“Looking back now it seems kind of funny.”
“Yeah, it does.”
“The sashimi was delicious.”
“We should go again.”
“Yes, we should. But I don’t think that’s really a possibility.”
Mom spoke matter-of-factly, mentioning several times that she thought it wouldn’t happen. I couldn’t find it in me to respond to what she was saying.
“So I guess Dad hasn’t come, right?”
I couldn’t take the silence over that elephant in the room anymore.
“No, I guess not . . .”
“I told him he should come, but he just said that he’d visit after he finished repairing the watch he was working on.”
“Oh, did he . . .”
Mom had a favorite wristwatch that she wore all the time. It was that watch that Dad was repairing. It was the only wristwatch she ever owned . . . which was kind of odd when you consider the fact that she’d married a man who repaired clocks for a living.
“What’s so special about that watch?”
“It’s the first present your father ever gave me.”
“Oh, so that’s it.”
“He made it himself using antique parts from his collection.”
“So he actually did something nice for once?”
“He did. You know, he’s really very sweet. He just finds it difficult to express himself.”
Mom sounded so young when she talked about Dad like this, erupting in girlish laughter.
“Last week your father came to see me, and I told him my watch wasn’t running. So he just took it with him when he left, without saying anything. I guess he planned on repairing it.”
“But why decide to do it now of all times?”
“Don’t worry about it. I’m happy you’re here, but people are different. There are different ways of showing you love someone.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“That’s just the way it is.”
It was the last time we ever spoke. Soon after that, she took a turn for the worse and within an hour she was dead.
I called the shop over and over again, but Dad didn’t come. He finally arrived half an hour after she’d died. He held Mom’s wristwatch in his hands. He hadn’t been able to get it going again. Mom’s lifeless body lay there, still, and I cursed him. Why now? Why at a time like this? I just couldn’t understand him, however Mom tried to explain it.
They took Mom to the funeral home, leaving the hospital room empty and still. Where Mom had been there was only a clean white sheet . . . It was more than I could take. On the bedside sat her wristwatch. She always had it on her. It was like a part of her body. And now all the life had gone out of it. The wristwatch had become a piece of useless rubbish. Suddenly I remembered Lettuce’s red collar, and the thought of it made the pain even worse. I picked the watch up and held it close to my heart, and found myself sobbing there, alone.
I never spoke to my father again, after that day.
Even now I can’t say how things got so bad between me and my father. We used to be a happy family. We were close. We would go out to eat together and go on holiday. But somehow over time, for no reason I could think of, the foundations that my relationship with my father was built on simply rotted away.
But we’re family. You just take it for granted that they’ll always be there and that you’ll muddle along somehow. I always believed that. I never questioned such an obvious assumption. But ironically enough, because we both believed in this unspoken truth, my father and I never bothered to talk to each other, to ask how the other was feeling, or what they were thinking about. We both went on believing that whatever we felt as individuals must be the way it really was.
But it doesn’t work that way. Instead of thinking of family as just being there, you need to think of it as something you do. Family is a verb—you “do family.” My father and I were two separate individuals who just happened to be related by blood. And because we accepted and lived with the distance that had grown between us for so long, eventually the last thread connecting us broke.
Even when Mom got sick my father and I never spoke to each other. We both put our own needs and what we were going through first. We didn’t think about Mom and what she needed. Even as Mom started to feel worse and worse, she carried on doing the housework, and though I think part of me knew, I still didn’t take her to see the doctor. I just blamed my father for expecting her to continue doing the housework, even in her condition. And I suppose he blamed me for not taking her to see the doctor. When the end came, I only cared about being by Mom’s side, while the only thing Dad seemed to care about was repairing her watch. Even Mom’s death couldn’t bring us together.
I ran and ran with no idea where I was going, and I still couldn’t find Cabbage anywhere. Had cats really disappeared from the world? Had I made Cabbage disappear? Would I never see Cabbage again? Would I never get to touch his soft fur again, to feel his warmth against my body, touch his dangling tail or his fleshy paws, or feel the thumping of his little heart?
Now both Mom and Lettuce were gone, and maybe Cabbage was gone too. I didn’t want to be left alone. I was grief-stricken, angry, anxious, and in pain. My eyes began to fill with tears. I kept on running, forcing my legs to keep moving, panting now, my mouth open and dry. I ran and ran until my head started to hurt again and I collapsed onto the cold stone pavement. I carried on, crawling awkwardly on the ground.
Then I recognized the paving stones. I looked up and realized that I had reached the square where I met my old girlfriend the other day. I’d just run the same distance it took the tram thirty minutes to complete. I was too late. The feel of the cold stone pavement brought reality crashing down on me. I had eliminated cats. I had made Cabbage disappear from the world.
But just then I heard a meow. I thought I could make it out, coming from a distance. I stood up mechanically. Then I heard it again. I ran toward the sound. Was I dreaming? Or was it real? My head was spinning and I couldn’t think straight. I forced myself to run even though my feet felt like lead weights. Following the meowing I found myself standing in front of a red-brick building. It was the movie theater.
