A small story, a story that goes unrecorded and disappears into the darkness without being seen by anyone.My father's story, and mine, may be categorized in this small tale. The story of a great historical figure is like a jewel shining in an underground vein. It is recorded from every angle, polished, beautified, and its greatness is passed on to future generations, sometimes even owned. On the other hand, around the gems of history, countless insignificant grains of sand swirl around like quicksand. My father's life must be one of these grains of sand. And the story of those tiny grains of sand will not be discovered by anyone, but will simply be buried in the vast flow of sand. And yet, it is the very source of my life, the cause of my own existence in this world.
The examination was quite simple, and its main purpose seemed to be to check whether the medication he was currently taking was having any significant side effects on his daily life, and whether there were any major changes in his cognition. And from the simplicity of the examination, it was clear even to a layman like me that there was not much in the way of effective approaches to dealing with this disease. The doctor gave my father a simple memory test Remember the following three words. Name the vegetable, and then subtract 7 from 100. What is the day today? Say the first three words again. My father was at a loss for answers. Not being puzzled by his inability to answer, my father immediately smiled and said, "I forgot. I felt indescribably frustrated that my father didn't seem to even try to tackle the doctor's question seriously, but I guess he just had to laugh it off.
My father and mother did not get along extremely well. My father only thought about winning the next match and never cared about the family. My mother, on the other hand, had no interest in tennis. Therefore, almost all of the household decisions in daily life were left in my mother's hands, and for some reason, my father did not like that. My father apparently wanted to reign as the patriarch of this little kingdom, but his decisions as patriarch were always ad hoc, contradictory, and wrong. After all, I have never seen my father and mother happy since I was a small child, but arguments and acrimony were always present in the household, and I was part of those arguments and acrimony. When I was in high school, I thought it would have been better for both of us if my father and mother had divorced, but she was probably in a position where she had to put up with it, financially speaking. Although my father and mother never divorced, their relationship was completely broken.
I kept my father away as much as possible. When I returned to my hometown temporarily, it was obvious that my mother was probably more stressed than my father, so I sometimes took my mother out on overnight trips to give her some free time from my father. However, in the face of my father's inevitable dementia, I began to wonder if it was right to keep him away from me as I had done in the past. No matter what I did to my father here and now, it would all eventually be forgotten, but my own memories would remain for some time to come. I knew that nothing I did now would make any difference, but I didn't want to make myself look bad by doing nothing. I sometimes took my father and mother to Nara and Kyoto, which are close to my hometown.It was the kind of outing that no one would enjoy, but no one would be bothered either.
I scared myself once during our trip. We were at a roadside station in the suburbs. My father suddenly left my side among the many shoppers. I immediately looked for him, but could not find him. Luckily, he had his emergency cell phone with him at the time, so I called him immediately. He didn't really understand how to use the cell phone, but I let him have it anyway, and it worked. He could barely answer the phone, but he didn't seem to know where he was. I first told him not to move from there, then asked him what was going on around him and looked for a similar place, and found my father alone a short distance away. No one knew how he ended up there.
How much meaning is there in memories that will never be remembered? I just kept taking pictures to make a small memory of my family. The memory of this modest journey will remain with me to some degree - as long as my memory is healthy. If I forget it, these photographs will serve as a storage device connected to the outside world, stimulating and complementing, if not perfecting, the faint traces of memory that remain in my mind. But what will these photographs mean if even the faintest trace of memory is lost? If those memories are never recalled, what memories have I recorded?
My father's frenzy of passion for tennis was overwhelming compared to that of his other tennis friends. When my father went to the tennis court, his tennis friends did not show up easily. It seemed that my father waited for his tennis buddies while maintaining the tennis court, but more often than not, they gave up and came back. Some of them were sick or injured, and some of them could not participate in tennis because of family reasons, but my father complained about those who did not come to the tennis court, saying that they were lazy. I was a bit puzzled, thinking that this was something one could understand considering one's age, but knowing my father's insane passion for tennis, I felt a bit sorry to see him come home from the tennis court looking so lonely. In reality, however, my father's friends never scheduled to practice with him on the day when he went to the tennis court. It was only a little later that I realized that most of the plan he had made to his friends were a figment of his delusion.
The day will surely come in the not-too-distant future when we will no longer be able to do what we could easily do before. The fact that my father was found to be in need of nursing care indicated to me that the only thing left to do now was to move forward toward the “goal”. We did not know when that goal would be, but my mother felt that she had to do what she could now before it came. She asked my father to replaced the shoji screens in our house , and to prune the trees in the garden. As long as they lived in the small plot of land, my father could continue to be the father he had always been. As long as I saw him replacing the shoji screens and tending to the garden, it did not seem as if his cognition had declined that much. It was true that asking him the same questions over and over again was bothersome, but it was not something that my father would have had trouble forgetting. But when I turned from such a peaceful routine to look at my father himself, the outline of my father was slowly dissolving into a fog of emptiness. One day, I realized that he had lost track of the location of the sports park he had been going to for nearly 30 years.
When I saw my father face to face for the first time in a year, I was again, as usual, frustrated by my interactions with him within a few days, and as usual, I desperately tried to contain that frustration within me. It is not that my father's dementia destroyed our conversations. I had been unable to communicate with him since I was a child. Communication - it was probably the only thing I wanted from him. But even though we spoke the same language, his words were always incoherent and I had no idea what he was trying to say. It was like a broken artificial intelligence spewing out inconsistent sentences at random, like Burroughs' Cut-Up.
