Mother’s Light
by Kuristina Oyama
According to yogic texts, contemplating death is a healthy practice that helps us keep life in perspective. In ancient times, samurai wrote poems on death. In the yoga tradition asana practices finish in savasana, the corpse pose, to “enthusiastically prepare us for death”. But nothing really can “prepare” to say goodbye to a loved one.
When I first walked into the ICU last October, just few days shy of my birthday, I couldn’t recognize my Mother. She looked so tiny and frail. (This was the woman who stood face to face with Sosai without heels.) Her ulcers had been bleeding, I was told and she vomited large amounts of blood. They stopped the bleeding but she was unconscious. But I’ll never forget when she opened her hers to see me, her eyes lit up with radiant, unconditional love. Mother couldn’t speak, could barely move, yet she emanated such love like an enlightened being. She then closed her eyes again.
In yoga traditions they say the inner most soul, which is called purusha, is lying with divine awareness behind our thought processes. This information was in my mind, but never before felt so deeply as when I had glimpsed the purusha in Mother’s eyes on that day. Over the past few years, she had suffered strokes and a-typical dementia that ate away parts of her functions. Yet she dwelled in such unconditional love. There was nothing left in her but her divine consciousness.
For many years after her Sosai’s passing, she tried to find peace within the whirlwind of accusations, betrayal, animosity and court cases. I wasn’t much of a help, in the sense that I was caught up in it too. She was hopeful that one day the students would come and work together for Sosai again, not against each other. But that day never came.
While her hopes vacillated from anger to confusion, her illness progressed. She was never the type to go doctors let alone depend on medication, so our efforts to find out exactly what was wrong with her took time. She had similar symptoms of Alzheimer’s but her brain was intact. We went to different hospitals for different tests, or sometimes the same tests but with different results: there was nothing really the doctors were able to explain. Other than she had a good heart or too high blood pressure or her insulin level was too low. It wasn’t a prognosis that was lead by a heart felt doctor.
Then one day an American doctor who also practiced naturopathy diagnosed her with having a rare virus in the membrane of the brain. It was called Cyto-megalo virus. There was no modern allopathic medicine to treat it. But he suggested a life style that would keep the virus under control, which was to take her out of any stress-triggering environment. That was one difficult mission to accomplish because her whole life had been with Kyokushin and its movement… and given the amount of stress she felt by just looking at what was happening, we almost felt hopeless.
When I was told Mother only had few months to live, I didn’t know what to do. All I could do was to stay with the news, moment to moment, trying to digest it’s meaning mentally and mindfully. In fact, I couldn’t bring myself to utter that fact to anyone. But I thought of Sosai during those times. Mother had always said, “When I am reincarnated I hope to be with Sosai again.” Those words imprinted themselves so strongly onto my mind. I had to bring her close to where her husband was. I wanted to move her closer to Honbu, which she had built with her husband.
Coincidentally, the doctor who operated on her ulcers was a big fan of Sosai. At first he didn’t say anything but when one saw how Mother was treated, I felt so much of Sosai’s presence all around. He made sure all her tests were done by the most efficient doctors at hospital. He made sure to talk to her whenever he walked passed her bed or encouraged the nurses to do the same. Mother was tended to the nines, so much so that she was glowing in the intensive care unit, and that made me realize she had perhaps been lacking the attention she needed all along. She smiled so beautifully at everyone that the nurses actually enjoyed their shifts. Her presence lightened the hearts in the room.
During her stay, the doctors told me the x-rays showed she had a black shadow in her stomach. They ran a test to see if it was cancerous and it came back as level 5 carcinoma. It wasn’t a shock to me; it was more like a confirmation of her suffering that manifested in the physical form. We all know cancers can be stress related. Some healers say that cancer is the eating away of oneself, a longstanding resentment of grief and deep hurt. I just didn’t expect it then.
The doctor, as perfect a doctor as he could be, advised me to tend her and to let her go. He didn’t word it exactly like that but he said, “If we operate her, she may never regain her consciousness and I think her feeling and seeing you and other family members as much as possible is the best treatment she can get.” The practice of non-attachment was starting. I had many attachments that felt vitally important. Protecting the environment, working towards peace and harmony… but the one person that sustained me and had given me inspiration to serve was going away and I had to let go with comfort and ease so she could finally be united again with her soul mate, Sosai.
