Forgiveness

by Mark Sakamoto

  Mom hadn’t wanted a funeral. She never did anything for show. Why should she have one now?

  But funerals are for the living. We needed closure, we needed one another. We gathered a few days later at the Saamis Memorial Funeral Chapel, a converted old brick farmhouse at the bottom of Scholten Hill, at the opposite end of Kingsway from the food bank.

  Mom hadn’t known a preacher. So we brought in a sergeant from the Salvation Army. At 11 a.m., people began to arrive. Daniel and I greeted everyone at the door—cousins, friends from City Hall … the faces washed over me. Daniel and I waited until everyone was in and then took our places in the first pew to the left. In a court of law, it’s where the defendant would have sat. Bagpipes played. The minister said a few words. I heard hardly any of it.

  Then it was our turn to speak. Daniel and I walked up the three steps. Daniel read a letter first. I can’t remember a single word he said. When he finished he stepped to the side, and I put my hands on each side of the lectern. I was bracing myself. Daniel softly placed his hand on mine. Immediately I pulled my hand away. I was afraid if I felt any softness, I’d crumble.

  I asked the folks in the room to remember my mom as she once was, to remember her spirit, her grace, her spunk. I told them to remember their delight, not their sorrow, to let those memories—those delights—be her final resting place. I told friends and family I had found solace. I lied: I felt neither grace nor solace. I felt fear. I felt a mighty undercurrent and I was petrified it would sweep me under.

  I felt ashamed. I felt guilty.

  After Christmas, I packed up for my return to Halifax. I had just one stop to make before heading out of town. I had to pick up Mom’s ashes.

  I drove back to the funeral home. What was left of her cremated body was handed to me packed into a white plastic medicine bottle. Her name was taped to it. She was bottle number S7. I packed her into my suitcase, wrapped in a plastic Safeway grocery bag.

  I thought I was fine.

  I was wrong.

  I began drifting before the jet’s wheels touched down in Halifax. I did not sleep for three days. Jade was relieved to have me home and under her careful, watchful eyes. I pretended to be happy to see her. The blues and whites of late-night television washed over my dull face. I knew she was lying in bed, eyes wide open too. I knew she knew.

  I maintained my routine. Shower, breakfast, class. I mastered the art of pretense. Everything was good. Except I did not take a single note in class for six weeks. I did not touch Jade in as many weeks. Night after night, I’d fall asleep in front of the television. I’d wake and stare blankly at the set for another few hours, waiting for dawn. I’d be out of the apartment before Jade awoke. The lectures washed over me. Constitutional Law, Evidence, Taxation. I couldn’t have cared less. I’d go for late-night walks in Point Pleasant Park. I’d stand at the water’s edge. The high midnight moon would use the ocean as a dance floor. Its clarity would pierce me.

  I was dulling myself. I was terrified. I could not shake the fear that had overcome me in the plane somewhere over New Brunswick. That fear struck me at my core. It was paralyzing.

  I was sleeping a couple hours a night. Around midnight, Jade would come out of the bathroom after washing up. She would lean over me on the couch and ask me to come to bed. I wouldn’t even look up.

  “In a bit.”

  She’d touch my shoulder or my arm as she left the room. I’d fall back asleep on the couch. Some nights, I’d wake and drag myself to bed. Most nights, I wouldn’t.

  This went on for three months. We spoke little. She was waiting for me to turn a corner that I could not even see. She was patient. I was lost. One night around 4 a.m., I came to bed. The moon was full. Jade was sitting up, looking out the window. I could see she hadn’t slept all night. I sat on the side of the bed. She slowly turned to face me.

  “Do you still love me?” she asked. She had been asking herself this question all night long. Tears pooled in her harvest-moon eyes.

  I felt my spine slump. I knew at that moment I had hit my own rock bottom.

  “Jade, I’m sorry. I’m in this fog. The only thing I know for sure is the answer to that question.”

  She had been my horizon. Behind me, in front of me, I had seen only her. But in that moment she seemed so far away. I seemed so far away from myself. We held each other as we fell asleep in our tiny, moonlit bedroom.

