This happened 22 years ago. Yet a death in the family cannot be counted in years. It’s always as if yesterday. With Japan’s season of obon just past, the time seems appropriate to look again at that somber “yesterday” when my wife’s mother passed away. Two years back, I posted a column that described her initial decline into failing health. To read that again, please click here. Never was she hospitalized. We had care workers dropping by the house daily. She died in her bedro

One of our family has become a Buddhist. The new Buddhist is not my Japanese wife, who professes Christianity. Nor is it her kin, who advance the sukiyaki approach to religious faith, as in: whatever adds a little flavor is welcome to the mix. No, the family Buddhist is my dog. The story behind this is approximately 14 years long. One third-grade morning, my second son found a frisky puppy outside his classroom window.

She figured the last sight she would ever see would be that of a bear-sized American soldier chopping at her with a bayonet.