==JAPAN: KM== [Death]

"If I die, you must protect your mother and your sister. You must be strong, you know." I saw him and remembered what he always had said to me. He lay in bed with eyes half open, and the pupils did not move. Still other people around him unanimously said, "I'm sure that he looked at me, and that with his eyes he had made a sign that he was O.K." But in fact he was unconscious, so he couldn't know who was around him and that he was in the ICU.
My father was strict with me. In the summer that I was six, I was a boy who still hadn't been able to swim well. In a word, I was only able to swim for 5 or 6 meters. Though I hadn't said anything to my dad, one day, after lunch, he unexpectedly said, "Ken, we are going to do some special training for swimming. Be ready for it!" His white teeth flashed in a quick grin. He usually smiled this way whenever he intended to do something which I disliked. To make a long story short, he threw me into the center of the pool (It was too deep for a six-year-old boy like me to touch the floor of the pool.) I desperately struggled to move my limbs, and to breathe, and to advance. Standing by me, he shouted to me as I was weakening and starting to sink, "Die, die, die!" As soon as I reached the edge of the pool, he threw me again in the opposite direction. Once more, I paddled hard to live, and finally arrived at the side of the pool. Immediately, he threw me... Thanks to him, I learned to swim.
When I was in the third year of junior high school, I broke the bone of my little finger before the baseball tournament. I strongly felt the pain of not being able to participate in the game rather than that of the fracture, because I was a regular player then. That day, he called me. He was drinking beer quietly. Naturally I thought that I would be scolded, because he usually bewailed my stupidity. We were silent for a while. By and by, he said in a cool tone, "Never say 'die'." I looked at him. His face was very calm. When he affectionately patted my cheek with his large and warm hand, tears trickled down my cheek. Then, just two months later, he came down with cerebral hyperemia.
On the night when my father fell ill, I went to him again, but his heart had already stopped. "No, Daddy, you are all right, aren't you? Say anything!" My sister cried out clinging to his neck. A young doctor tried to resuscitate him with artificial respiration, and to remove her. "Don't touch my daddy! You could do nothing to save him, so he, he..." She snapped at him. My mother was only crying. And I was helplessly watching them practice artificial respiration on my father. I felt nothing, as if I were watching a second-class TV drama in which somebody dies of cerebral hyperemia. I couldn't admit to the reality of his death.
At his funeral, I was thinking of the words my father said. "What does it mean for me to protect my family?" "What can I, a junior high school student, do?" Is it a matter of protecting them economically? Maybe not. I think that it is to become the spiritual support of my family, and to watch over them, as he had been doing. I must have a strong mind that isn't discouraged by anything for that purpose. I swore to protect my family and to be strong. I kissed him in a coffin on the forehead, and said good-bye.

COMMENT Probably, this content will be the reason why he comes to this university now. For me, it is so natural that I have never wondered until now that I have been with all of my family as a member of it. He must surely know the preciousness of a family better than I and he must have a deeper understanding of death. And he will never forget those feelings when he becomes a doctor in the future. I think it is true that the time he was with his father was very short, but he really was taught a lot of important things by his father.

Miyuki Matsumoto