First of all.
Thankyou for comments and DM's of kindness.
Yes, we were shocked too. Something you know is coming - for years - when it comes. And so quickly, it is still shocking.
But we feel relieved for her (and us) that all that struggle is over. The last few years are absolutely NOT what she wanted. The forced feeding, the meds to keep her body alive.
I'm sad that Japan, as a society, makes this the only choice for the end of life. The dementia made Okaasan's situation worse, because even though her body was functioning, in the past 3? years her brain was unable to understand what she was seeing/hearing. We wondered if her brian could respond to the bossa nova music we played her. Maybe. Or, it eased OUR souls to think so.
So. Here we go. The blog about Okaasan's death.
Came on a Sunday. We'd just returned from a morning, regular visit to the vets. Hospital called saying "come quick, blood pressure problems". It was the start of Golden Week holiday, so the hospital was closed to family visits. We went in thru the side entrance and the service elevator to the 5th floor.
Okaasan's blood pressure had been dropping dramatically to...60...but two lots of meds had brought it back up to 77. She looked so-so. The skin around her eyes was mottled, her breathing very ragged inside the oxygen mask.
We stayed about 20 mins, bossa nova music, hand strokes. The nurse said we were welcome to come again Monday. We carried on with our day - a few months ago there was a blood pressure blip, corrected by meds. All families have the stories of the death coming/not coming/coming/not coming visits and calls. Sometimes days, or even weeks. We thought the same.
In the evening I drank wine with dinner (because ordinary life has to go on, and you don't know WHEN the emergency will come), we went to bed...at our usual ridiculously early time (8 pm!!). Sometime after 10 pm I could hear Dear Son's phone ringing ringing...he can sleep thru earthquakes, so he heard nothing. Then MY phone, then the house phone. They'd called 5 time.
Befuddled in a taxi thru a rainy, cold night to the side entrance and the service elevator.
She'd gone already.
Maybe 20-30 mins before. Standing there by her bed. It was all over. Just like that.
The lights in the room were blazing, the four other occupants were behind curtains, the night nurse staff were friendly and professional. A doctor was summoned to confirm death - another one of those doctors who'd obviously skipped Bedside Manner classes at med school. Nurses run the world anyway. ;-)
And then began the whole: What Happens Next.
We hadn't even contacted a funeral company. So unprepared! Dear Son was on his smartphone scrolling company websites, choosing a price plan and making a call. The hospital night watchman was showing more humanity than the doctor - guiding us where to wait, what to do. Even reminding us to make sure to claim the funeral cost subsidy money from the city office :-)) Thankyou Sir!
Okaasan's bed was brought down the service elevator to a side room with fake white silk drapes, artificial flowers on a little table - a brass bell bowl and stick (you ring before making a prayer). We waited.
Funeral company arrived about 12.30 am. The nurses came down to bow deeply outside the side entrance. Okaasan was moved into a fake silk body bag and placed on the stretcher inside the funeral company car. Dear Oyomesan (me) go to ride in the back seat right next to Okaasan...and yes...it was a bit unnerving..as the car moved, the body bag shook and and moved....2 hours ago this was Okaasan and I'd stroked her hand and hair. Now this was a dead body in a bag, and I was HOPING the staff had secured it all correctly.
Still with me? I'm that kind of blogger...
Back home and standing in our front garden in the wind and rain.
The only room of the house ready to receive Okaasan was our ground floor Japanese-style room. THANKFULLY, a foreign friend who stayed with us 4 weeks while her new apartment was prepped, had moved out a week before. THANKFULLY, all the bags of paper trash from my retirement cleaning, had also been moved out 3 days before.
As we opened up the big windows onto the garden, and the funeral staff started prepping to enter our home - I was snatching bowls of half eaten cat food, scattered cat toys and my SUP bag out of the room and getting a futon base from the closet.
Okaasan was placed on the futon in our home. A house she hadn't been in for years. Many Japanese families choose to move the body to the funeral company for pre-cremation keeping. But, keeping at home is traditional (and cheaper?).
Maybe you've seen the 2008 Japanese film "Departures" (Okuribito)? The one about the man who goes back to his hometown and works as a mortician? Luckily, I had. So I was kind of prepared for what came next: a woman staff dressed Okaasan in a simple white kimono and did her make up. We were asked about colors for lipstick, flowers, funeral urn. No hesitation - red! Okaasan loved her bright colors. :-)
A coffin was assembled in the room. Lots more fake white silk. Okaasan was eventually placed in the coffin, the lid has a window, with ornate shutters, at face level.
There was practical talk of cremation timetable and money. Too late I remembered I should have offered the staff tea, I made it. But it sat untouched on the kitchen table. Dear Son did the washing up from Sunday night dinner.
The funeral company left us a little table with insense sticks, a candle, a brass table bell. Warnings about not leaving the candle burning if we left the room (earthquakes). Also, warnings that blood pressure meds used pre-death could thin the blood so much that there is...leakage. Not to be shocked if that happened. To mop up leakage and call them if it was bad.
I guess the death business is like that: you have to be respectful and show caring sympathy to customers who are going through a shocking experience. But also you have to guide them in the practicalities.
Finally they left. Okaasan was home again, with us. In a box. Looking peaceful, with alarmingly bright lipstick. :-)
We lit the candle, rang the brass bell and knelt at the coffin to do slightly self-conscious prayers and last conversations. Neither of us cried. Everything had happened so fast. TBH, we'd knelt in the same room three years ago when our cat had died and the pet cremation company came - we'd howled with raw grief at the cancer death of our dear, furry boy. This was different.
Okaasan was very old. She was very sick. If she had had any say in the matter, I'm guessing she would have chosen to die 4-5 years ago when she first stopped eating. But she was dragged by the Japanese legal and medical system on a procession of hospitals and procedures. Kept alive.
On a rainy night in early May, in the city where her mother's family had lived long ago, her 95 years finally closed.
We went to bed in the early hours. Recently, I actually sleep downstairs to escape the nightime noise/restlessness of our remaining senior cat. But on this night (and the next) I moved back upstairs. Couldn't actually bring myself to sleep in the next room to a coffin and a body. Death is a funny time: emotion about the person - but also the emotions linked to our distaste/nervousness about the topic.
And so. That was the day Okaasan died.
I'll leave it for now.
Write next time about the cremation and what follows. Japan has death customs that are far more direct than we do in Western cultures now. You might find it interesting. I did.
Thankyou again for messages. Thankyou for being on this journey with me.
Years of writing this blog, hardly updated in recent times.
Foreign DIL in Japan.
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