Flight to Angkor Wat

 

At the end of the 1980s, my mother started a non-profit initiative that involved sending sewing machines to Vietnam. After WW2, Japanese women had worked with sewing machines to help their families. But, subsequently, the Japanese economy had recovered and few people had continued to use sewing machines. So it came about that there were too many sewing machines in Japan. At the same time, it happened that people needed sewing machines in Vietnam. Hence, my mother sent over 1200 sewing machines to Vietnam.

I took part in the initiative and travelled to Vietnam. At one point, we decided to go Angkor Wat in Cambodia, which was next to Vietnam. We were advised to take an airplane to Cambodia. So we did just that.

When we arrived the airport, I was surprised. It was very small: a small one-story house. My local town’s railway station was bigger than that airport! There was no airplane, but many people had gathered at the airport. Perhaps there were about 100 people.

After a few minutes, a small, outdated airplane arrived. I told my Japanese colleagues a joke: “If all of these passengers take that airplane, most of us will have to fly standing up.” All of my colleagues cracked up.

Unfortunately, the humorous situation I had envisioned came to pass. Over 100 people needed to take the small airplane. Fortunately, I was able to find a seat, but most of the passengers had to fly standing up. It was almost like rush hour on the subway in Japan. The airplane was jam-packed.

Even scarier than that was the fact that there was plenty of packing tape taped to the wall on the inside of the airplane. I joked again: “Apparently there are many cracks in this airplane.” We cracked up again.

It was summer, and it was very hot. But there was no air conditioning on the airplane. When we took off, the airplane made noises I had never heard before. It shook violently before finally stabilizing. At that point, I felt at ease. Then a cool wind reached us from somewhere. I thought to myself, “Oh! They have an air conditioner. They probably didn’t use it when the plane was on the ground for some environmental reasons.”

But I was wrong. That was cold air from the outside. As the airplane rose to a higher altitude, the cold air gushed in between the strips of packing tape. It turned out that the airplane actually had cracks. Once more, a humorous situation I had imagined had come to pass. The cold air looked white, and the inside of the airplane was filled with white fog. Eventually, I couldn’t even see the face of the person next to me.

In those days, Vietnam and Cambodia had problems. So it was difficult to go to Angkor Wat. Three years later, Angkor Wat became a World Heritage site. So we gained a great and valuable opportunity to visit it.

However I can’t remember anything but the outdated airplane. I was nineteen years old then. Later, upon joining graduate school, I would start to develop an interest in history. But in those days, Angkor Wat was just an odd house to me.

I want to visit Angkor Wat again!

Picture by freehandz

 

Funeral

 

Once, when one of my loved ones passed away, I couldn’t attend the funeral. So I tried to attend other funerals as much as I could. Sometimes I attended the funeral of a person to whom I was not closely related. I believed that a person who was dying had to be going to the place where my loved one lived. So I felt that I could connect with my loved one by attending that person’s funeral. However, when my mother, who had Alzheimer’s disease, needed 24-hour care, I found it difficult to attend funerals.

The common Japanese-style funeral gives one two opportunities to attend a ceremony. The first one is tsuya or the wake, which originally meant an all-night vigil over a body. It starts in the evening. Those who are closest to the deceased stay at might night. The second one is sougi or the actual funeral, which starts on the next day at noon. My mother used to go to an adult daycare center daily. But I needed to be at home when she left and when she came back. Tsuya was too late and sougi was too early to accommodate my schedule. Of course, using the short-stay service for adults was an option, but we would have had to make a reservation a few months in advance. And no one could predict when a funeral would be held a few months ahead of time. Thus, during that period, I could not attend some funerals.

However, my mother sometimes said mysterious words to me. Some of them might have been spiritual messages, for instance, “Do you understand why you appeared to this world?” It was possible to think of my mother as already being a half-resident of the other world. Taking care of her was a possible way to connect to a deceased loved one.

Now that my mother is in a nursing home and I am no longer responsible for her day-to-day care, I can finally attend funerals again. But, my friends, please don’t die! I hate funerals. I sincerely hope you will live long lives.

Picture by Matu