Important Letters

 

One of the problems we had when my mother had Alzheimer’s disease was that lots of mail was delivered every day. My mother was an active person. She had many friends and many kinds of jobs. Many people sent mail to her.

She hired a licensed tax accountant and advised me to manage the letters. I didn’t want to do it, but no one except me could. I didn’t have a choice.

We lived together, but I was really hesitant to open the letters to my mother. I felt as if I was doing something wrong.

I started to manage the letters to my mother. There were a lot of letters. A few cardboard boxes were full of them.

She ran a supplementary school, so many of the letters were advertisements about teaching materials. We decided to close the supplementary school. I called the companies and asked them to stop sending us more teaching materials. I called about 100 companies.

There were polite handwritten letters. I couldn’t throw them away. I thought they might be important letters. When I visited the memorial halls of great persons, I saw their handwritten letters being exhibited. So I kept those letters.

There were letters from public offices. Those were written ritualistically. They were boring, so I threw them away.

There were letters from financial institutions. They were made up of just numbers. I couldn’t understand them, so I threw them away.

One day, the accountant scolded me extremely hard. I believe my heart had been in the right place, but I’d done the opposite of what I should have done.

My mother had lived a successful life. She was famous in her industry. She was a great person, but she was not so great that someone would build a memorial hall for her. The polite handwritten letters had been important, but most of them had not been urgent. I should have continued her correspondence on her behalf, but I hadn’t had time for that.

The letters from the public offices and financial institutions had not been heartwarming, but they had been important. Someone should have taken care of them. I called the public offices and financial institutions and asked them to reissue the letters. It was an extremely complicated procedure.

I haven’t sent a handwritten letter in a long time. I haven’t received one in a long time either. Most people might be the same.

If I were to visit the memorial hall of a future great person, there might not be handwritten letters. There might be exhibitions of their social media correspondence.

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Picture by Tugumi Kougei

 

Maturity

The “light novel” is a category of Japanese novels. Novels that target the younger generation are considered light novels, and some Japanese animations are based on light novels.

When I was a teenager, the term “light novel” did not exist, but some publishers printed novels for the younger generation. I loved to read those novels.

Once, one of my favorite novelists made a shocking statement during an interview: “If no one dies at the beginning of the story, the product is not interesting.” I thought it was not a good thing to say.

A few decades later, the social media world dawned. I looked for the creators of my favorite animations and novels on social media because I couldn’t find some of their works on TV or in bookstores. Maybe some of them had quit creating. It was possible that some of them were not so popular anymore.

I found some creators’ accounts and followed them. Their statements interested me. I found the account of the novelist who had made the not-so-nice comment. As it turned out, he was always posting pictures of his cat. He would post only cat-related stories. I didn’t know what had happened to him. I guessed he had passed his prime.

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Picture by freehand