  “Remember what you’re made of,” she said.

  I cried tears of gratitude. For her. For Grandma Mitsue and Grandpa Ralph—for showing me a way out.

  After that night, things gradually improved for me. I bounced back. Jade pulled me up, pulled me out. Life regained colour. My studies became interesting again. I volunteered on a few political campaigns. Mostly, I stuck close to Jade.

  The night before I graduated from law school, I rented the Queen’s Suite at the Westin Nova Scotian. We could see our apartment from the massive balcony. That night, it felt as if we had never left the stairs of the college theatre. I proposed to my best friend. Jade told me that, in her mind, she had said yes three years earlier.

  I was offered a job at a Bay Street law firm, and we moved to Toronto a week later. One day that summer, my friend Sachin Aggarwal, a political organizer, asked me to join him on the patio at the Café Diplomatico in Little Italy. We had hardly said hello when he asked me what I thought of Michael Ignatieff. I had read most of his books while studying political science. I had especially liked Blood and Belonging. We discussed pros and cons as if the author weren’t a real person. Ignatieff was smart, good. His stand on the Iraq War, bad. All in all, a very interesting person with real potential to make an impact. The conversation did not have a speculative air to it.

  “He’s willing to run?” I said doubtfully.

  “We’re going to see tomorrow. Why don’t you join the conversation?”

  I was curious, so I went. A small group of Liberals, some middle-aged, some young, met Michael in one of the towers in which I had recently interviewed. He was indeed keen to run for the party. He wanted to discuss details. Which riding? How much money would we need to raise? How would the prime minister react? Mostly he wanted to know two things of the strangers seated around the table. Could we deliver? Could we be trusted? Michael was more concerned with the first question. His wife, Zsuzsanna Zsohar, a fierce Hungarian, was determined to know the answer to the second question.

  After Michael and Zsuzsanna left, we charted out a small tour for Michael. He hadn’t lived in Canada for some time; there were many people to meet and many places to visit. We all lived in Toronto, so that was easy. So was Ottawa and Montreal.

  Who knows anyone in Calgary? I put up my hand.

  Who knows anyone in Halifax? I put up my hand.

  “Okay, that settles it. Sakamoto will run the first tour.”

  Political tours aren’t much different than concert tours. Having worked with my uncle Ron on his music business, coordinating this tour was like hopping on a bike after years without riding. It is, after all, show biz. As we travelled together, Michael would become professorial, expounding on Cartier’s first exploratory voyage of 1534 as we flew across the Gulf of St. Lawrence, or walking me through Riel and the North-West Rebellion of 1885 as we passed high above the prairies. I was always more concerned about getting him and Zsuzsanna to our destination on time and in one piece.

  Our first tour ended in Calgary. We spent the day meeting local folks, oil executives, and a few journalists. Then I escorted them back to their hotel room.

  “Okay, guys,” I said, “I’m off to visit my brother. I’ll be back at 7 a.m. tomorrow to get you to the airport.”

  Michael stopped me on the way out and told me that he wanted me to know he and Zsuzsanna were both fond of me. I smiled and bowed my head a little. I had become fond of them too.

  I remained close to them throughout the coming months and years. When Michael became Leader of the Opposition, he asked me to come to Ottawa and work with him. Jade was rel
uctant. She didn’t want to live in Ottawa, but she didn’t want me to work out of town either. I told Michael that I could help out for only six months.

  During those six months, shuttling between my home in Toronto and Parliament Hill, I almost felt like I lived at Toronto’s island airport. During the week, I shared a condo with two old political pals, Alexis Levine and Sachin Aggarwal. My bedroom consisted of two mattresses, a toiletries bag, and the clothes I had brought with me that week.

  My first day at the office was a cold, dreary one. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end as I made my way up to Parliament Hill for the first time as an active participant. I stopped for a moment at the centennial flame. It flickered and danced. I thought of all the nights Mom and I had tuned in to watch Knowlton Nash. I was a long way from my Superman pyjamas and peanut butter toast. I was a long way from Medicine Hat. I was a long way from my mom. I tried to push that thought out of my mind. I did not want to be late for my first meeting.

