FROM GRAVE, BACK TO LIFE
When Shigako and I arrived at her family home in her childhood village, Kase in Aomori, one of the first things we did was visiting our ancestral grave-site. There is something about this practice, as if to say, we are here to honour you. We don't know very much about the worlds beyond death. We can only know the reality of this world with our senses. So with all our senses , we are here to connect with your lives, you who have gone beyond.
Shigako took me on a walk about, guiding me to the village grave site, where the bones of our ancestors rest, as do those of other village folks, other kins. Solemnly she found the grave. Written on it was Kidachi Mangoro, her grandfather, the sake maker, a martial artist, a lake restorer. I never met him, but I had spent time with mother's grandmother, Mangoro's life-partner, Kaa as my mother and her sisters addressed her charmingly.
My mother and her sisters are full of stories of their ancestors. Just the other day when we put a dish of pickles on the table, they said 'oooh, Kaa's pickles were so superb. They were even thinking to make a business of her pickles, even to take them so far away as Tokyo to sell them, they were that good.' In my mind, when I heard this story I conjure up the thought of her excellent partnership with the bacterial world to make excellent fermented food. My grandfather must have had a similar partnership with the bacterial kingdom to have been a sake maker in his time. We still have the huge wooden barrels in which he made his potent brews in the family workshop.
Mangoro had a keen connection with nature. Apparently he had a hand in restoring several large water bodies in the areas they lived. My mother tells me how he used to go out frequently to work on the lakes. She took me to a large body of water, a lake in their village one day. This is one of the projects he worked on. He had the foresight to see that restoring the lake would increase the biodiversity and the life-force of the land as a whole. The family received a letter of recognition from none other than the Emperor of Japan, for Mangoro's earth healing activities.
Going to a grave-site may feel like an end of the line, like you go so far and no more, because the dead don't talk. But I feel they do. I felt a great kinship, like coming home. I felt an unbroken bond with Mangoro and Kaa. So he was an earth healer too, and so was she in her own ways, in her weird and wonderful partnership with the bacterial kingdom. Sometimes I feel the ancestors are not too far, and death is not the end of the road. It may just be the beginning of a wonder-filled adventure. How strange that I am finding myself treading the path that my ancestors have trail blazed, but in other parts of the world. How mysterious death is. How wonderful to be alive, to reconnect with the ancestors, to know that they return, in ways I couldn't know, but can only feel their presence in my life.
Shigako took me on a walk about, guiding me to the village grave site, where the bones of our ancestors rest, as do those of other village folks, other kins. Solemnly she found the grave. Written on it was Kidachi Mangoro, her grandfather, the sake maker, a martial artist, a lake restorer. I never met him, but I had spent time with mother's grandmother, Mangoro's life-partner, Kaa as my mother and her sisters addressed her charmingly.
My mother and her sisters are full of stories of their ancestors. Just the other day when we put a dish of pickles on the table, they said 'oooh, Kaa's pickles were so superb. They were even thinking to make a business of her pickles, even to take them so far away as Tokyo to sell them, they were that good.' In my mind, when I heard this story I conjure up the thought of her excellent partnership with the bacterial world to make excellent fermented food. My grandfather must have had a similar partnership with the bacterial kingdom to have been a sake maker in his time. We still have the huge wooden barrels in which he made his potent brews in the family workshop.
Mangoro had a keen connection with nature. Apparently he had a hand in restoring several large water bodies in the areas they lived. My mother tells me how he used to go out frequently to work on the lakes. She took me to a large body of water, a lake in their village one day. This is one of the projects he worked on. He had the foresight to see that restoring the lake would increase the biodiversity and the life-force of the land as a whole. The family received a letter of recognition from none other than the Emperor of Japan, for Mangoro's earth healing activities.
Going to a grave-site may feel like an end of the line, like you go so far and no more, because the dead don't talk. But I feel they do. I felt a great kinship, like coming home. I felt an unbroken bond with Mangoro and Kaa. So he was an earth healer too, and so was she in her own ways, in her weird and wonderful partnership with the bacterial kingdom. Sometimes I feel the ancestors are not too far, and death is not the end of the road. It may just be the beginning of a wonder-filled adventure. How strange that I am finding myself treading the path that my ancestors have trail blazed, but in other parts of the world. How mysterious death is. How wonderful to be alive, to reconnect with the ancestors, to know that they return, in ways I couldn't know, but can only feel their presence in my life.
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