THANKSGIVING: finding light

 Grief is one of the worst experiences we must endure in life. Friends of mine have just had to endure the unbearable burden of losing two parents in two consecutive months. I was moved to tears thinking about how difficult this all must be. I believe the key to empathy is feeling through a situation as if it were happening to oneself. I thought back to my own experiences concerning grief.

At four, I lost my father to suicide and at sixteen I lost my stepfather to a sudden and unanticipated heart attack. I also lost my last remaining grandparent last year. Through my experiences, I have learned that even in the worst of situations, we can find ways to overcome and to get by in the difficult aftermath. I would like to share with you a piece I wrote shortly after Thanksgiving last year. The piece was originally written for people back home and I have only lightly edited it for publication in the Nore Sore.

 >From Dec 2, 1997...

The last few days have been life changing. I think I will be a better person for the experience. There are many challenges to living overseas, and many of them are very personal, but at the same time they are personal, they are also part of the shared experience. At the moment we experience our first bite of natto, we learn a little bit more about ourselves and Japan. We all try and, and even those who choose not to, share in the "natto" experience. Yet, life has a way of making us feel that our experience is unique and solely our own even when the same themes and the same experiences bind us all together. Those of us who choose to live abroad all deal with the challenge of being far from our native lands and develop different strategies of coping.

Part of living abroad is being away from family and friends during the holidays and other events. I have done this before when I lived in England and I have done this when I was in the military. This time around it has been particularly trying.

Thanksgiving in Japan is a non-event. It is not a holiday here, just another workday. There was a planned gathering of expatriates and Japanese friends in nearby Hirosaki on the following Saturday to celebrate with a traditional feast, but on the Thursday of Thanksgiving I found myself very much alone. I called my mother to wish her a happy Thanksgiving. It did not turn into the conversation I expected. Instead I discovered my grandmother had passed away Thanksgiving morning around 4:00am Eastern Time. I found out around 10:00pm Thursday Japan Time. I had called my mother only a few minutes after she had been called by the hospital staff to inform her. I could tell that my mother had not had the chance to process the event and she had been crying.

My grandmother was 89 years old. She had been a very visible part of my life and my relationship with her was very close. She had suffered a long illness and her death was not unexpected. What was unexpected for me was the intensity of the experience. It is diffcult to be prepared for the death of a family member regardless of the forewarning. Not being able to deal with this event with my family has been a trying emotional experience. There are other events in my family that make this a particularly difficult time for everyone. Not being there to offer support and help console one another adds to the frustration of this experience. To not be with my family at this time makes me appreciate the role of family even more. I believe I will be a better person for this experience, but this realization came with an emotional price.

After learning of my grandmother’s death, I was stung with pain and frustrated at my inability to reach out to my family. The phone and Email do not replace the warm quality of being there and sharing time and feelings together. Going home to America was not a viable option due to cost and time. I would not have been able to make it back in time for the funeral. I desperately wanted to be with people who would be sharing their feelings about my grandmother and celebrating the accomplishments of her life and the memory of her beautiful character. I came to the realization that that day I was no longer a third generation member of my family but a second generation member. I felt I was no longer a grandchild, like a certain status in my life had been taken away from me and I was being forced to grow up a little more. I was glad that a few years prior, shortly before she had the stroke that would leave her unable to communicate and eventually lead to her death, I had been able to escort her across country to California to visit her sons and grandchildren. The trip was a meaningful time alone together with my grandmother, and one of my fondest memories of her. I have tried to never leave anything unsaid that I felt needed to be said. I have always wanted to avoid the feeling that there was unfinished business in my life. Even so, with the passing of my grandmother, I thought of things I would like to have expressed to her. I was reeling from the waves of emotion and thoughts that came so quickly and so vividly.

I called a friend of mine at the junior high school and told her of my pain, and asked her to let the people at the school know that I would not be coming in to work on Friday. I needed some time alone, and I was in no state to teach. Her words were kind and reassuring. I did not know if people would begrudge me taking this time. Sometimes there is the impression that Japanese people are an unemotional people because they tend to conceal their feelings in public settings. I do not believe this to be true. They do have a different way of expressing themselves than westerners may be familiar with. I found my friends and co-workers to be sensitive to this issue. When I returned to work on Monday a male colleague of mine, lacking words, put a comforting hand on my shoulder.

