Remembering a life filled with love

 

I was touched to read about a husband's tribute to his deceased wife in Japan.

In a poem she left behind at her bedside, Yoko Miyamoto prayed for just one healthy week to do some final things for her husband.

“God, please, get me out of this hospital room and give me seven healthy days,” Miyamoto wrote at the start of her poem titled “Seven Days.” “I want to stand in the kitchen on the first day and cook a lot of dishes. I will cook gyoza dumplings and ‘nikumiso’ (miso-flavored braised ground pork), your favorites. I will also have curry and stew frozen for you.”

Yoko, who had been battling cancer, died in January last year at age 70 before her wish could be granted.

Her husband, Eiji, 72, felt compelled to write the poem in a post published in The Asahi Shimbun’s “Koe” (voices) column, thanking his wife for their 52 years together.

. . .

After the post was published, it unexpectedly generated a huge response and was shared by about 190,000 people on social networking sites. Their story was turned into a book in the summer last year and went on to garner even more sympathetic responses ... The poem was also adapted into a song, which was released as a CD single in June this year.

. . .

“The last conversation I had with Yoko was when we had dinner in her hospital room and she said, ‘You should eat first,’ and then I said, ‘OK, I will,” Miyamoto recalled. “She fell asleep and died at dawn. If I had known it would be our last meal together, I would have wanted to say, ‘thank you.’ ”

“Thank you” was also Yoko’s last message to Eiji.

“When I was putting away her belongings after she died, I found a notebook,” he added.

Yoko wrote in a meticulous manner: “It has been fun days since I met you … Thank you for the long time together. I have always loved you so much.”

There's more at the link.

May Yoko rest in peace, and may her husband join her when his time comes.

Love can be a blessing for far more than just the people involved.  By sharing his wife's last poem, Mr. Miyamoto has blessed many people, as the response to his article shows.  Even though I live many thousands of miles away from him, it's been a blessing to me, too:  and I hope, by sharing it here, it'll be a blessing to you as well, dear readers.

I'll let St. Paul have the last word.

Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal.  And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.  And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, but have not love, it profits me nothing.

Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up;  does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil;  does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth;  bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Love never fails.

. . .

And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

Peter