Last week, I drove straight from my mentor’s clinic in Nara to Sasayama city via my mother’s cemetery. It was because I’d just heard about the death of Emiko, whom I met six year ago. She was suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS).

When I heard about her physical problem first, I took her to my mentor’s clinic one time, and I’d since been treating her for five years based on the guidance given by my mentor.

Her doctor had told her to prepare for gastrostomy feeding process because she would soon be unable to eat through the mouth. The doctor kept advising her for four months advising her to consider the option.

Being a remarkable gourmet, she was offended by the words of the doctor and stopped seeing him, and began seeing a neighborhood internist once a month. When I met her, Emiko was not able to talk or even to move by herself at all. Her husband quit working and began taking care of her around the clock, seldom leaving her alone for more than an hour at a time.

The couple kept visiting this clinic, the husband pushing his wife’s wheelchair all the way from Sasayama to Nishinomiya. Emiko burst out crying only once when she met me. After that, she always kept a pleasant smile on her face each time she saw me, although she was not able to talk.

I was wondering what had happened to them when they stopped coming to our clinic about a year ago. During that time, as I found out later, their two sons got married, her mother-in-law had passed away, and her husband had a colorectal cancer operation.

Then I heard that Emiko passed away quite peacefully on the day right after she learned that her husband’s cancer had totally healed.

Despite her hard struggle with inability to talk and move, Emiko was entirely satisfied to meet her end happily as she knew her family was doing well. Her husband and I reminisced in tears about Emiko’s heroic life when we met after her death.

According to her husband, Emiko had actually relished her meals every day until she died at daybreak on March 17th. Indeed!

As I drove to Sasayma last week, the cherry blossoms there were in full bloom as if conveying Emiko’s friendly smile all around. She went at age 66. Dear Emiko, let us meet again somewhere sometime….