry? Are you alright?”
That was her shout from the bottom of the heart.
This was really my first time to see and know the significance of the war and what it left in people’s heart.
The feeling I had at that time was unspeakable and it gave me a big shock.
These days, my dad sometimes talk to a home shrine.
“Mum, aren’t you hungry? Are you alright?”
He often buys Yokan and puts it on there. He told me that my grandmother barely had Yokan herself even after the peace came back.
What is the war? Why did it have to occur? Why do people feel so sad even after more than 60 years?
I will never forget the night my grandmother passed away.
I will think about the war and its significance myself a lot through my life.