Again the same meow. Cabbage was there, on the counter in the movie theater. In the same position he always adopted, he was stretched out with his tail dangling over the counter’s edge. He jumped gracefully onto the floor and walked toward me, letting out another meow. I picked him up and squeezed him tight. Feeling his soft fur and hearing him purr gave me the sense that this was what life was all about.
“It’s good you two found each other again.”
There she stood in front of us. Of course. My ex-girlfriend. She lived here, after all.
“I was so surprised when Cabbage turned up here on his own.”
“Thank you. I’m so relieved.”
“And there you go crying again. You haven’t changed at all, have you?”
Only then did I realize that tears were streaming down my face. It was embarrassing, but I was just too happy for words. Cabbage hadn’t disappeared. He was back in my arms. I wiped the tears away and got back to my feet.
“Well, this must have been your mother’s doing.”
“What do you mean?”
She handed me a letter. It was addressed to me. It had a stamp, but no postmark, meaning that it had never been sent. Someone wrote it but then never mailed it.
“It’s from your mother. She had me keep it for you.”
“From Mom?”
“That’s right. Back when your mother was in the hospital I paid her a visit, and she asked me to hold on to it.”
I had no idea until now that my old girlfriend had visited my mother when she was in the hospital. I was finding it hard to believe, but took the letter from her anyway.
“Your mother wrote you the letter while she was in hospital, but she just couldn’t send it. She was afraid that she would never see you again once you’d read it. So she asked me to give it to you if you were ever goin
g through a really hard time.”
“I see . . .”
“At first I turned her down because I had broken up with you years before, and I didn’t expect to see you again. But then she said it didn’t matter if you never got it. She just wanted someone to have the letter. And then, when I saw that Cabbage had turned up here today and that you were beside yourself in tears, I realized that it was time to give you the letter.”
“Now?”
“She did say to give it to you if you were going through a difficult time.”
“Right . . .”
“Your mother was really great. She just knew things. It was like she had magical powers or something.”
Hearing herself say this, she laughed.
I sat down on the sofa in the theater lobby and put Cabbage on my lap.
Then I carefully opened the letter. On the top of the first page in large letters (she had beautiful handwriting) it said: “Ten things I want to do before I die.” The title was a bit of an anticlimax. So both mother and son, without knowing it, had written the same thing. I couldn’t help but laugh and carried on to the second page.
I don’t have much longer to live, so I thought I’d note down ten things I’d like to do before I die. I’d like to travel, and enjoy delicious gourmet meals, and I’d like to kit myself out in some really stylish clothes. But then, as I wrote these things I began to wonder. Was this really the kind of thing that was important to me? Is this really what I want to do before I die? I started a new list when suddenly I realized that all of the things I wanted to do before I died were for you. Your life will go on for many years beyond mine, and in the course of that life there’ll be both good times and bad. You’ll experience joy, but there will also be times of sadness and pain. So I decided to write down ten beautiful things about you so that whenever you’re going through a difficult time, you’ll be given the courage and self-belief to go on.
So instead of a list of ten things I want to do before I die, this is what I wrote.
Things that are beautiful and good about you:
When people are sad, you’re able to cry along with them.
And when people are happy you’re able to share their joy with them.
You look really sweet when you’re asleep.
Your dimples when you smile.
Your habit of rubbing your nose when you’re worried or anxious.
Your concern for the needs of others.
Whenever I caught a cold you helped with the housework, and acted like you enjoyed doing it.
You always ate whatever I cooked as if it were the most delicious thing in the world.
How you’d think deeply and ponder over things.
And after all that brooding you always seemed to come up with the best solution to the problem.
As you go on with your life, always remember the things that are good in you. They’re your gifts. As long as you have these things, you’ll find happiness, and you’ll make the people around you happy. Thank you for everything you’ve done for me. And goodbye. I hope you always keep hold of these things that are so beautiful about you.
The tears rolled down and fell on the letter like warm, salty drops of rain. I quickly wiped them off, not wanting to ruin a letter that mattered so much. But when I tried to stop I just cried more and more, and the letter got wetter and wetter, the ink beginning to smudge. Along with the tears, came a torrent of memories of my mother.
Whenever I caught cold my mother would rub my back. Once I got lost when we were at an amusement park and began to cry. I remember how my mother ran to me, and picked me up and held me. When I wanted the same kind of lunch box as all the other kids, my mother ran around town all day long to find just the right one. I always fidgeted when I was asleep, and my mother would come in and put the covers back on. She always bought me new clothes when I needed them and never bought anything for herself. She made the best Japanese rolled omelet. I could never eat enough of it and she’d give me her portion. For her birthday I gave her a voucher for a shoulder massage, but she never used it. She said it was too much of a treat for her and didn’t want to waste it. She bought a piano and played my favorite songs for me, but she wasn’t very good and always tripped up and made mistakes in the same places.
