According to yogic texts,
contemplating death is a healthy practice that helps us keep life in
perspective. In ancient times,
samurai wrote poems on death. In the yoga tradition asana practices
finish in savasana, the corpse pose,
to “enthusiastically prepare us for death”. But nothing really can
“prepare” to say goodbye to a loved one.
When I first walked in the ICU
last October, just few days shy of my birthday, I couldn’t recognize my
Mother. She looked so tiny and frail. (This was the woman who stood face
to face with Sosai without heels.) Her ulcers had been bleeding, I was
told and she vomited large amounts of blood. They stopped the bleeding
but she was unconscious. But I’ll never forget when she opened her hers
to see me, her eyes lit up with radiant, unconditional love. Mother
couldn’t speak, could barely move, yet she emanated such love like an
enlightened being. She then closed her eyes again.
In yoga traditions they say the inner most soul, which is called
purusha, is lying with divine
awareness behind our thought processes. This information was in my mind,
but never before felt so deeply as when I had glimpsed the
purusha in Mother’s eyes on
that day. Over the past few years, she had suffered strokes and
a-typical dementia that ate away parts of her functions. Yet she dwelled
in such unconditional love. There was nothing left in her but her divine
consciousness.
For many years after her Sosai’s
passing, she tried to find peace within the whirlwind of accusations,
betrayal, animosity and court cases. I wasn’t much of a help, in the
sense that I was caught up in it too. She was hopeful that one day the
students would come and work together for Sosai again, not against each
other. But that day never came.
While her hopes vacillated from
anger to confusion, her illness progressed. She was never the type to go
doctors let alone depend on medication, so our efforts to find out
exactly what was wrong with her took time. She had similar symptoms of
Alzheimer’s but her brain was intact. We went to different hospitals for
different tests, or sometimes the same tests but with different results:
there was nothing really the doctors were able to explain. Other than
she had a good heart or too high blood pressure or her insulin level was
too low. It wasn’t a prognosis that was lead by a heart felt doctor.
Then one day an American doctor
who also practiced naturopathy diagnosed her with having a rare virus in
the membrane of the brain. It was called Cyto-megalo virus. There was no
modern allopathic medicine to treat it. But he suggested a life style
that would keep the virus under control, which was to take her out of
any stress-triggering environment. That was one difficult mission to
accomplish because her whole life had been with Kyokushin and its
movement… and given the amount of stress she felt by just looking at
what was happening, we almost felt hopeless.
When I was told Mother only had few months to live, I didn’t know
what to do. All I could do was to stay with the news, moment to moment,
trying to digest it’s meaning mentally and mindfully. In fact, I
couldn’t bring myself to utter that fact to anyone. But I thought of
Sosai during those times. Mother had always said, “When I am
reincarnated I hope to be with Sosai again.” Those words imprinted
themselves so strongly onto my mind. I had to bring her close to where
her husband was. I wanted to move her closer to Honbu, which she had
built with her husband.
Coincidentally, the doctor who operated on her ulcers was a big
fan of Sosai. At first he didn’t say anything but when one saw how
Mother was treated, I felt so much of Sosai’s presence all around. He
made sure all her tests were done by the most efficient doctors at
hospital. He made sure to talk to her whenever he walked passed her bed
or encouraged the nurses to do the same. Mother was tended to the nines,
so much so that she was glowing in the intensive care unit, and that
made me realize she had perhaps been lacking the attention she needed
all along. She smiled so beautifully at everyone that the nurses
actually enjoyed their shifts. Her presence lightened the hearts in the
room.
During her stay, the doctors
told me the x-rays showed she had a black shadow in her stomach. They
ran a test to see if it was cancerous and it came back as level 5
carcinoma. It wasn’t a shock to me; it was more like a confirmation of
her suffering that manifested in the physical form. We all know cancers
can be stress related. Some healers say that cancer is the eating away
of oneself, a longstanding resentment of grief and deep hurt. I just
didn’t expect it then.
The doctor, as perfect a doctor
as he could be, advised me to tend her and to let her go. He didn’t word
it exactly like that but he said, “If we operate her, she may never
regain her consciousness and I think her feeling and seeing you and
other family members as much as possible is the best treatment she can
get.” The practice of non-attachment was starting. I had many
attachments that felt vitally important. Protecting the environment,
working towards peace and harmony… but the one person that sustained me
and had given me inspiration to serve was going away and I had to let go
with comfort and ease so she could finally be united again with her soul
mate, Sosai.
