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11/8　　（日本語は後に続きます）

One of my important rehabilitation routines is to go to church every Sunday. Since the discharge from the hospital, I have never missed the service.

Last Sunday, on 11/5, our church had a special music Sunday commemorating All Souls Day, which remembers the dead, and which I am not too familiar with because I am not a Catholic. Instead of our regular service, Messe Solennelle, Opus 16 by Louis Vierne (1870-1937) was sung by the choir, and there was a special session, in which any willing congregation member went up to the microphone on the floor, and announced, “ I remember such and such.”

In Japan, remembering and honoring your own ancestors is an important fabric of daily life, even though it is not overtly expressed in the daily life of contemporary people. My father, for example, starts his morning by praying and chanting in front of a Buddhist alter for his ancestors, after offering fresh water and cooked rice. (He then gives the same menu to the Shinto alter in the kitchen. It is very difficult to explain this commingling of Buddhism and Shintoism to people outside Japan.) Whenever I go back to Japan, it is a must to visit my family tomb; my father visits the tomb every week so that it always has fresh cut flower offerings.

Even though I am not too crazy about this taxing Japanese custom, I always felt that I was missing something in the US. Even though both of Mark’s parents passed away and I miss them a lot, we never made a special occasion to visit their cemetery plot. So, when the announcements started at church, I felt quite comfortable and at home.

However, while listening to the words,” I miss my late wife so and so,” listening to the solemn organ and choir, and looking up the beautiful fall blue sky through the church window, something broke in my mind.

Since the discovery of the cancer, I have been quite comfortably coexisting with the possibility of the death (Mark joked that I befriended death.) The first information I found in the web site told me that the survival rate was 10%. Even after all the things I have gone through, i.e., chemotherapy, radiation therapy, and surgery, my 5-year survival rate is only 50%. Strangely enough, however, I was never frightened nor panicked by these numbers. Fundamentally I am an optimist and I have always felt that you only have this moment to live; you never know what the next moment brings to you.

But when you think of what your death brings to other people’s minds, you start seeing death differently, and that broke me. I felt that I cannot die yet for my family (it is completely different from “ I do not want to die.”)

Once you break down, there is no way to prevent frustration, anxiety and self-pity from coming to the surface.

The past few weeks have been extremely difficult as well as monotonous; my whole day is consumed by re-learning how to eat. The progress is very small, and physically difficult, but it is a kind of difficulty that even a family member cannot understand; they want to look at how bright and strong Mayumi moves forward, and the burden is on me.

Why on earth did I get this difficult cancer? In addition to the after-effects of treatments and pain that all other cancer patients suffer, I have to relearn how to eat, and the process may take over a year. Other cancers have much better survival rates…

As no emotion lasts forever, however, I was OK after a few hours.

Actually one of the remedies was to read the part of my own blog that I kept in the midst of my esphagitis when I was vomiting blood and had constant fever. Even “that” difficult time has passed eventually, and this period shall pass too.

I visited my oncologist on Tuesday. I need to go through a modified barium swallow X-ray on Monday to see if I have an aspiration; the fact that I almost choked on a piece of fish that morning, that I feel a discomfort where my new esophagus is connected, and that I have been having backaches made him order the test. As I said in the previous entry, not only me but also the oncologist does not know what all these symptoms mean, and we have to be vigilant for every possibility. It is better to be over cautious than be sorry.