I found my father downstairs, steaming the wrinkles out of my old gray-and-pink orchid yukata. Instead of our usual miso and rice ball breakfast, he’d made me waffles with a side of bacon and eggs. He hugged me tightly and told me he was happy for me.
“I’m looking forward to being a grandfather,” he said. “When all of this is over, your mother will be able to celebrate your future. Don’t worry.”
After eating breakfast, I stepped out into our normally quiet street that had transformed into a celebration of Baba’s life. I felt an immediate kinship with the Fujita sisters, who stuck to the sidelines like outcasts at a party. I thought about returning to the house until the ceremony began, but slimy Uncle Mich raised his eyebrows from across the street and turned his hands into pistols, firing them at me as he swaggered over.
“There’s my girl,” he said. “Long time. Too long.”
“Uncle Mich,” I said, more of a statement than a greeting. He asked me about America, about beautiful American girls. I kept walking and told him I needed to find my mother.
As I wove through the growing crowd, I found myself engaging in the sort of catch-up small talk I hated, repeating the same banal niceties. Finally, the priest rang a bell and called the ceremony to order, telling the crowd how a worldwide tragedy many generations ago had brought our country closer together. In suffering, he said, we found our heart. In suffering, we found new traditions, a way forward. My mother, my father, Tamami, and I stood before Baba’s remains as the others found their seats. A canopy provided shade; mist fans dangled from the poles, helping everyone stay cool in the summer heat. A banner hung over their heads with a photo of Baba and her name—KIMIKO TADASHI: 2034–2105. We waited for my mother to go first. She signaled for my father to begin. We watched him slowly pick out the first bone fragments and place them in a small wooden box, one of several we planned to distribute among the neighborhood. A bit of toe or ankle? Who knows? I couldn’t help but picture Baba watching us from the audience. Tamami followed, ribs and spine, and all that held the life of my baba together, all that contained the sickness that ate at her until the doctors found it too late. Every movement was slow and considered, as if Baba could feel us carrying the pieces of her, the pressure of the chopsticks cradling bone. My father signaled for me to continue. I’d like to imagine that I picked a part of Baba’s smile, her cheeks, her head that held so much love and secrets and wisdom—she had given me permission to leave, but she would have wanted me to remember moments like this, my mother sobbing in the background. When it was finally my mother’s turn, I watched her tears darken the ashes, her unsteady hand barely able to hold the chopsticks. I stood beside her, wrapped one arm around her waist, steadied her wrist with my other hand.
“No tears,” I said. She looked at me, nodded, and wiped them away. “Together.”
“Together,” she said. Our hands combed the ashes, removing the last bone fragments. I felt like Baba had given us one final gift.
My mother transformed after the ceremony. I heard her laughing with the neighbors, telling stories about Baba—how her mother had sewn holographic pins onto jackets for several of the uncles during their virtual pop idols concert phase, or how when Jiji was still alive, she took ballroom and country line dancing lessons and won a competition. There were stories of Baba as a young woman, working as a volunteer nurse, inspired after she survived the plague as an infant. And maybe this was more tale than fact, but one neighborhood policeman told everyone about the time Baba helped move the belongings of her friends after the city forced flood zone residents to relocate.
“She strapped a dresser to her back and ordered everyone to do their share,” the police officer elaborated. “I heard she had boxes of their belongings piled high in her yard until they could figure out their housing.”
“I heard she paddled an inflatable raft through the city after a typhoon hit, before the seawalls were finished,” a young boy said. “She saved two cats, three dogs, one rabbit, and at least five families.”
The street was crawling with stragglers well into the evening as the cleanup began and Baba’s ashes, now in the urn, were taken away. Apart from the one burst of grief, the day had seemed to energize my mother. She asked if we should all walk to the cemetery tower together to see if the urn was ready.
“I know they said it might take a day, but I need to get off the street for a while,” my mother said. “We’ve earned it. Some power walking will do us good.”