Where the Dead Pause, and the Japanese Say Goodbye: A Journey (39 page)

The lingering effects of winter are less of a concern to modern people, so perhaps it’s not a surprise that people have forgotten the original reason for displaying dolls in March. Doll-floating is also a nuisance, as too many follow the tide out into the ocean and become caught in fishermen’s nets. These days, in towns where the dolls are floated, city volunteers wait downstream from the launch site and catch all the “bad luck” dolls before they make it out to sea. The dolls are later burned, after a Shint
priest recites a prayer.

H
INA’S GRANDMOTHER BECKONED
us into the second of the two rooms. This was the living room, set up with a low table, and a TV off to the side. The family friend whom I had seen in the community center sat quietly on a
zabuton
pillow. Beside the TV was a shrine to Hina. The shrine was homemade, a stair-step structure covered in red cloth, like the platform used by the
hina
dolls. Hina’s Shichi Go San portrait had been placed in the middle. There were candles, a bell, and several clay Jiz
s; the one Kaneta presented today was apparently not the first Hina’s grandmother had made. The multiple levels of the shrine were festooned with large bags of
candy and toys. In the very center, under the portrait, was a rice ball, colored pink and shaped to resemble the face of the superhero Anpanman.

“Anpanman!” said Ewan, recognizing his friend, the red-bean-bread superhero whose theme park we had visited only a couple weeks before.

“Every day, Hina’s mother makes her a new rice ball and puts it there for her to eat,” said the grandmother.

“Anpanman candy!” said Ewan.

“Go ahead. Have some candy with Hina,” said the grandmother.

Ewan looked at me for permission.

“I don’t want to take your candy,” I said.

“Please. Have some candy. And please play with the toys.”

Ewan impulsively picked up the bell and rang it. He smiled at us and then began to dismantle the shrine of its toys.

“I have a video,” said the grandmother. “Let’s turn it on. You can see Hina while Ewan is playing with her.” A camcorder was attached to the large-screen television. The grandmother began to cry softly again, while caring for little baby Kasugi.

Ewan looked at Hina’s photo. “
Kawaii ne
.” She’s very cute, isn’t she, Mommy? he said to me.

“She’s beautiful,” I said.

On the television, Hina was laughing at the camera, then running across the room of the temporary housing unit. Her voice was the bright, energetic voice of a healthy and happy toddler. “She
was
healthy,” the grandmother said to me. “Just as healthy then as your son is now.”

The grandmother told me how delighted Hina had been to have a baby brother. She had been a little jealous at first, but then after Kasugi was born, she instantly transformed into the perfect older sister. This was the hardest thing about losing Hina. The grandmother began to cry harder. When Hina came down with the fever,
she went to sleep with her grandmother because her parents naturally wanted to keep her away from the newborn baby. “But why can’t I see the baby?” Hina cried. And then, said the grandmother, she went to sleep, and then . . .

While we were talking, my son found an unopened box of Anpanman figures. He held out the box with a look of triumphant delight. The grandmother told him to open up the box. Then she asked me to tell the story of how Ewan was born. I told her how he had been due in January, but that my water broke suddenly in December. I called the doctor, who asked me to come to the hospital. We tried for forty-eight hours to induce labor, but my body would not cooperate. Ultimately Ewan was delivered by Cesarean.

“Isn’t that fascinating,” the grandmother said to me through her tears. “Isn’t life so strange? The start of life and the end of life are so strange. You can’t understand the meaning at the time. Only later, when someone dies, do you understand their story. And even then sometimes you
don’t
understand . . .”

She trailed off again and handed Kasugi to her friend. “Has anyone in your family died?”

I told her how I had lost my father six months after getting married, and just over a year before my son was born. I explained that my father had been my best friend and that I still struggled without him. I had spent much of my pregnancy crying. I had tried not to cry because I hadn’t wanted my son to be sad. I still found it incredible that my father would never know Ewan. He loved children. She nodded. She said she could not understand how or why Hina was not going to be an older sister.