  The Leader’s of the Opposition’s office is a cavernous, woodpanelled room. A few people huddled around Michael’s table. A hundred decisions awaited: staff hires, parliamentary positions, scheduling, Question Period, short-term strategy. We spoke for thirty minutes, then broke to get the first news cycle of the day and some breakfast.

  As we walked out of his office, Michael pointed to the large room next door, the Opposition boardroom. “That was King’s War Room,” he said. The current Opposition boardroom was never meant to be the Prime Minister’s Office. But Mackenzie King loved that room. When he was elected prime minister in 1920, he refused to relinquish it. In politics, real estate is everything. For the duration of King’s reign, that room remained the Prime Minister’s Office. He personally saw to its total renovation. HONOUR THY KING was inscribed in the archway above the boardroom’s main entry. Every major Canadian decision about the Second World War took place between those four walls.

  I took a deep breath. I had a meeting in that room in thirty minutes.

  I tried to maintain my composure while I met a few Members of Parliament in King’s War Room. The meeting lasted about thirty minutes and I don’t recall a single word spoken. I was thinking about the men who had once met around that very table, reviewing reports, sipping water, writing notes. Making decisions.

  Like the decision to send Ralph Augustus MacLean to war.

  Like the decision to intern Mitsue and Hideo Sakamoto.

  The decisions made within this room had sealed my grandparents’ fate. They had been condemned there, apprehended there, abandoned there. They had been left for dead there.

  That room had taken my grandpa MacLean to the brink of death. It had tried, convicted, and sentenced my Japanese grandparents. Perhaps, just perhaps, Prime Minister King had sat right where I was sitting now as he decided to intern every Canadian of Japanese descent, and when the decision was made to send two thousand young men to serve as a tripwire for fifty thousand battle-hardened Japanese soldiers.

  The decisions made right where I was sitting had caused tears, blood, and unspeakable hardship. I hated that room for what it had done to those I loved. And yet, but for the decisions made in that room, I most certainly would not be sitting there at all. I would not exist. But for the internment, my grandparents would never have left British Columbia for the cold, hard, southern Alberta prairies. But for his imprisonment, Grandpa MacLean would never have met my grandma when the returning soldiers stopped in Calgary to receive a hero’s welcome.

  Life happens one decision at a time. You have no idea where each will take you. Maybe it is fate. Maybe it is God’s will. Maybe everything does happen for a reason. All I know is that you have to find a reason in it. The reason is usually the future. I was inching closer to forgiveness.

  As I sat in King’s War Room, the sun broke through thick clouds, its light filtering in through the massive arched windows. The brightness seemed to open the room to me. And then it opened my country to me, illuminating, in that moment, in how precious few places in the world my family’s story—my grandparents’, my parents’, and mine—would be possible.

  Someone’s assistant knocked on the door. The room was booked for another meeting shortly. He must have wondered why I looked like I had just seen the face of God.

  CHAPTER 15

  Journey’s End

  Six months in Ottawa turned into a year. On a Tuesday morning, Jade called. She usually didn’t call quite as early as she did that day. She was nervous, I could tell. She couldn’t hold in her news for the forty-eight hours it would take for me to get back to Toronto.

  “I’m pregnant.”

  I beamed. Just beamed.

  “I’m coming home.”

  Nine months later, almost to the day, I sat alone in the hallway at St. Joseph’s Health Centre. Jade was on the other side of the green door. The baby was breach, so we had opted for a C-section. I watched as the doctors scrubbed up in an adjacent room. They were talking about their summer vacations. One to Italy, the other to France. After they entered the operating room through the side door, a nurse came to escort me in. I stood up, made sure my shoes were still covered by the hospital booties, shifted my gown, and straightened out my hairnet.

  The operating room was crowded with medical equipment, two doctors, and three nurses. I walked around the curtain that shielded Jade’s abdomen to see her face. She was trying to be strong, but she was scared. There were tears in her eyes.

  The doctor popped his head around the curtain.

  “We are about to start. We’ll be done in about five minutes.”

