Saturday, 09 August 2008

• Love, Suicide and Life

  Closing my hand, I pushed the habaki out of its saya, and let the tip of my thumb brush against the cold steel of my blade along its clouded hamon edge.  My fingers lightly gripped the tightly wrapped silk, and I felt my blade float free.
  
  
  
  My eyes closed, I listened to the waves sliding through the small rocks at our feet that lined the shore of the bay where we stood.  I felt the wind, cold and moist from the breath of the ocean against my face.  As I breathed in, the salty, pungent scent of the sea filled my nostrils.  I held the breath in my lungs for a moment, and then exhaled deeply.  The taste of the adrenaline in my mouth faded, and was replaced by calm.
  
  "I'm ready."  I heard Toshiro exhale.
  
  I opened my eyes.
  
  The night had fallen long ago, but the dark violet tinge to the black sky reminded me of the last of the fading light after sunset.  Stars filled the sky from the mountains to the east to the city skyline in the west and the entire bowl of vast ocean that lay to the south in front of us.  It was a calm night, quiet and still now that the rain had passed.  The moon floated three hands high above the horizon where ocean met sky, casting a silver light on the slowly approaching waves and on the thin clouds in the distance.
  
  I nodded to Toshiro.
  
  My thumb brushed against the Matsudaira clan mon engraved into the habaki of the shinken katana I held in my hand.  Tonight, as warriors of my family have done for a hundred generations, I would have the honor of aiding my best friend in seppuku -- here at the edge of the bay that we came to together for the years we knew each other.  Here, where as children we practiced our kenjutsu with our bamboo boken.  Here, where as young men we came to retreat from the pains of our lives.  Here, where now as warriors, we would now execute Toshiro's final solution.
  
  I heard his wakizashi slide free from its saya, as he took a deep breath.
  
  
  
  
  
  

  *****
  

  
  
  
  
  Seven years later, I stood at the podium at Toshiro's wedding, and I remembered that night as we stood along the edge of the bay.
  
  The woman he thought was the love of his life told him, just hours before, that she no longer loved him and instead was leaving the state to be with another man -- a man who Toshiro already dispised for his dishonest, dishonorable, rodent-like personality.  To lose the love of his life to a man like this was a dishonor he could not bear.  After slicing his wrists with an X-acto knife unsuccessfully, he called me near three o'clock in the morning and told me to pick him up.  He asked me to help him die in the way our ancestors did -- by seppuku... by ritual suicide.
  
  At his wedding reception, seven years later, I gave the best man speech based on one of our favorite songs -- a song that first brought us together over sake and sushi and laid the foundation of our lifelong friendship.  This song is called "The Last Song" by X-Japan, and my best man speech was based on this song.  This is part of that speech:
  
  
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  

  ...In the depths of suffering, Toshiro called me up in the middle of the night, one night; and we took our swords, and went to the edge of the sea.  There, at the edge of sanity, so close to the end, under the cloudless sky, there was this song.   It starts like this:     Watching the stars till they're gone Like an actor all alone Who never knew the story he was in Who never knew the story ends Like the sky reflecting my heart All the colors become visible When the morning begins I'll read the last line     The next line in the song is my favorite.  It goes:     Owarana-i ame daki-shi-meta yoru ga asa wo muka-eru kokoro wa ma-da nu-re-ta mama   (Endless rain embraced me as night approaches morning My heart is not yet soaked)   I told him that night that fate, that destiny, had a reason for everything; and that while he and I were suffering at the hands of fate -- that one day the night would pass into morning and the seemingly endless rain in our lives would cease.   In the endless rain I've been walking Like a poet feeling pain Trying to find the answers Trying to hide the tears But it was just a circle That never ends When the rain stops, I'll turn the page The page of the first chapter     I swore to him many things that night, one of them being that I would be there beside him when the endless rain ceased, when we could finally turn that first page of the next chapter...

  
  
  
  
  
  That night seven years earlier, Toshiro didn't plunge his wakizashi into his gut and disembowel himself.  I didn't aid him by decapitating him with a single, clean tameshigiri cut to the back of his neck.  Toshiro wasn't dead.  And seven years later, I wasn't in prison for murder.  Instead, that night we found renewed hope, and seven years later I found myself at his wedding, marrying the woman that ceased his endless rain.
  
  Toshiro and I live our lives by an old Japanese proverb.  Translated, it means:
  
  
  
  

  Live as a man
  Die as a man
  Become a man
  

  
  
  
  We met in seventh grade, in that group of eight whose fates became inexplicably intertwined as we formed that first circle of desks in Ms. Tsoulos' class.  He and Christy became an item soon afterwards, like me and Katie.  They left our school to go back to their home districts. but not before Toshiro convinced me to join his Kendo dojo where I stayed for many years afterwards -- where he and I became best friends.
  
