My beloved mother passed away last week. At the request of many who attended her funeral, I am posting (below her photo) the eulogy I read at the service. My humble Japanese mother lived a life of selfless and cheerful devotion to her family, and especially to her two intellectually and physically disabled children, my brother and sister. The funeral home was packed with those who admired her giving spirit in the face of a physically and emotionally demanding fifty-year workload--but few knew the circumstances of her life before Bobby and Jeannette were born. I hope that by sharing her story, Mom may continue to inspire others. Hers is truly the story of one who transformed the mud of suffering into a blossom of love and beauty. I am grateful to carry her in my heart forever.
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Yoshiko Frances Kelley
1926-2015
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So many of you here today are probably having the same sense
of déjà vu that I am, standing here. You were here for my little sister’s
funeral in 2001. You were here for my brother’s, four years ago. Today we are laying Mom to rest with Bobby
and Jeannette, and Dad and I want to say thank you to everyone here today, for
the love and support you’ve given us. What a gift you have been to us,
especially in these last years since Mom’s stroke. What a gift you’ve been to
Mom.
The last two times I stood up here, I talked about my
siblings and I read you some of the poems I wrote about them. Today I’m going
to do something different. I’m going to tell you a story. But before the story,
a quote from a children’s book, Coraline,
by Neil Gaiman. In it he tells us, “Fairy tales are more than true—not because
they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be
beaten.”
The story that follows isn’t a fairy tale, but it does
contain dragons. May it be as true for you as any fairy tale you’ve ever known.
Once there was a little girl with eyes that shone like
pebbles washed in a river of light. She lived with her mama, whose face was as
beautiful as the moon’s, and with her father, who carried her on his shoulders
like she was a boy, who laughed and gave his change to the neighborhood
children so they could listen to the stories of the traveling kamishibai man
and buy candy when his tales were done. She lived with her little brother,
Yoshiro, and with her mama’s mother, Haru, who came to help because another
baby was on its way to join the young, happy family.
The family lived far away from their homeland, in a place
called Manchuria, and they lived there because the emperor had told them it was
their duty to make Japan stronger by settling in foreign lands. The father
worked as an interpreter, and he worried about his family’s safety in this
place where the Japanese were unwelcome aggressors, but duty came first.
The baby came next, a boy named Yoshi-aka, but the mother
with the pale moon face did not survive his birth. The little girl loved this
tiny brother, but it wasn’t long before his life waned and he was lost to darkness, like his mother. It was a sad time for the girl and Yoshiro,
for the grandmother and for the father who feared for his family. “Take the
children home to Japan,” he told Haru, “and I will return as soon as my duty is
done.”
The girl and Yoshiro missed their father and mourned their
mother and baby Yoshi-aka, but the grandmother cared for them and taught them as a mother would
teach her own children. Yoshiro made friends with the neighbor boys. He kept a
fighting spider in a bamboo box. The girl kept her eye on him, as a big sister
should.
And when his duty was done, their father came home, and there
was a parade in his honor. But it was a parade for a fallen hero, and when it
was over the girl and Yoshiro said goodbye to him forever.
Time passed. The children went to school. And when Yoshiro
was nine, he grew ill and died. And the little girl was not so little any more,
but she was still young, and she wished more than ever that her mama would hold
her tight and sing her a lullaby so that she could sleep and dream of a world
where she was not so sad, so lonely all the time.
High school passed. The girl and her friends were sent to
factories and plants to work, because there was a war going on. A big war. And
the plant where the girl and her best friend worked was subjected to air raids
again and again. And one time the girls ran in different directions, and the
friend hid under a bridge, and the girl with the pebble eyes watched in terror
as death fell from the sky and took the bridge, and took her friend with
it. Some time later a mushroom cloud
rose on the horizon, in the direction of Nagasaki, sixty miles away.
After the war, the girl, who was now a young woman, went to
work in the city. It was not a happy life. And then a young sergeant, an
American, came to the shop where she worked, looked into her dark eyes, and
fell in love. He visited her again and again, and when his tour of duty was
over and he had to return to America, he saved his money and they wrote back
and forth until he could return to Japan and rescue his beautiful bride.
They had a child. A quiet boy with eyes like dark pebbles,
solemn and shy. He was not well, he needed surgery; his would not be a normal
life.
They had a girl. Her eyes were button bright, and she was as
lively and quick as the boy was quiet and still. She would need help to take
care of her big brother, the young woman and her handsome husband decided. They
would have another child.
The third child was another girl. Her face was as lovely as
the moon’s. But her arms and legs were floppy and soft, and she could neither
talk nor walk for years.
But the young woman held her children close. She sang them
her Japanese songs. She loved them as her mother had loved her. And the oldest
and the youngest were hers forever, always beside her, and the middle one was
always in her heart, and when the grandchildren came and the young woman became
an old woman who was still washing her own children’s hair, she did not tire.
Not until her youngest and her oldest had lived out their
lives did she begin to wane, and when she did, her husband sat beside her every
day, holding her hand, and her daughter’s husband and children brightened her
days.
And when Yoshiro called her from beyond the stars, she knew
it was time to go. Her daughter held her tight and sang her a song, a lullaby, and
the old woman sighed and slipped softly into a dream of her beautiful, love-filled life.
Now, that is the end of my story, but it is not the end of
my mother, Yoshiko’s, story, and it is not the end of our story—those of us who
grieve and love and wonder why bad things happen to good people.
Our story is now. Our dragons are here. They are real. They
are as true as my mother’s story is true, and I have left out many, many of the
dragons she encountered in her life.
But my mother taught me that dragons can be beaten. Not with
force. Not with hatred, or anger, or resentment. How could my mother beat the
dragons of war which killed her father and her friend? How could she beat the
dragons of grief—the same dragons we face today, here in this room?
She beat them by not allowing them to harden her heart. She
beat them by allowing the pain to make her stronger, and she used that strength
to help others. After all she endured in her early life, how was she able to
fight the dragons of weariness and fear which arose as she cared for her
disabled children, whose needs increased with time? She fought the dragons with love. She had learned at a young age
how precious love was, how precious family was, and because of that she had the
strength to fight for decades and to hold on for Bobby and Jeannette in a way that someone
with a softer, easier childhood might not have been capable of, for so long.
When you are struggling with your own dragons, when you
wonder why someone with a kind and generous heart can be dealt a difficult
life, I challenge you to remember that even the dragon of despair can be beaten
with love. My mom taught me that. We may not understand what truth each dragon
will bring us, but I know that heartbreak can crack open your heart so that
your light can be shared with others—and so their light can enter your heart,
as well.
In Kurt Vonnegut’s words:
Be soft.
Do not let the world make you hard.
Do not let the
pain make you hate.
Do not let the bitterness steal your sweetness.
Take pride
that even though the rest of the world may disagree, you still believe it to be
a beautiful place.
My mom had so many opportunities to harden her heart to
life, but anyone who met her knew that her earthly body guarded the soul of a
child. Innocent. Open. Trusting. Loving.
As the wise old bear Winnie the Pooh said: How lucky I am to have something that makes
saying goodbye so hard.
Rest in peace, my dear, sweet mama. Thank you for teaching
me how to tame dragons.
