Now that I review the photos where my mother appears and I see that first time she entered the clinic, where she was very bad (that was the moment she was leaving and God gave us an extension), she is seen with a different face, with a expression of tired of life, of sadness, of leaving, of abandoning; But a change occurred in her, I see that her expression was changing, the coming of my sister Ana to visit her, who came from Nihon, where she has worked for many years; perhaps pity for her, because she left with an image in her mind, of not wanting to fight, but she left us an oba who little by little changed, with joy, smiles, with the desire to live.
He got up little by little, until the end, always smiling, happy, with his jokes, with a good appetite, always wanting to turn things around in the food, saying “yummy, yummy” when he ate something he liked, or when he asked for his toothpick, to say “I'm going to take out the pork on the stick (a dish where the pork is cooked by smoking it, in the open air)”, or when he watched his television and what he saw were food programs, his “Veinte lucas” , “Alfredo's tribune”, by fat Gonzales (food programs on Peruvian television).
Even though he couldn't eat many things, he said “when will Roberto take me?”, but without losing that humor, settling for what we gave him. Of course we were not completely rigid, she waited for every outing, to celebrate every birthday, where we were going, waiting for her piece of cake and Jenny told her “diet tomorrow” and she laughed with her mischievous face.
My sister Susana is the one I asked for more things to eat, I think I took her for the feeling, because many times she gave in, but unfortunately we had to discipline her. He didn't bother with us, he never said anything to Jenny, he just laughed with his mischievous face, he never complained about the food, even though it had almost no salt. Even in this last stage when I could only eat chicken for lunch, only vegetables for dinner, or be on egg whites for breakfast and dinner. Just seeing them I didn't even want to eat them anymore, I imagine what it would be like for her to eat them.
But I think that each one did their part, from Akio who always accompanied the obachan, a little for convenience to play with the obachan's Tablet; but on the other hand he always worried about her, like when the nurses didn't come. When I needed something he ran to tell me, he was the little boss who called out the nurses when they were late or when they did something wrong, better than me.
I think he got used to it, of course sometimes he lost his patience, my mother always corrected him or told him something he hadn't done because his memory was no longer the same. He came in and greeted her, but after an hour he told him “Akio, you don't know how to say hello” and he got upset, we explained to him that he's forgotten, but after a while he got over it. My mother missed him when she didn't see him, when he would go to the park and he would take his little plate to play a prank and buy him something he shouldn't eat, like Akio said that he would send him to buy ice cream and he would eat a little bit and then give it to him. Akio. Both were complicit in many things.
After so much sadness, the entry into emergency, the long faces of the doctors, the death, the burial, the conversations, the memories, the laughter come, but it passes. People are leaving, there are fewer of us, we are left alone, we remember them and we feel sorry for them. Life goes on, as Akio says (I don't know where he got that phrase from, I think he's still a little boy). School, work, daily routine, but everything has changed; He too, upon returning home after school, was in a bad mood, everything bothered him, he also feels it, the obachan is missing.
My daughter sometimes seems like she lives in her world, a little indifferent to everything that happens at home, what happens around her, but it's because she puts up a shield and believes that it won't hurt if she doesn't think about it, but sometimes sometimes it breaks. But since she started working, every time she arrived she went straight to the obachan and told her, even for a little while, how it had gone, that made her happy, although after a while she forgot that her granddaughter had been there. She was proud of her because she practiced Eisa, something that perhaps was left undone and she always wanted to see her dance in a performance, which never happened, now one remembers all the things that could have been done but it's too late.
But what I can highlight is that the obachan was always happy, laughing, joking, I think we fulfilled our goal of making what was left of her life a little better, wanting to get around with food, mischievous, joking with her therapist, she He made me very happy with his sense of humor, his jokes, and his witticisms. He looked forward to his therapy, even though he got tired from the exercises he did, which told him “let's go to Chincha to eat cat” (Chincha is a place south of Lima, where they say they eat cat), the therapist joked. and she followed the rope. Milagros, the chubby girl, her therapist, said goodbye to the obachan with great sadness: “we will no longer be able to go eat cat in Chincha.” I couldn't believe it because she saw her and left her well, she did her therapy, she laughed, she joked, like every day, without thinking that the next day she was going to tell her that she was no longer with us.
So many things to tell about her, I'm going to miss every day greeting her and asking her how you slept?, telling me “echadita” (what I always told her). Then he would tell me “good” or when I said goodbye to go to work, I would tell him “you behave well”, “you too”, he would tell me “and he sells a lot”. When I came home at night and asked him how it went, he would tell me “well, I always do well, eating and sleeping.”
I told him “what did you eat?”, he no longer remembered and looked at the nurse and said “what did I eat?”, so that she could tell him. This had been a constant lately, I thought within myself if one day what they had told me would happen, that they would no longer recognize me and what it would be like. When at night I would lie down with her and talk about how she was and what she had done, if she had gone to the park, how her day went; He would tell me what are you telling me, or when he had to relieve himself and he would tell me “just a little while, just five minutes, come back... now?” Many times I didn't come back because I started doing other things, now I think about how I didn't stay with her a little longer, for that it's already too late.
Now I return home and the first thing I do is go see my mother, as I always did, but she is no longer there, so many things to say, without doing it, changed us all. My sister arrives anyway and there is no way to greet her, only in the butsudan. Now she sleeps with Mayumi, to lessen the sadness a little, because she slept with my mother. Mayumi comes home from work and maybe she can't tell him about things anymore, deny the traffic, the heat, the bad smells of the van, that her feet hurt because of the high heels.
Akio comes home from school and has no one to fight with, no one to annoy, to come in making noise with the ball, the oba denying “this boy”; with whom to watch his novel at night, although the oba didn't even see it because from a distance she couldn't see well and she didn't hear well either, but it was being with her grandson. Jenny, no more making her special diet, running to the market and telling her I'm coming right now, worrying about the nurses, that they take good care of her, that if she has to buy her medicines, that she's missing something, the saddest thing, having to eat lunch alone, because now the oba is no longer there, there are no nurses, the house feels lonely, perhaps even bigger or it will be because of the emptiness that her departure has left us. You've just left and we already miss you a lot.
© 2018 Roberto Oshiro Teruya
