When You Were Here

true. Something I’ve denied and hid from but finally figured out before I walked in the door. Something I was terrified of moments ago. But something that I also know I can finally handle. “She came to you first for treatment, then for release.”
    He nods, the kind of sage nod of the wise man. “Yes. She was ready to move on. She came here to find peace, to be weaned off her meds in a way that was safe, so that she could die on her own terms. So that she could seek solace in the world around us.” He gestures to the windows of his office, a gesture I understand to indicate the temples beyond. “To come to peace with the moving on. It is a gift, in a way. We spend so much of our time fighting death, as we should. But sometimes the greatest gift we can give ourselves, and in turn the ones we love, is to know when to let go. To know when it is time—and to be at peace with that.”
    Maybe he is a faith healer after all. Because it seems what my mom found in Tokyo, more than anything, was a new faith. Faith in the Buddhist ways; faith in the belief that everything happens as it should, in its own time, that we move on from one phase of life to the next, whether we celebrate it with a ceremony or not.
    For her there was no more resistance, just readiness, just the letting go.
    It hurts knowing that. But it also doesn’t hurt like I thought it would. Because I finally understand. It was never really about the pills. It was never really about tea or treatments. It was about moving on.
    I stand up and hold out my hand to shake Takahashi’s. He was my mom’s last great hope, and that’s all I ever saw him as too. But now I understand who he is and what he was. Because now I finally have all the things I came to Tokyo for, all the things I didn’t know about her:
    That Takahashi was not only her last hope for life but her great hope for a peaceful death too.

Chapter Twenty-Six
    I am outside, back on the street I walked down only an hour ago. It is just me now, me and this city, this adopted home that I have always loved, that I still love. Asakusa is not Shibuya. It is not neon and lights and flash. It is subtler: It is bamboo and temples; it is kimonos and sandals. It is a long shopping alley with open-fronted stores and carts and people weaving in and out as they hunt for seaweed and fish, for rice crackers and biscuit sticks dipped in chocolate. I find myself walking down this shopping arcade, part of the flow of people—the shopkeepers and the workers, the families walking through and the tourists scooping up folded fans and miniature red cat statues.
    An older Japanese woman with graying hair and lines around her eyes nods at me as I walk past the display of mochi cakes she is selling. I stop, reach into my pocket for some yen, and buy a packet of mochi filled with strawberries. I eat one as I continue on, passing a small store peddling embroidered jackets, then souvenir shops selling tiny replicas of a nearby temple, Tokyo’s oldest temple, built for the goddess of mercy. I’ve been to the temple itself, many times, on family trips.
    But it’s not the temple or the visits I remember now as I walk past men on bicycles with shopping bags in the metal baskets, past women pushing strollers, past all this regular, everyday life.
    All this beautiful, wonderful, amazing everyday life.
    I remember some of the last words my mom said to me. She was lying down on the living room couch, under a blanket, petting Sandy Koufax. “Obviously,” she said, “I’m going to miss your graduation.” Then she became serious but also content. “But in some ways it’ll be like I’m there. I’ve already pictured it, imagined it, constructed it in my mind. And I’ve watched it. I’ve clapped, and I’ve cheered, and I’ve cried. And I am proud of you. Life is short, and life is beautiful, and everything is lovely. Love it, embrace it, smell the lilacs, play with the dog, and love endlessly and fiercely with everything you’ve got. Live without regret.”
    My mom’s life was all it could be. She made sure of it. She made sure of it in the way she lived—and the way she loved.
    Because there was no magic cure. There was no secret remedy, no ancient tincture to save her, to save anyone. Butthen there was . There is and always will be. The magic cure is in how she lived her life, and even more so in how she chose to die when given the choice. My mom, even in her death, has shown me yet again how to live and how to