The first time Yuya Kawamura saw his newborn son, the baby was already dead.
The infant’s brother, just 11 months old, was found in the arms of his mother. They, too, were dead, victims of the tsunami that swept away their house in Iwate Prefecture two years ago.
Listless for months after the disaster, the grieving father thought about killing himself.
But with so much death haunting his life, the 28-year-old found a rather unorthodox place to come to terms with his loss and find a reason to live.
“I am working as a mortician because I lost my wife and children,” Kawamura said. “My right hand is my elder son, and my left hand is my younger son. I think my skills will improve when my children grow.”
Kawamura, who is training to become an embalmer, finds meaning in his work because he says it draws him closer to his family members.
His job also allows him to help people see their dead loved ones for the last time in a way that they should be remembered, something that Kawamura was unable to do with his own family.
Kawamura was in Morioka on a business trip when the magnitude-9.0 Great East Japan Earthquake struck off the northeastern coast on March 11, 2011.
His wife, 20, was with the two boys at their home in a coastal town. She had returned the previous day six days after giving birth to the younger son.
Fifteen minutes after the temblor, Kawamura contacted his wife on her cellphone. “We are about to flee,” she said.
Kawamura sped back in his car and reached the town the following morning. It was gone.
He spotted the red roof of his house 200 meters inland from where it originally stood. After desperately removing the debris, he found his wife holding the elder son.
“My wife was strong-minded, but she appeared as if she were sleeping. She looked peaceful and beautiful,” Kawamura said. “Only her arms were rigid, as if she would never let him go.”
He asked police to keep the two bodies as they were. Before the bodies were transferred to a crematorium, Kawamura removed his son and held him in his arms.
“I am sorry. I am sorry I could not save you,” he kept saying.
The body of the younger son was found in April. Kawamura went to a morgue, where the tiny body was laid beside a hooded blanket that his brother had also used.
Kawamura was already on the business trip when his second son was born. “I had seen his face only in photos e-mailed to my cellphone,” he said.
Police officers advised Kawamura not to look at the body of the boy.
“But I wanted to hold him in my arms by any means,” he said.
He told the baby, “We are together at long last.”
After the funerals of his family members, Kawamura resigned from his company and left the town.
“I did not feel like doing anything,” he said.
He did not want to return to Miyako, his hometown, and instead stayed in the prefectural capital of Morioka.
“All of a sudden, I thought I wanted to die,” he said. “When I was driving a car, I wondered whether I could die if I crashed into the one running in front.”
But a former classmate from Miyako told Kawamura about an embalmer who was volunteering her time to restore the remains of disaster victims. He found a flier in his mailbox seeking morticians and immediately called to apply.
Kawamura said one of the main reasons he applied was because he could not do anything for his three beloved ones before they were cremated.
“I laid a dress over my wife before the coffin left, but I was not able to put it on for her,” he said. “I was not able to put on some makeup for her, either. If I had known how, I might have been able to restore the face of my younger son to look like the one in the photos.”
It was a demanding job looking at one dead person after another, and he wanted to quit countless times.
But he embraced the work after listening to a speech by the volunteer embalmer in May 2012.
She told Kawamura that she was glad he was alive and cried for him.
“An embalmer puts dead people back in shape and returns them to their families so that the families can cry,” she said. “An embalmer re-connects dead people with their families.”
When Kawamura helps clean the bodies of children, he recalls how he felt when he lost his sons and recounts his experiences to the parents to help them cope with their loss.
After listening to his story, some parents speak about their memories of their loved ones, such as their lovely smiles.
“Working as a mortician drives home how family members hold their lost ones near and dear,” Kawamura said, mentioning the way they touch the faces of the bodies in the coffins. “I am learning how valuable lives are.”
The disaster struck before spring arrived in the Tohoku region.
Kawamura keeps cherry blossoms, a favorite of his wife, in his funeral makeup box. He said he wants the victims to see the spring flowers in the afterworld.
He said he might not have survived if he had found a different job.
“I kept apologizing to my wife and sons for one year after the earthquake, saying, ‘I am sorry I could not save you,’” he said. “I now thank them for being with me.”
His wife’s cellphone appeared to have been destroyed by the tsunami, but it suddenly turned on when Kawamura was toying with it in November.
When he opened a video stored in the phone, the elder son called to him, “Dad!”
“A long time ago, I might have felt so sad to see this that I would want to die,” Kawamura said. “Today, I am glad to see him. I can say this from the bottom of my heart.”
Tuesday 5 March 2013
http://ajw.asahi.com/article/0311disaster/life_and_death/AJ201303050084
