he ambulance arrived and my grandfather was sent to the hospital as an emergency case. He became a man incapacitated by a stroke. The hospital where he was sent was a civic hospital. My family-my mother and father, my sister and I-and my grandparents were going to live together. We were going to move. The matter occured just before our move. In those days my grandparents lived in an apartment as their tabernacle. My grandmother wouldn't tell us the matter. We were refused to call on her, so we knew what happened to my grandfather. It seemed that my grandmother thought she didn't want us troubled. However what she did was too silly and cold, wasn't she?



e moved to a second hospital that had faclities for the rehabilitation. It's called a "The Rehabiritation Center." People who have only one or no legs because of misfortune accidents in their jobs were there. Such people tried to rehabilitate to return to their work. But my grandfather wasn't one of them. He was a man who had a distaste for hard work. I am this way, too. I believe everyone is inclined this way. But I wanted him to work hard then. He started rehabilitaion to reduce responsibilities for my family, especially care persons. He had a hangover from illness, even so he should have tried to overcome obstacles as best he could. Didn't he know that?



e finished rehabilitation which he felt obliged to do and he left the hospital. That was the dawn of our home care for him. The room which is the nearest to back door was my grandparents'. My grandfather used a wheelchair with hemiplegia. So a slope was made in order that he could go in and out easily. He didn't try going out during his wheelchair life. There were two reasons. Firstly, he was disareeable to go. Secondly, others were biased against him. Was this the truth? It was the third year since my town had been set up. My town was a new town. There were toilets for disabled people in most buildings. I often saw people who used wheelchairs in my town. When my grandfather rode the subway, someone asked, "Shall I help you? There is a person who uses wheelchair in my family." I thought he had prejudice toward disabled people, so he felt other's eyes prejudice toward him. Did he regard kind words as prejudiced words?



uch days continued. And my grandfather complained of abdominal pains. My grandmother didn't listen to his complaints. She thought it was his excuse for avoiding going out. But he complained for so long, my father sent him to the hospital. He became an inpatient in an intensive care unit. From then on he never left the hospital. His paralyzed leg was full of necrosis and many parts of his body was driued in order for pipes to run into them. It was painful to see his shape. He became a bedridden person. He sometimes went into a coma but he escaped death by these means. He couldn't move freely. It must have been hard.



hy should people keep on living to have such hard experiences? I got angry with my grandfather's behavior. That was a fact. But he was family. I knew he was spiritually weak. Progress in medicine, an aging society, and unsatisfactory welfare-. Can we say that to servive is happy? Did the feeling that we let him relieve from the pain make me think so? Living longer, is really happy for us?




Back
Next