December 28, 2001
  surcease

Masako left for Montana at 11 last night, bumbling over snowy mountains towards Montana, where her boyfriend and his family were waiting to go skiing. We fretted over her like old women, all three of us, before she left.

"Do you have enough food?" Mom asked, stuffing croquettes into the growing food basket for her. "Do you want some water?"

"Do you have a blanket in case you break down?" I demanded.

"Do you have chains for your tires? Do you want me to show you how to put them on?"

"Do you have insurance?"

"Do you have a phone card?"

"Do you have a first aid kit?"

"Do you know how to get there?"

"Have a nice time," said my grandmother, entering late into the conversation. She patted my sister kindly on the butt. "Where are you going?"

There was still a strange scent of bile in my nostrils through the morning, no matter how long I showered. At odd moments I would smell it; turning around too fast, or walking through a draft. It faded in and out, a bizarre memory of a smell.

Mom and my grandmother had left for the Dojo early in the morning, in order to prepare for mochi-making the next day. I wandered around the kitchen, poking into things; they'd thoughtfully left a covered plate full of food for my breakfast, and another one for lunch. The theme of my visits home is always food. Mom laments over my health, tying it in to lack of exercise and weight gain, then contradicts herself by forcing mountains of food into me, lauding each piece as a new miracle of empirically proven Good For You nutrition. For all her complaints, she eyes my body fat jealously; five-foot six and 90 pounds herself, she lives vicarious plumpness through me.

I wash dishes. I study Japanese. I read a book, still A History of the American People. I walk to Factoria Mall, a mile away, and consider going to another showing of Lord of the Rings, only to find that I'm fifteen minutes too late for the afternoon showing. I walk back home.

At four o'clock, my mother calls from the Dojo.

"Did you get my message?" she asks.

"Just got in," I tell her. "What's up?"

"Pamela died."

Sometime within the last twenty-four hours, I must have settled in my mind that Pamela was already dead; the fact is, I feel no surprise at all -- we were expecting it, after all -- and regret more for Connie and her husband than for Pamela. Under it all is a kind of relief, for her.

I almost say, "Good."

"We're going to the funeral home, but first we're coming back to get a bite, and so I can have a shower and change. . ."

I prepare dinner, sit down, and study Japanese some more. There is, I realize, a pimple growing on my chin. I spend a happy ten minutes poking it.

Tekazashi, literally translated, means "raised hand." It's a spiritual practice, for people who are members of our Dojos; for the first twenty-four hours after a person has died, we believe that the spirit is still, partially, attached to the body. We do tekazashi to the dead body, with the belief that it will lighten the afterlife for the deceased.

We arrived at the funeral parlor and made our way in; it was seven p.m. by then, and ours was the only group there. Jacquie-Marie was waiting for us. She'd flown in from Hawai'i to spend the holidays with a friend in Vancouver, and instead had come to stay by Pamela and Connie's sides in the last few days.

She remembered my name, though we'd only met once at the hospital the day before. She gave me a hug. "In here," she said, and led us through the hallways.

Pamela's father was sitting, shrunken and old, in a chair outside the chapel. I passed him and lifted a hand in an automatic greeting, not registering his presence; he smiled back at me and lifted his own hand in salute, the hand dangling at the wrist like it was too heavy for him.

My mother and Mrs. Ito, who had carpooled with us, were less oblivious. They stopped and stooped over him, offering their condolences in their own unique mixture of broken English and birdsong Japanese.

"How are they doing?" I asked Jacquie-Marie while I waited, leaving implied who "they" were.

She looked at me strangely. "So-so," she said, and lifted her shoulders philosophically. "As well as can be expected."

I peered at her. She was wearing the same clothes I'd seen her in the day before; even in that firm, American face, there were signs of exhaustion. "How are you doing?" I wondered.

She lifted a hand and wobbled it in the air. "So-so," she said, and turned away abruptly to lead me to Pamela.

Connie and family members were there, speaking in subdued whispers around the body like they were afraid they would wake her. It was quiet, and warm; a red-tinted lamp threw heat and color into Pamela's face. For the first time in months, she was resting comfortably: no more labored breathing, no more pain. After the memories of the day before, I had to take a moment to make a new memory: oh, so this is what she looked like.

Death, when he comes as a friend, leaves dignity behind him. The dead person doesn't care, but the people who are left behind do. Somehow, it matters almost as much as the fact of dying itself.

