GRANDPA
I was never really that close with my maternal grandfather. What I do know about him was that he was a rare university graduate with a degree in philosophy. He also loved to work. He was a trader. He exported Japanese chinaware to places like Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. I have an oil painting that my grandpa brought home as a souvenir in the 1970s. Entitled “Kabul,” it depicts a marketplace in colors that were once vibrant but have since mellowed with age into soft blues and pale browns.
I also found out later that he was a Communist, and had written a letter to the Japan Communist Party for financial help. His thriving business ran aground after his business partner accrued insurmountable gambling debts on the corporate account and disappeared. He would restart the business a few years later but in a much-reduced form with what clients he had left. My grandmother, who had gotten used to wearing fur coats and having servants around the house, was said to have become bitter when they lost nearly everything. But she never showed that side of herself to me.
One spring day in 1990, while I was a graduate student in Chicago, I got a phone call from my mother informing me of my grandfather’s passing. He was crossing the street to catch a bus home from work in Roppongi around 11 pm and was struck by a car. He died instantly. My chatty and extroverted grandmother changed noticeably after his death. She used to love making fun of him – it was her past time. But as the days and weeks passed, she became increasingly despondent.
A few weeks after he died, grandma developed a large bruise on her rib cage and a small one on her forehead that resembled the ones my grandpa sustained in the accident. Around that time, my mother and her brother were clearing out my grandpa’s office in Roppongi, just steps from where he was struck, and they opened his most recent phone bill. They scratched their heads as they examined the last item on the bill that indicated an outgoing international phone call to Afghanistan, 3 days after he died. Nobody else worked in this one-room office except for my grandpa. After much, “wait, when did he die again?” type discussion, my uncle concluded that his father was unaware that he had passed on and was still trying to make business calls to the Middle East.
It turns out, my grandpa was quite attached to the telephone (and perhaps still unaware of his transition) 6 years later when I found out I was pregnant with my first daughter. One late afternoon I was alone in my apartment, resting on the couch battling fatigue, and the phone rang. I answered but all I got was an earful of thick static for a few seconds, then suddenly, the unmistakable voice of my grandpa calling out my name, “Kura chan? Kura chan?” I yelled back, “Ojiichan?! (Grandpa?!)” I remember glancing around my small apartment as if searching for reassurance from someone that I wasn’t losing my mind. I only heard static. The line wouldn’t hang up so I kept holding on, unwilling to be the first to disconnect. After several more minutes of calling for Ojiichan and not getting a response, I started to feel a bit like a looney. So I hung up.
It would be maybe about a decade or more later, when I was able to confront my grandpa in my dream about this phone call. He was sitting at a coffee table with my grandma, so I approached them, excited and beside myself with joy for the unexpected reunion. I don’t remember what we talked about but I remember being so very happy and that happiness turned into panic at learning that the conversation had to end. They kept telling me that it was time for me to go, so I asked them if we could talk again the next day. They just laughed. And you know, the funny thing is, the next evening, I was able to visit them in the same place again in my dream. This time, I asked my grandpa right away if he tried calling me that one day in the fall of 1996 when I had just learned that I was pregnant with my first. He just laughed.
And my grandma, she followed my grandpa to the Other Side almost exactly a year after he died.