Gift from Mother

Gift from Mother

Hisato Kawata

The buckle was broken.

The simple buckle with a frame and tongue,

Fastening my belt every day,

But not anymore.

The frame and belt

Still together intact,

But the tongue had dropped

Though intact itself.

Then what’s missing?

What part is broken?

It’s the bar,

The tiny bar that supports the tongue,

As the central axis, supporting everything,

Everything about the belt.

On the floor, right next to the dropped tongue,

Was a tiny object,

So small, hardly visible,

But I found it, I picked it up.

That was the bar, the broken part.

Amazing, this tiny and slender thing

The core part of it all,

Supporting the rest to work well.

Amazing, this was doing this behind the scenes,

Behind the frame, tongue, belt, all these years,

Not being noticed or recognized,

Even by the one who is most close,

Who put on the belt every day,

That is, by me,

Until now.

So I decided to keep the broken part a while.

The next day or the day after, the phone rang.

It was from the hospital,

My mother was dying.

She was a person always thinking of someone else first,

And herself second.

An amazing person who lived out that way of life,

The core part of her Christianity,

Not saying it but doing it, living it.

Mother passed away the same day.

Her face, calm and peaceful,

Beautiful for a 97-year-old woman.

She completed her life, that amazing life.

It’s not just a life I should respect,

But a life that shows how I should live.

Now the tiny broken part of the buckle,

A gift from my mother,

A baton passed from her.