In the Bhagavad Gita—the classic yogic text—Krishna advises
Arjuna, the warrior who is reluctant to go to war, to go into battle as
into every experience of life with full awareness but without
attachment. It is not up to us to win or lose, whether we survive or
not. How things will work out is ultimately in the hands of higher
power. Arjuna simply had to do what is right without any expectation,
good or bad.
One of the hardest attachments to let go is the ones we love. We
are brought up into thinking that life owes us something. We can’t
contemplate dying young—our mind recoils from the thought we can be
forced out of our bodies. My
yoga teacher reminded me of something that helped me embrace the
situation a little more, “Everyone dies alone. No one can go with you at
that time. The only friend who can go with you is your mantra”. He also
reminded me that the less Mother had to worry “here” the easier it would
be for her to go. So my
daily chanting started.
Mother was a saintly woman. Machida Kyōsuke, who is now
supporting Matsui, was one of the very first students of Sosai in
Tateyama. He told me people used to call her ‘Bodai satsu sama’
(Bodhisattva) whenever she walked out around her house. She did
japa (chanting) while I was in
her tummy, taught me the Hannya Shingyo (Heart Sutra) and geomancy. She did
O-hyakudo mairi, a form of
austere religious observance, whenever there were tournaments, when
Sosai left overseas, when my second sister went abroad. She lived many
things that would be called karma
yoga, spiritual discipline through her actions, although I never
looked at it that way at the time.
Now she was faced with one of
the hardest form of spiritual practice: watching herself disintegrate.
And she was doing it so well, so gracefully with awareness; it put me
and all the Kyokushin problems to shame to complain about anything. She
never complained or said she was in pain. The caretakers, nurses and
doctors were surprised at how she overcame numerous fevers and so much
loss of blood. We were able to celebrate her birthday and the New Year
with her.
But the time came surely. June 4th was Sosai’s
birthday and she had her first seizure on that day. It was as though he
came to her. She was fighting fever and I could see she was weakening.
Even so, every once in a while she would say, ‘Arigatou’—thank you,
especially when I kissed her on her eyelids. She was just adorable by
nature. I was on my way back from another prefecture when the nurse
called to tell me her blood pressure was dropping alarmingly. I gripped
my cell phone and started my mantra chanting on the Bullet Train back to
Tokyo. I could feel my heart tightening.
I got off at Ikebukuro station
and hurried out the Metropolitan exit, going thru all the familiar
passages to get to the hospital across from Honbu.
When I walked into the room,
Mother was struggling for her breathe. But as soon I popped my head over
her face, she smiled thru the oxygen mask. This is the woman battling
her own life, yet she is smiling at me, encouraging me not to be scared!
Those last hours with her changed me forever. My husband came in with my
son, who was already in bed when I had called. The doctor came in and
said if her heart failed, they would not perform any resuscitation since
her bones were too weak to handle the pressure. She was not on any
painkillers so she was aware of all the conversation that went on in the
room. While she went back and forth between seizures and having the
phlegm blocking the air passage, I held her hand and kissed her. Her
hands were incredibly soft, and warm.
Around midnight, her pulse
started to stabilize. The helpers and nurses all nodded off while I
scrunched over beside her bed, talking and chanting to her. As I also
started to nod off, I felt her breathing slowing down. I looked over and
she was looking straight ahead, her eyes calm, a beautiful deep black. I
had a feeling she wasn’t suffering but nevertheless taking in her last
breaths. I talked to her and reminded her she would soon be greeted by
her parents and Sosai. As the frequency of her inhalations slowly
started to lessen, tears came to my eyes. I loved her so much and I know
I was never able to give her the best she deserved.
I wiped my tears and touched her
face and told her she had nothing to feel she left unfinished here.
Everything she had come here for was already done. She just came to be
with the person who changed the world with his strong will for justice
at a time when people needed to have the belief that they could make the
change they needed. And he did make changes and left us this gift of
Kyokushin Karate. If it was not for her part, he would not have been the
same. So I saw that she was just returning now to the person who was
waiting for her, so she had nothing to worry about.
Mother was so beautiful as her
breath went into eternity that I had such urge to photograph her. Of
course I didn’t but I have never seen such serenity! I knew all she
wanted was to be with her husband again and he probably came to greet
her. The room was warm and the air calm. It was exactly 4 am.
Kuristina Oyama
Hold on to what is good, even if it’s just a handful
of earth. And hold on to what you believe, even if it is a tree which
stands by itself. Hold on to what you must do, even if it is a long way
from where you are. Hold on to life, even when it is easier to let go.
Hold on to my hand, even when I have gone away from you.
Pueblo Verse