Where Is the Original?

Let me tell you about an old Japanese animation: Lupin the 3rd: The Mystery of Mamo was released in 1978. I was eight. I watched the animation on TV and loved it. It was a large-scale and dynamic story. Historically famous people appeared in it. The characters moved around the world. Even the White House Chief of Staff appeared in it. It included scenes that were inappropriate for children. I mean erotic scenes and violent scenes. I was a child. So of course, I loved those scenes.

Let me introduce the story: Lupin’s enemy was Mamo. Lupin killed Mamo many times, but Mamo returned every time. Actually, the different Mamos were clones. In the climactic scene, Lupin thought he had burned the final Mamo to death. He assumed that that was the original Mamo. But then he found a small machine in the burned remains of his body. So he suspected that that was not the original. So where was the original? 　

By the way, I usually write about caregiving for my mother. You don’t know much about my experience as a caregiver for my father. It was actually harder than caregiving for my mother: He needed hemodialysis, he struggled to walk and to hear, and he was stubborn.

I’m not joking. His stubbornness was the most difficult aspect of caregiving for him. I was always afraid of him. I always needed to butter him up in order to start caregiving.

One day, he passed away. I had taken care of him for sixteen years, during which we had lived together. Those had been the most humiliating days of my life, and they had finally ended.

After the funeral, we moved to the crematorium. Then, following the cremation, we had a ceremony. The family members met his ashes and bones. I had already experienced this a few times. So, there should have been nothing to be surprised about. But there was.

There was a small burned machine in my father’s ashes. Why? I was confused. I imagined all sorts of possibilities. Then I remembered Lupin the 3rd: The Mystery of Mamo.

Suddenly, it hit me: Maybe my father was not dead! This might be one of his clones! Where was the original?

Actually, that wasn’t it. The machine in the ashes was his pacemaker. I had almost forgotten that my father had had some heart problems. He’d had to get a pacemaker. I had arranged for the operation a few years before. But that was my first time to see the pacemaker itself.

Ultimately, my father was not a clone. But a part of his body was a machine. So we could have called him a cyborg.

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Japanese

Picture by ikorch