  We came to that very same bay as teenagers, as kendoka, looking for others to practice our kendo with out of class.  We formed a small group who would meet at the edge of that bay, and we would hold informal practice sessions there on the hard-packed sand.  We thought that place, those times, made us into men.
  
  What we didn't realize was that it was that night we went there to commit seppuku that we became men. 
  
  
  

  It was when we faced death, and looked it in the eye, and without fear of death or any punishment neither human nor divine, made a choice.
  
  A choice to live.

  
  
  Yamato Damashii does not require one to die.  Yamato Damashii requires one to live as if he is already dead -- to fear nothing, to never surrender, and to never give up.  To live as if one is already dead, and has been given a second chance to live the life he lived over again.
  
  Becoming men that night on the edge of the bay, with our shinken katana ready to commit seppuku, wasn't about going through with the act.  It was being able to face death, and then choose to live...
  
  
  

  ...because while fear of death is dishonorable and cowardly, fear to live is even more dishonorable and cowardly. 

  
  
  That night, after standing at the edge of the moonlit bay for hours, I finally returned my shinken katana to its saya and let its habaki click back into place.  We walked out to the farthest point in the bay we could, stepping along rocks until we were completely surrounded by water, and stopped when the ocean would lap at our feet.  There, we talked -- about Christy, about the past, and about the future.  We talked about life ahead, and we talked about the essence of Yamato Damashii.
  
  
  That night, my romantic notions of ending one's life through suicide ended.  I realized that night that suicide was not about dying honorably -- it was about running from life. 
  
  It was about giving up the fight.  It was about succumbing to the struggle. 
  
  
  
  
  
  

  *****
  

  
  
  
  
  
  As I sat in the chair beside Reiko's bed in the ICU, I remembered that night; and I remembered the things Reiko told me when she slipped back into consciousness.
  
  
  She told me that everything was a struggle, that ever since she was young, she always struggled.  People expected her to do this, and that -- and at every step of the way, she struggled.  She told me she didn't expect me to understand, because everything came easily to me -- but she didn't want to struggle anymore.  She wanted the struggle to end, because the struggle had overwhelmed her and she felt as if the value of living wasn't worth the struggle to live.
  
  The thing that worries me the most about Reiko right now is that she didn't go to the brink like Toshiro and I did.  Yes, she faced death -- but she succumbed to it; and the only reason she's still alive is because we brought her back... not because she chose to live.  She didn't make that choice to live.
  
  Toshiro's story had a happy ending.  Seven years after that night by the bay, I was his best man in a wedding where he married the true love of his life.  Reiko's story though, I was not sure of.  But the lesson here is that choosing death is final.  Things may be bad now, and the struggle may be difficult -- but we never know what the future holds for us; and for us to give up the chance for a better life ahead is foolish.  If we end our lives, we will never know.  For Toshiro, it was finding Mariya.  For Reiko, who knew what it would be.
  
  I finished my seven-minute best man speech at Toshiro's wedding that night:
  
  
  
  
  

  Tonight, I give away my best friend to the only woman who is worthy of him. The song ends in a fitting way: I see red I see blue but the silver lining gradually takes over when the morning begins I'll be in the next chapter     The silver lining on the clouds does gradually take over.  The rain eventually stops.  And the morning always follows the night.  This song, called "The Last Song" was the first song for me and Toshiro.  It was something else for us back then, a song that talked about the end -- about suicide.  Tonight, this "Last Song" is indeed the last song for the last falling of rain before this night ends and the morning comes.      The cycle we began so many years ago, in the depth of night, in the baptism of rain, ends now.   Tomorrow, Toshiro and Mariya will wake up for the first time as husband and wife, as the light of the rising sun finally extinguishes the darkness of night and owaranai ame, the endless rain, is finally no more.

  
  
  
  
  Toshiro's endless rain was finally no more.
  
  
  

  I wish Reiko had done the same thing.  I wish she had told me... I wish she'd come to me and told me that she wanted to end her life. 
  
  Although my romantic notions of suicide are long gone, I would have wanted to be there with her -- to approach the brink with her, to let her hold the liquor and the pills in her hand, and stand there at the edge between life and death with her and let her stare death in the eye.

  
  
  ...to stare death in the eye, and be able to feel no fear and instead choose to live.
  
  But this didn't happen.
  
  And now my duty to her became more difficult, although it is not one that I would flee from.  I would do whatever it took for her.
  
  Suicide and death are not pretty, romantic things.  I spent almost twelve hours in the emergency room with Reiko that first day, and the memories of what she had degenerated into, I will carry in my heart for the rest of my life.  It's not a thing of flowers and eloquent speaking for the dead.  There is no beauty in death, and there is certainly no beauty in being alive but dying. 
  
  What I needed Reiko to know is that the rain does eventually stop.  The silver lining on the clouds does gradually take over.  And one day she would wake up, and find herself in the next chapter.  And I would be right there beside her, doing whatever it takes, to bring her into this new life.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

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