Life: When your father dies, it makes you think about.....

When your father dies, it makes you think about ......his life and what's left. His legacy. His relationship to other family members including yourself.

And then, about your own life, what you are going to leave, and your relationship to others.


My father passed away on 6/30/2015. I took some time off to take care of associated social necessities (funeral, cremation, paperwork, etc), and to take due time to aid grief work of my mother and of my own. That would help me to have no regrets in the future. I tend not to dwell on the past, but it would help to deal with big life events at the time appropriately before moving on. 

Thanks to my collaborators and lab members who are working on important experiments, and neighbors who are taking care of my cat, I can take this time off. I got to bring them sweets or something as a token of my appreciation.

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When I was young, my father was quiet, self-reliant yet family-oriented man. He read many books. His habit of reading is passed down to me.

He did have an aspect of not liking to lose. When I was a kid, I learned Japanese chess (shogi). Once I got the rules, I played the game with my father, with a streak of his winning. He stopped playing after I won the game for the first time at the age of 12.

Around the time when I left home for University, he moved to a new house and started his own construction company. He was busy, but certainly he had his days. 

We had to close down his company when he had a stroke in the winter of 2002. Afterwards he and my mother worked together on his rehabilitation. Although half-paralyzed, he was eager to walk again with his own legs. Thanks to the tax his old company paid, my parents were getting social security enough to support his unplanned retirement.

He had another stroke in the summer of 2006. I flew back to Japan and met him who was holding out in ICU. When I called him, tears came down from his eyes, then he slipped into calmer coma. It was one of the most emotional moments in my life.

Afterwards, he never spoke nor was able to communicate clearly except for some hand squeezes until his death. 

Every time I came to Japan and met him, I said goodbye, assuming the greeting would be the last one while he is alive. The last greeting was on 5/27/2015. After a couple of pneumonia in June, he passed away without much apparent suffering.

Now I can be sure he is not in physical discomfort, and I am relieved by the fact. May his soul rest in peace.

From now on in my life, he will be playing a symbolic role rather than a role as a physical and breathing being.  In many cases, a symbol is much stronger than a physical being. How I deal with the symbol is up to me.

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What I can present as a summary of a man's life is very limited. I am certain that it is true to most people. This fact is astounding.

Parents are people about 30 years ahead of you in life stages. 30 years can be short or long. I have my own life to live, and this is an opportunity to think ahead.

[Temporal Buddhism altar for the deceased]