Something in Connie's face changed when she saw my mother; almost like a relief of her own, a flash of something behind the brittle resignation of her expression. My mother has that effect on people, like Paula, who was already doing tekazashi to the body. The two of them, Paula and my mother, are representatives of their people. Paula is like the Rock of Gibralter, solid, matter-of-fact, a shoulder to rest on; she was there when my father died, and made order out of chaos.

My mother is like water; she flows around things and wears away rough edges until they're smooth. She conforms to fill any container. Connie gripped her hands in welcome, vibrating like a string wound too tight, and then scurried away to find some other little task to keep herself occupied.

We gather around the body and start to do tekazashi; the conversation is, for the most part, in Japanese, since that's all Mrs. Ito knows how to speak.

"Her skin is so beautiful," she exclaims, and we peer down at what's left of Pamela with interest. Her cheeks are rosy and smooth, the skin almost transparent, lucent.

In the hospital, she was barely a bump in the bed. Here at the funeral parlor, she's still a vague outline of a body, but now her limbs are arranged neatly, formally. Jacquie-Marie comes into the room to give my mother information: when she died, who was with her, how she got to the funeral home.

"You know," I remember, "Connie once told me that there were four mothers in her neighborhood whose children all went to the same preschool. Pamela and she were one of them. I think she said that out of the four, three of the mothers had cancer, and all of the children had developed some sort of tumor or disease, leukemia, brain tumor, something."

"When did she start coming to the Dojo?" my mother wonders, puzzled. "I don't remember."

"Ask Jacquie-Marie," Paula jokes. "She knows everything."

"She was already diagnosed when she started coming," someone volunteers. "Connie had the breast cancer right before."

"What was that, twelve? Thirteen?"

"Twelve," Jacquie-Marie volunteers. "She started coming seven years ago."

"And she's twenty now?" I hazard.

Seven years of cancer.

The body looks like it's fallen asleep; from time to time, some trick of the light or a blink makes me think that it's taken a breath. Paula, sitting by, comments on the fact. "I keep expecting her to wake up," she says with a grin.

We laugh. "I'm glad it's not just me," I say.

We stay there four hours; members from the Dojo come and go, paying their last respects to the spirit of their friend and neighbor. When my father died, there was laughter and joking all night, a hilarious episode in the hospice kitchen; we blanketed the place in humor, out of respect to the way my father had lived. His family wanted it that way.

For Pamela, we were quiet. I drew Jacquie-Marie away to the chapel adjoining the room where the body was, and we listened to the hum of conversation coming through the door.

"They're too loud," she said, fiercely at one point. Takeshi was saying something in Japanese; Jacquie-Marie, not understanding, bridled protectively. "They should respect Connie's space."

"He's telling a Pamela story," I told her, and cocked my head to listen. "Something about a wedding, and dancing. . ."

She subsided regretfully, reluctant to let go of something to be angry about. "Are you sure?" she demanded.

I smiled in the dark, where she couldn't see me. "I'm sure. He's translating for someone." Paula's voice said something, recognizably hers, and Takeshi picked up the thread again.

It's hard to be quiet. I can't imagine Pamela enjoying the grave, haunted respect that Jacquie-Marie wants smothering the room, but we acquiesce as best as we can out of respect for her feelings. Connie has collapsed in the outer room, drowsing fitfully under a pile of coats.

I've rediscovered the storyteller's urge that failed me so miserably the day before, and I want to tell stories about Pamela that will make people laugh and remember the way that she was. These aren't all my people, though, who would understand; Americans, the ones who don't understand, grieve differently.

At ten, we leave. We have an early morning ahead at the Dojo, making miroku mochi for the New Year celebration. The room is crowded with Dojo members; before I leave, I give Jacquie-Marie my cell phone and home numbers to call in case they run out of hands during the night.

"Don't hesitate to call me. I'll come running," I tell her, already anticipating a sleepless night.

She takes my hand briefly in gratitude. "Thank you," she says. "I probably will."

We say good-bye to the people assembled in the room, and pay our last respects to Pamela before leaving. Her body is cold; her face is bright, almost happy. By our beliefs, her spirit has forty-nine days to explore the physical world, to go anywhere she wants to, do anything she wants to, see anything she wants to.

"She'll go dancing on the beach in moonlight," prophesizes Paula, chuckling quietly. "She said that's what she'd do first. Funny girl."