Great-grand mother, Setsugi.

Reach a certain moment in your life, and you discover that your days are spent as much with the dead as they are with the living.

Setsugi is my great-grand mother. Biologically, I must have four great-grand mothers, but she is the only one I have personally met. Since she was babysitting us (me and my younger sister) while my parents were working, I do remember her very well.

According to my mother, she was born in 1903, more than a hundred years ago. It is amazing that I have a strong personal link with a person who was born more than a hundred years ago. A hundred years seem to be forever for me.

The tragedy of Setsugi's life was that her first husband, who is my biological great-grand father, died very young in his early 20s. I do not know why he passed away so early, but soon she married again with an another man. Unfortunately, her second marriage went to a wrong way, and it became really suffering for her and her son. However, at that time in Japan, it was the way impossible for her to divorce her second marriage due to very high social pressure. She and my grand father had to tolerate an endless terrible period there.

These experience more or less twisted her and her son. Even though I do not know what they exactly experienced there, I think I am also under the strong influence of their wound. When the wound is too big, it is easily transmitted to the descendant generations. I am really afraid of this kind of wound or trauma which beyond human life.