My mother . . . Did she have any hobbies of her own? Did she have any time to herself? Were there things she wanted to do, hopes and dreams? I wanted to at least thank her, but never found the words. I never even bought her flowers because it seemed cheesy. Why couldn’t I at least have done something small? It was such a simple thing. And when she finally left this world it came as such a shock. I hadn’t ever imagined that she would die.
“In order to gain something you have to lose something.”
My mother’s words came back to me.
Mom, I don’t want to die. I’m afraid of dying. But it’s just like you used to say.
Stealing things from others in order to live is even more painful.
“Come now, sir, dry those eyes.”
I heard a voice and looked around. Cabbage was curled up on my lap looking at me. Suddenly he could speak again, and I was surprised. He still had that haughty tone of voice.
“It’s terribly simple. All you need to do is make cats disappear.”
“No, Cabbage, I can’t do that!”
“Why, if it were up to me, I’d have you live, sir. It shan’t be easy for me when you’re no longer with us.”
I never thought the day would come when I’d be moved to tears by the words of a cat. But I had a feeling he would have been able to communicate just as well with a meow and a purr. Just when I thought I’d calmed down, I began to tear up again.
“Oh, do please stop crying. My existence is a trifle compared to what you have already made disappear.”
“No, Cabbage, no. It doesn’t have to be that way.”
If cats disappeared from the world . . .
If Lettuce and Cabbage and Mom disappeared . . . I just couldn’t imagine it. I may not be the smartest guy, but I felt like I was beginning to understand. There’s a reason that things exist in this world. And there’s no reason good enough for making them disappear.
I’d made my decision. And I think that Cabbage above all understood my resolve. He was silent for a while, and then began to speak again.
“I understand, sir.”
“Thank you.”
“Now, just one more thing.”
“One more thing?”
“Close your eyes.”
“What for?”
“Never mind. Just close them.”
So I closed my eyes, and out of the darkness a figure appeared—it was my mother. Oh sweet memory . . . a memory of childhood.
When I was little I would get upset all the time, and wouldn’t calm down or stop crying. Then my mother would say softly, and gently, “Close your eyes.”
“Why?”
“Never mind. Just close them.”
So I closed my eyes, still crying. In the darkness my emotions became a black whirlpool swirling round and round.
“What do you feel?”
“Sad and upset, Mama.”
I slowly opened my eyes, and my mother went on as she gazed at me.
“All right, next make a happy face.”
“I can’t.”
“Go ahead. Even if you have to force it.”
My mind and body were at odds with each other. I couldn’t smile very well. I managed to twist my unwilling face into a smile, but I still felt bad. The tears didn’t stop.
The sound of my mother’s voice saying “take your time” soothed me, and I managed to force a smile.
“OK now, close your eyes again.”
Prompted by my mother, I slowly shut my eyes. When I tried closing my eyes while smiling, no matter how forced it was, I could feel my emotions being soothed. The black whirlpool disappeared and what looked like a rising sun began to appear in the darkness. Gradually this gentle, cream-colored light would spread all around. I
could feel my heart finally begin to warm as the light grew stronger and I was wrapped up in a feeling of tenderness.
“How do you feel now?”
“I’m OK now.”
“Good. I’m glad.”
“Mama, how did you do that?”
“It’s a secret.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a little magic trick you can play on yourself. Whenever you feel sad and lonely, just smile and close your eyes. Do it as many times as you have to.”
So it was Cabbage who’d reminded me of my mother’s magic. Whenever I felt bad I would beg her to do it. There in the lobby of the movie theater, as I sat on the sofa, I slowly closed my eyes and forced myself to smile. The warmth crept back into my heart, and I felt calmed and soothed. It seemed I still had some of Mom’s magic left in me after all.
“Thank you, Mother.”
I’d never been able to say that to her. Those simple words. But I really did want to say it. And I finally had.
I opened my eyes, and Cabbage was still there, curled up purring on my lap.
“Thank you, Cabbage.”
I stroked his fur some more and he meowed as if he’d understood what I’d said. Then he meowed some more. He seemed to be trying very hard to tell me something. The strange human speech, those expressions that came out of some old TV show were no more. It seemed to me like this was his way of saying goodbye.
I remembered again what Mom used to always say about cats:
“We may think we own cats but that’s not the way it is. They simply allow us the pleasure of their company.” I’m glad I had a chance to talk to Cabbage before it all ended. Maybe this was Mom’s magic too. Goodbye, Cabbage. Thank you for the time you gave me.
I stayed there for a while longer, sitting on the sofa of the theater lobby in the fading light. I read back over the letter again as I stroked Cabbage. I read it again and again. But each time there was something at the end of the letter I got stuck on, like being pricked by a thorn. I felt a little stab of pain in my heart. There was still one thing I had left to do.
This is what it said at the end of the letter:
If Cats Disappeared From the World Page 11