On rare occasions, tennis buddies would call my father. Perhaps the tennis friends had noticed something wrong with my father. When my mother answered the phone from my father's tennis friends, she told them that my father had dementia and that it would be difficult for him to continue playing tennis in the future. My father's tennis friends seemed to understand this. After that, I never received another phone call from his tennis friends. My father's life as a tennis player ended quietly in this way.
One day I happened to catch a close friend of mine having a conversation with her father. Her father's words were full of compassion and love for her. And most surprising of all, The creature named "father" was having a conversation with her that was not incoherent and that I could understand. It was a very natural communication. I had thought that all creatures named “father” were like my father, unintelligible, full of gibberish and unintelligible words. It was only then that I realized that my relationship with my father might have been more than just a discord; it might have been something else entirely. It was then that it all became clear to me. Why had my father told me so little about what was going on at the company? Why did he have no friends outside the tennis court?
About 10 days after my father collapsed, after the emergency surgery was over and his condition had calmed down, my mother sent me a picture. In the picture was a scene I had never seen before. My father in his pajamas on a wheelchair was a shock to me, as I had only seen my father in his athletic and energetic form, but what surprised me most of all was the sight of my father and mother smiling peacefully. My mother's hand on my father's shoulder was gently caressing him as if she was working on him. It was the very image of a happy couple who had been together for many years. There was the smiling face of my father and mother that I had wanted to see since I was a child. Why did it take so long? Why couldn't we do such a simple thing? This picture of a happy father and mother pierced my empty heart with a dazzling light.
On the morning of my first visit to my father in the hospital, I was a little nervous. Obviously , my mother had told me about my father's condition every step of the way, but it still seemed like a story that was happening somewhere in the distant world, a story that had no sense of reality. In my mind, my father was still somewhere playing tennis with great energy, and as usual, he remained a moody, aggressive person who would say things that he shouldn't say, depending on his feelings at the time. On the way to the hospital, my mother and I talked bit by bit. Everything we talked about was in past sense.
My reunion with my father was much more peaceful and awkward than I had feared. He did not look much different from before, but compared to a few months earlier, it was uncomfortable, like watching a puppet move in his likeness. I tried to be cheerful and talk to him as if this reunion was a precious experience, but his response was much slower than I had imagined. I took a picture of him and my mother, saying, "This is a good opportunity, so” My father will never come back to us. There is an invisible wall between me and my father in front of me. My father has already left for somewhere far away. Alone, as always. But at the same time, it also means that my mother and I have been released from the responsibility of caring for my father. Silently biting back relief and sadness, I spent a short time with my father with a fake smile on my face.
During this period, my father sometimes told my mother “ Sorry to bother you” , when she visited him.At the same time, he sometimes said that he might not have been a good father. My mother, however, tried to console my father by saying, "It's good that you were able to continue doing what you loved for so long, My father would reply, "I might have put you through a lot, too. I could not hide my surprise that behind the pompous attitude as an athlete that should have covered my father, there lurked such a sense of mediocrity. Rather, I had tried to settle my own conflicts with my father by recognizing him as an extraordinary monster, but behind the mask of the monster lurked a pathetically ordinary man. Strangely enough, the disease of dementia had destroyed my father's previous crazy, monstrous appearance on its own. I honestly did not know what to do. However, my father's hesitation was soon swallowed up by the fog of memory.
My mother weathered the major storms of the past few months alone. After my father suddenly collapsed, the situation took an unexpected turn. On the positive side, my father's hospitalization after his collapse relieved her of the difficulties of caring for him at home, but even so, there were still many procedures to go through in order to get one elderly person to see a doctor at the hospital. In between visits, my mother made frequent phone calls to the hospital and city hall, went to the counter and quietly worked through the process, and sometimes enlisted the help of relatives and friends to get my father admitted to the hospital without incident. In the end, my father was unreliable to the very end, but my mother, as always, pulled through with her strong will. My mother and I joked, "I have many things to say to my father, but since he was admitted to the hospital at the end without causing us much trouble, I won't complain.”
November 2013
A small story, a story that goes unrecorded and disappears into the darkness without being seen by anyone. My father's story, and mine, may be classified as one of these small stories. The story of a great historical figure is like a jewel shining in a vein in the earth. It is recorded from every angle, polished, beautified, and its greatness is passed on to future generations, sometimes even owned. On the other hand, outside the gems of history, countless insignificant grains of sand swirl around like quicksand. My father's life must be one of these grains of sand. And the story of those tiny grains of sand will not be discovered by anyone, but will simply be buried in the vast flow of sand. And yet, it is the very source of my life, the cause of my own existence in this world.
Telling a small story, that is. Telling the story of an insignificant grain of sand. When I told my story to a critic I met in Tokyo shortly after my father was diagnosed with dementia, he suggested I take his father's picture. Certainly, sooner or later my father's condition would worsen, and the tragic family breakdown that would ensue would make for excellent subject matter for a photographer. My evil intentions as a photographer spring to life. That ugly will to expose my family's misfortune and thereby gain fame as a photographer.
But photographers are the ugliest and most shameless of people, who go out and try to get paid for exposing grieving people. It would be a little better to take advantage of my own misfortune than to take advantage of the misfortunes of others. As a photographer, I have decided to cut out and expose the small tragedies that befall us from now on. Other people's misfortune tastes like honey. How sweet and fragrant do you make that honey? That is where my skill as a photographer comes into play. Just to be sure, I asked my mother what she thought about taking my father's picture. She simply said, "That's a great idea".
