Makiko Itoh : Not a nameless cat.

I woke up, and no longer felt like I wanted to go right back to bed.

Progress.

This piece was originally posted on Quora in response to this question. I wanted to re-post it here, as a part of my own history and that of my family. It contains some painful and personal/family details, for which I may incur the wrath of my relatives if they should happen to read this. For this, I apologize. But somehow I needed to tell it. It may also explain to some people why I have not responded to your condolences or attempts to reminisce about my father in the past year. For that, I also apologize.

In many ways, this is the "other side" to this.

As I've already mentioned online somewhere, my father died in late November. His memorial service will be held in February, at the church he attended. I wrote up a short biography for the pastors at the church to refer to in their eulogy (or whatever it is called that is read out at a memorial service) and I thought I'd post it here too, as a sort of closure. It is admittedly the 'good' version of my father's life, and leaves out a lot, but it is what I think is most fitting.

I am not well. There's no getting around it.

Just a personal tribute.

Radiation and me, and you.

I do not currently own a television set - or rather, I own a physical TV, but we still have to get it hooked up. This means that I can easily avoid the 24 hour news channels and such, which today I'm sure are being flooded with news of the 10th anniversary of 9/11. (It's also the 6 month anniversary of the March 11 earthquake in Japan.)

Still, it's hard to avoid all mention of 9/11 as long as I'm hanging out online, which is mostly what I have the energy for at the moment. And the phrase I keep hearing again and again is "Never forget". I'd like to know, what exactly are we not supposed to forget?

I've been debating with myself for a while whether I should make this public knowledge, but I've decided to go ahead...because you might see something is up anyway. It's hard to write about food, when food is such a part of your health and body. Besides...it's not like a dirty secret. It's part of what I am, in early September 2011.

A local TV station in Japan makes a stupid mistake onscreen.

It's all a matter of roots.