  Jade nodded and grasped my hand. I stroked her forehead. Her body shook a little as the doctors tugged at her on the other side of the curtain.

  In a few minutes, a nurse declared: “It’s a girl! Ten fingers, ten toes!”

  I kissed Jade’s cheek and she clutched my hand a little tighter. The nurse came around the curtain and put our little baby girl on the side gurney. She cleaned her off, prepping her for her first breath. I could see the baby move on the table, reacting to the touch of the towel. And then that newborn wail rang out.

  We both took a deep breath as our hearts soared. The nurse brought the baby close, a few pictures were taken, and then, suddenly, everyone was gone. Jade was rolled out to the recovery room. The last nurse in the room handed me the baby.

  “Here you go, Dad,” she said, and then she left.

  It was just the two of us. The room seemed much larger with the instruments cleared away. I looked down at our baby. I took two steps towards the door. She shifted. I stopped. She stilled herself. I had one foot in the room and one foot in the hallway when she opened her eyes wide. She was staring right at me. Doctors will say a baby cannot see so soon after arriving in the world. But I know she saw me. It took one look, just one, to vanquish the fear that had struck me in the plane high over New Brunswick.

  I stayed the night in the hospital. While Jade was recovering I paced the room with the baby. Fear gone, I knew I had a job to do. I had to come to this task with an open heart. I could feel the sadness rising. I wished Mom would open the door and peek in, hold the baby. Laugh, cry, smile. I knew I had to make my peace with her. So I could laugh, cry, and smile. Jade woke and grimaced as she sat up. She held out her arms and I placed the little one in her arms. They were beautiful together.

  The night before we went into the hospital, I had been reading The Tale of Genji aloud. I had told Jade I liked the name Miya.

  Jade looked at me now. It was dawn.

  “How about Miya Mitsue?”

  I nodded and choked out a thank you.

  My grandparents bore witness to the worst in humanity. Yet they also managed to illuminate the finest in humanity. Their hearts were my home. I saw none of the ugliness they had. I felt none of the bitterness.

  How on earth did they manage that?

  Forgiveness is moving on. It is a daily act that looks forward. Forgiveness smiles.

  I had never said I’m sorry to my mom. She
had never sought my forgiveness. Now that she was gone, where could I go from here? Where could I seek salvation? How could I find reprieve from my anger at her for leaving me behind? Could I absolve myself for my own sins? I thought I had missed my opportunity for forgiveness. But I realized now that forgiveness is not a transaction. It is not an exchange. Forgiveness has nothing to do with the past.

  Like her love, Mom’s forgiveness was a tough forgiveness. It was years in the making. It had peaks and valleys. But Miya Mitsue had brought me to the journey’s end. My heart was her home. She deserved room to grow, to be free, to smile.

  My mom’s final gift to me was forgiveness. It was the hardest lesson she ever taught me.

  I was finally ready to let her go.

  Saying goodbye, really saying goodbye, is the hardest thing we humans do. We make stuff up—absurd tales—to avoid its searing pain. I had avoided, stalled, hidden, overcompensated, lied, cheated, and closed myself off to avoid that pain. There was just so much unfinished business.

  Mom’s ashes were still in the white bottle, wrapped in the plastic Safeway bag, stuffed into a metal business case, and crammed in the back of our bedroom closet.

  I flew home to Medicine Hat and rented a car at the Calgary airport. It was dusk and I drove south with the sun setting in my rear-view mirror. I listened to Dire Straights’s Brothers in Arms sixteen times through. I could see Mom smiling and dancing in the living room mirror, green jumpsuit, frosted hair. For those two-and-half hours, in my mind, we were having a ball.

  I hadn’t given Dad and Susan much of a heads-up about coming home. They knew I was in Alberta, but did not know the purpose of the trip. I didn’t want much fanfare. I didn’t want a big dinner. I didn’t want to deal with other visitors. I just wanted to quietly say goodbye. I wanted to be on my own. I would have stayed at a hotel and been in and out, but you just can’t do that in Medicine Hat. You can’t get a litre of milk without running into someone you know.

  I wanted to be with my mom and I knew where she wanted to be.