Zoom family time

 Had another Zoom Time with Okaasan yesterday.

Big voices, waves, inane chat to fill no-verbal-response silence. A few random questions to the nursing staff about Covid booster shot schedule in the care home.

Okaasan was on her side in bed. Nose tubes. Hands covered with huge mittens. Face a bit red and puffy. But she did react to the nurses touch and voices. Our voices. There was maybe a smile, mouth movements and neck movement.

What more can I say. Or hope. Expect.

The Quasi State of Emergency ended here last week. Now we are free to go to bars and restaurants and drink alcohol in the evenings. Baseball is back to full capacity crowds. Being Japan - 99% of the population are wearing masks in all public situations. Actually you even see Japanese driving along ALONE in a car and wearing a mask...friends who work at universities say that classes will be back to face to face 100% from April.

New infection numbers are coming down, but slowly. March is the moving/changing life month for millions of Japanese. School and college start, job start, job transfer start, move home start - here in the north we are now seeing car license plates from other parts of the country and most families have somebody making a move of some sort. So Covid is having a move too.

When can we meet Okaasan face to face?? No info on that. The care home is continuing online for now. I guess until the big public holiday Golden Week at the start of May. Or after.

So, we can only hope that we can go to the care home and meet her...and dream of somehow this summer getting her in a wheelchair and wheeling her outside into the sunshine...into the car...doing all of that seems such a long time ago. 3 years ago since we did any of that.

Memories. Facebook reminded me this morning of end of March 2009 when we first moved to this house with Okaasan and I drifted back to my original blog postings about the move and starting our lives together here. I came across the story of my crazy dream about a two-headed Okaasan in the kitchen and us trying to tear the spirit head away!! I'd forgotten that.

Go back to 2009. March 29 for THAT one :-)