The Japanese do not generally touch one another in public, and I appreciated the cultural sensitivity that came with this gesture. It made a great difference to me, and spoke volumes. I felt that my time off Friday was understood, and people here were supportive of my grief. There was little talk about it, and I appreciated that as well. It is still very close to the event on Tuesday, and even now writing about it I feel my emotions very close to the surface.

I am not a particularly religious person, but I found comfort that Thanksgiving evening in reaching out to a higher power. There is a Meiji Era (Meiji: a former Japanese Emperor) park in Onoe, it is called Saruka Park. According to my sources, it is one of the few Meiji parks left in Japan. In the summer there were beautiful lotus flowers blooming in the pond there. It is a lovely place to walk. The town holds many of its festivals in the park. There is a large Shinto shrine there, and I decided to go there late that evening on my bicycle. The streets of Onoe were dark, the air was crisp and cool, and there was a silence broken only by the sounds of occasional cars in the distance. The Tsugaru Plain is a wide extremely flat area surrounded by mountains. I have noticed that night sounds seem to drift great distances across the rice fields and through the orchards.

It was dark, but the shrine grounds were gently lit by large stone lanterns and soft lights emanating from the shrine. I rode underneath the large white concrete Torii that spans the road, and then under three more traditional wooden red Toriis. I stopped at the dragon fountain to wash my hands and rinse my mouth. I am no expert on Shinto customs, but I wanted to respect this purification ritual for entering the shrine. I walked past the large bell housed in the open wooden building. I have always been very impressed with the quality of the structures across Japan. The Japanese are extraordinarily talented woodworkers, and some of the oldest wooden structures in the world are in Japan. This is more impressive when one considers the earthquakes and typhoons that rattle and blow their way across this nation.

I made my way to the shrine, and placed my offering. I put in a mix of Japanese and American currencies in a strange symbolic gesture that I can not explain, but made me feel better just the same. I rang one of the smaller bells at the front of the shrine. The rope attached to the bell is huge, about 15 cm thick. It is ornately woven and tasseled at the end. The bell is a bronze orb filled with either rocks or marbles. It was surprisingly loud, and I hoped I was not waking anyone up, the park is fairly secluded, but houses are very close to the edges.

I prayed. I feel religion is where you need it. That night I needed it. I hoped that whatever all-mighty supreme being or animist spirits there were beyond the material world would understand what was needed and offer me comfort that night.

I did not go home for a few hours and rode my bicycle through the streets and fields just thinking, feeling, and trying to sort things out. My apartment can feel like a lonely place, but riding through the town gave me a feeling of peace that I was looking for. I would stop and listen from time-to-time. It is rarely truly quiet anywhere there are people. Even in the middle of the night I could hear stirrings inside of people’s homes and the din of distant cars. I have no revelations about this, just that it felt right to just stand and listen, and somehow that made things better.

That next day, I headed to Mutsu to meet with friends. I had planned to go to the pre-wedding party in Oma, the northernmost town of Honshu, the main island of Japan. I had met Grant and Sarah in August , and when they found out I was going to be in New Zealand over the holidays they invited me to their wedding. (Note: I attended Sarah & Grant’s wedding in New Zealand on January 3rd, 1998 and I had wanted the opportunity to spend time with them to get to know them better beforehand. ) Another friend of mine was also going to be at the Oma party, and had invited me to visit the beautiful Shimokita Peninsula, and stay at her home. Such is the nature of friendship in the expatriate community. There are few of us, and our stays here are short. There is a common bond that exists among all of us, and it helps ‘jump start’ friendships. The absence of friends and family back home can leave an empty feeling at times, and the value of friendships with people here came more clear to me this weekend.

The support and encouragement of friends that weekend, combined with the joy of the wedding celebration were helpful in easing my experience of grief and separation. I was also treated to my first experience with traditional Maori dancing by Coral, an expatriate from New Zealand who also lives in Oma. The combination of friends, festivities, and new experiences helped distract me from dwelling on my immediate situation too intensely, and allowed me the time needed to find a sense of inner peace again.

Travel is a voyage of exploration that involves getting out and looking at the world from different perspectives, seeing new sights, and learning about people and cultures. Sometimes though, events conspire to allow us opportunities for great leaps in understanding. Through joyful and painful experiences we can discover a different view of our own life and learn more about what is inside of us, even as we are learning from that which is outside of us. This personal internal journey can prove to be even more significant to our lives than the external journey around us.

Ganbarimashou,
Mitch