'I am making wooden bowls,' he answered quietly,
'for you and for Mommy to eat out of when I am grown, and you are
both very old.'
***
I received a letter from a woman of Japanese ancestry who read the
preceding story. She wrote that her father, who had passed along to his
children much of the lore and tales of old Japan, had another version:
In many villages of old Japan, the townsfolk suffered deeply and often
the extremes of hunger and cold. It was vital to the survival of the able-
bodied that those who were in their final hours of life be taken to the
nearby foothills and left there to die. This sorrowful task belonged to
the senior son.
So it was, indeed, that a dutiful senior son, at the appropriate time
imposed by illness and tradition, wrapped his dying mother in the family
blanket reserved for such sad occasions. He lifted her gently, cradled
her in his arms, and made his way to a sheltered place among the nearby
foothills' rocks and underbrush.
Lowering his mother to the ground, he kneeled beside her and tenderly
made his final good-bye. She listened silently, breathing shallow, eyes
closed.
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