In the Bhagavad Gita—the classic yogic text—Krishna advises Arjuna, the warrior who is reluctant to go to war, to go into battle as into every experience of life with full awareness but without attachment. It is not up to us to win or lose, whether we survive or not. How things will work out is ultimately in the hands of higher power. Arjuna simply had to do what is right without any expectation, good or bad.
One of the hardest attachments to let go is the ones we love. We are brought up into thinking that life owes us something. We can’t contemplate dying young—our mind recoils from the thought we can be forced out of our bodies. My yoga teacher reminded me of something that helped me embrace the situation a little more, “Everyone dies alone. No one can go with you at that time. The only friend who can go with you is your mantra”. He also reminded me that the less Mother had to worry “here” the easier it would be for her to go. So my daily chanting started.
Mother was a saintly woman. Machida Kyōsuke, who is now supporting Matsui, was one of the very first students of Sosai in Tateyama. He told me people used to call her ‘Bodai satsu sama’ (Bodhisattva) whenever she walked out around her house. She did japa (chanting) while I was in her tummy, taught me the Hannya Shingyo (Heart Sutra) and geomancy. She did O-hyakudo mairi, a form of austere religious observance, whenever there were tournaments, when Sosai left overseas, when my second sister went abroad. She lived many things that would be called karma yoga, spiritual discipline through her actions, although I never looked at it that way at the time.
Now she was faced with one of the hardest form of spiritual practice: watching herself disintegrate. And she was doing it so well, so gracefully with awareness; it put me and all the Kyokushin problems to shame to complain about anything. She never complained or said she was in pain. The caretakers, nurses and doctors were surprised at how she overcame numerous fevers and so much loss of blood. We were able to celebrate her birthday and the New Year with her.
But the time came surely. June 4th was Sosai’s birthday and she had her first seizure on that day. It was as though he came to her. She was fighting fever and I could see she was weakening. Even so, every once in a while she would say, ‘Arigatou’—thank you, especially when I kissed her on her eyelids. She was just adorable by nature. I was on my way back from another prefecture when the nurse called to tell me her blood pressure was dropping alarmingly. I gripped my cell phone and started my mantra chanting on the Bullet Train back to Tokyo. I could feel my heart tightening.
I got off at Ikebukuro station and hurried out the Metropolitan exit, going thru all the familiar passages to get to the hospital across from Honbu.
When I walked into the room, Mother was struggling for her breath. But as soon I popped my head over her face, she smiled thru the oxygen mask. This is the woman battling her own life, yet she is smiling at me, encouraging me not to be scared! Those last hours with her changed me forever. My husband came in with my son, who was already in bed when I had called. The doctor came in and said if her heart failed, they would not perform any resuscitation since her bones were too weak to handle the pressure. She was not on any painkillers so she was aware of all the conversation that went on in the room. While she went back and forth between seizures and having the phlegm blocking the air passage, I held her hand and kissed her. Her hands were incredibly soft, and warm.
Around midnight, her pulse started to stabilize. The helpers and nurses all nodded off while I scrunched over beside her bed, talking and chanting to her. As I also started to nod off, I felt her breathing slowing down. I looked over and she was looking straight ahead, her eyes calm, a beautiful deep black. I had a feeling she wasn’t suffering but nevertheless taking in her last breaths. I talked to her and reminded her she would soon be greeted by her parents and Sosai. As the frequency of her inhalations slowly started to lessen, tears came to my eyes. I loved her so much and I know I was never able to give her the best she deserved.
I wiped my tears and touched her face and told her she had nothing to feel she left unfinished here. Everything she had come here for was already done. She just came to be with the person who changed the world with his strong will for justice at a time when people needed to have the belief that they could make the change they needed. And he did make changes and left us this gift of Kyokushin Karate. If it was not for her part, he would not have been the same. So I saw that she was just returning now to the person who was waiting for her, so she had nothing to worry about.
Mother was so beautiful as her breath went into eternity that I had such urge to photograph her. Of course I didn’t but I have never seen such serenity! I knew all she wanted was to be with her husband again and he probably came to greet her. The room was warm and the air calm. It was exactly 4 am.
Hold on to what is good, even if it’s just a handful of earth. And hold on to what you believe, even if it is a tree which stands by itself. Hold on to what you must do, even if it is a long way from where you are. Hold on to life, even when it is easier to let go. Hold on to my hand, even when I have gone away from you.
Pueblo Verse