Details

 I'm not ready to pick up yet on Part 3 of the topic I started on several days ago.  For today, I'll post here what I also wrote on Facebook a bit ago.  It's about Chee.

Hiromi's sister died around 6:30 last night at Hospice House in Hutchinson. Funeral plans have now been set for Tuesday, March 29, at 2:00 in Sterling. Chizu "Chee" was his only sister, about 11 years older than he. A brother just older than Hiromi died as a toddler, of diptherea apparently. I'm sure that the family was happy to have a healthy child when Hiromi came along, but Chee remembered also with some sympathy for her childhood self how heavy he was to carry around when she needed to help care for him.

Chee was an efficient and hardworking homemaker who freely welcomed us and other family members into her well-kept home. She embodied the natural charm that I've seen so often in other Asian women.

The last week of her life was not pleasant for Chee. So very many things went wrong health wise after she broke her hip a week before her death. It's easy for me to believe that things suddenly got a lot better for her on Sunday evening around 6:30.

There were tears in the room at the time of her passing, but all of us who were present were also feeling a lot of gratitude for her peaceful transition. I wrote about it on my blog. I'll see if I can copy the post in the comments below.

**************

Hiromi has one surviving brother in Japan. Hiromi called Saiji earlier to tell him of Chee's condition, and now has notified him of their sister's death. Communication about such matters is still easy, but I'm suddenly wondering what would happen if either Hiromi or Saiji died and communication between the Japanese and the American Iwashiges was needed. No one in our family is conversant in Japanese. Saiji comes closer to having a family member conversant in English. His stepson, Yoshinori, spent several months living with us and going to Pilgrim High School. The challenge is to keep in close enough contact to know how to get in touch in an emergency.

In preparation for writing the obituary for Chee, Bev needed quite a number of details that Hiromi was the best source for. Here are the details she needed: Full name of father (the only child of Chee's who ever met him was three years old at the time.), Maiden name of mother, birthplace of Chee, and name of Saiji's wife. I'm not sure how many of our children would be able to come up with all those details.

Hiromi is rather dismissive of my concern about how we'd keep up the family connections when Hiromi's generation passes on. "Who cares?" he asks.

"I care," I answer, "and I think those who come after us will care."

This is a complication of being in a family with first-generation immigrants. The ties are still strong, but it's obvious that they grow increasingly fragile over time--a fact which I lament.