There was a sudden change in the air. I looked up and saw Kaneta standing in the entry to the room. He had been so quiet, I hadn’t heard him come inside. He saw me sitting on the floor, and Ewan surrounded by an array of toys and unwrapped pieces of candy, and the video camera playing back a recording of Hina laughing and
smiling. He started almost imperceptibly at the sight of us, then nodded once to himself. “So,” he said to the grandmother, as he sat down at the table. “You’re still doing this kind of thing with the video.”

Ewan went over to Kaneta and stood next to him.

The grandmother nodded, the tears flowing freely.

“You know you’ve got to stop it. Otherwise she can’t move on from here. She’s still here right now. That is your first challenge—to let her go.”

“I know,” the grandmother sobbed.

“Your second challenge will be how to explain Hina to little Kasugi. He’s just a baby right now. But soon he will begin to notice that you are crying. And he will be able to talk.” Kaneta looped his priest’s apron over his head and looked over at another priest who had come into the room. “Which sutras do you know?” As I had seen him do before, Kaneta consulted with the volunteer to determine which ones, if any, the two of them knew, despite their different schools and their different training.

While this was going on, Ewan did an odd thing. He seemed to understand that they were about to perform a memorial service, and so he picked up the mallet used to ring the gong and began to hit the bell. He rang it a few times, looking around for approval, which Kaneta, utterly nonplussed, gave him. Then Kaneta took out some incense and lit it, and Ewan immediately took one of the sticks and waved it around in the air, as he had seen me do, to extinguish the flame but keep the end burning. “Whoah!” Kaneta exclaimed, as he took the incense from Ewan’s hand. “That’s enough now.”

We all put our hands together, and Kaneta and his assistant began to pray.

The last time I had thought about the connection between life and death was when my son was born. I remember thinking about the strangeness of watching consciousness develop in my son while,
if I was to believe the Buddhists, my father’s consciousness was fading. Sometimes my son laughed or nodded his head exactly the way my Japanese grandfather did. It’s genetics, of course, that account for this. I remember my father saying to me the only thing that ever lived on in humans was their DNA.

Kaneta finished chanting his sutra, and as if he could read my thoughts, he said, “Isn’t life a strange thing? I just don’t know why things happen sometimes. Look at you,” he said to the grandmother. “People from all over the world come here now to see you because of the tsunami.”

She brightened just slightly and looked at me. “I wouldn’t have met you if it weren’t for the tsunami. And Hina got to play with Ewan today.”

I smiled back at her, but inside I was raging against the injustice of a three-year-old girl dying, after having been saved from the tsunami by her grandmother. If Hina were alive, she and Ewan could
actually
be playing together with toys, instead of in this imaginary space.

“Where is she buried?” I asked.

“At Daitokuji,” said the grandmother. “A nearby temple. It’s an amazing place—hundreds of years old with a large statue of Fud
My
-
. Our family had no burial plot. No place to go. But Daitokuji took us, and I can visit her any time. I am so grateful. So grateful.” She began to cry again, and I hugged her.

“That’s where you should take Kasugi,” Kaneta said. “That’s where he should play with Hina when he is older.”

It was time to go. I was taking a train back to the city of Sendai. After the tsunami, the train ran very irregularly, and I would need to hurry to catch it, or risk paying an exorbitant amount for a taxi. The grandmother would not let us leave until we took a pack of Hina’s candy.

I picked Ewan up in my arms. Kaneta was staring at the shrine. “Anpanman,”
he said. “You know, the other day I had to do another funeral for a child. That one was Anpanman-themed too. This seems to be the trend for children who die.”

“
Sore ike
!
” I said. Let’s go! This is what Anpanman and his flying friends often say right before they depart for new adventures.

“That’s right!” Kaneta said brightly. “And you know what? One day, we will all take off! We will all take to the sky!”

Before I left, I promised the grandmother that my son and I would return to see her. Then I gave her a hug. People don’t usually hug in Japan; even now, people mostly bow when they say goodbye. But it seemed wrong just to bow in this context. The grandmother hugged me back.

“And I’ll be back, you know. I’ll see you again very soon,” Kaneta promised. “In the meantime, take care of that baby.” And with that, Kaneta ushered me out.