My Mother and Hymn

 

My mother has Alzheimer’s disease. An Alzheimer’s patient forgets many things, but there are exceptions. This includes crystalized memory, the things that a patient repeatedly does.

When I lived with my mother, she went to day service. It gave me a brief rest. One Christmas day, my mother came back from the day service with a helper and the care manager.

The care manager was excited and said, “Today we had a Christmas party. We played hymns on a CD. Your mother could sing all the songs on the CD!”

My mother was a Christian. Most people around her didn’t know this. My mother didn’t have siblings. Her father had passed away when she was a child. My grandmother was sickly.

My grandmother said to my mother, “If I pass away, you should enter a convent. At least they will feed you.”

My mother studied at a Christian junior high school and a Christian university. I believe she had faith in God. After she graduated from the university, she didn’t have a chance to go to church. Our town didn’t have a church. This was why people around her didn’t know she was a Christian.

She has Alzheimer’s disease. It is difficult to communicate with her now. I don’t know if she is still a Christian or not.

I think, at least, she knows a lot of hymns.

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Picture by fuwari

 

I Lost 30 Pounds in a Month

 

 

A few years ago, I was in a hospital because of a serious illness. During the first week, I completely lost consciousness. While I was unconscious, they put a feeding tube in my nose. After I woke up, I started eating, but at first, I couldn’t eat much. I left most of my meal on my plate.

When I was discharged, I lost 30 pounds. I had been the tubby type. It was a good change.

Before that, I had experienced losing much weight by dieting, but when I went on a diet, I took time. I slowly lost weight. I worked very hard. However, this time, I don’t have any memory of when I was losing weight. I feel like I had just woken up and lost 30 pounds.

I came back to society. All of my acquaintances were surprised when they looked at me. Some people couldn’t recognize me.

We can call this the “coma diet.” It doesn’t give you a sense of achievement. Of course, it is too dangerous. I don’t recommend it to you.

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Picture by yamamedal

Almost Moving

 

I used to work for a computer game company in Tokyo.

Our office was located in a student’s quarters. It was nice to live in. Our office was actually in an apartment building. It was designed for a family. We put many desks in all the rooms. It was the 2000s. These kinds of companies were busy and profitable.

We started to feel that our office was too small. We decided to move to a bigger room. The new room was designed for a family, but it was located in a better place.

We needed to adjust the working schedule. Then finally, we reached moving day. We didn’t hire any moving company. All of us were young. We packed up and moved by ourselves. We rented and filled up a small truck. I saw the truck off. Some of us continued packing up our old office.

A few hours later, the truck returned to our old office with all our belongings. What happened? One of my coworkers said when they unloaded our belongings, the landlord of the new office saw them.

The landlord said, “I expected a family would use the room. I don’t want to rent the room for a company.”

There was a mistake in communication. Our moving plan ended in failure. We didn’t get the new office. We unpacked our belongings again. We resumed our jobs at our old and only office.

You think this was a miserable experience? Actually, there was a bright side. We threw away many of our belongings for the move. So we felt that our old office got bigger. “Almost moving” is the best method for general cleaning. I recommend this to you.

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Picture by Masayuki Wada