This post is continued from this one.

My thoughts were interrupted by Christiansen, who was running up the hill towards me.

“The cremation’s done,” he said between breaths. “They’re ready for you.”

I hurried back to the crematorium.

A large stainless steel tray the size of a coffin had been wheeled into a private room on something like an operating table. My Ob?¢chan and my two aunts were waiting for me, and two of them held long, colorful chopsticks in their hands. The handles were capped with metal. Tomoko held a blue and white urn in her hands about the size of a basketball. Christiansen did not enter the room, but stayed outside with Uncle Hisao. I looked down at the tray. Then I saw what was left of my Oj?Æchan.

His bones were smaller than they should have been, and many of them had broken into several pieces. They looked like they had been soaked in bleach. There was ash everywhere. His skull had collapsed into its constituent bones. Not all of his bones would fit in the small urn, so carefully selected a few to represent him.

“His jaw was such a strong feature,” my grandmother said, picking up his jawbone with her chopsticks as if it were a pickle or a piece of salted mackerel and handing it to Kazumi. Kazumi took it with her chopsticks and placed it in the urn. I understood at last why it is considered very rude to accept food from someone else’s chopsticks with your own. Passing something from one set of chopsticks to another is only done with the bones of a relative after cremation. Every morsel inadvertently passed this way by ignorant foreigners and young children must remind the Japanese of death. Ob?¢chan handed me her chopsticks.

“It’s your turn,” she said. Almost cheerily. Perhaps the cremation is a form of closure.

I can’t remember which bones I picked. Not that it mattered.

Christiansen didn’t argue this time about where he was to sleep. Before turning out the light, I glanced up at the urn that now sat where my grandfather had slept the night before.

“Oyasumi, Oj?Æchan,” I mouthed. Good night.

I woke up to see Oj?Æchan sitting next to me. He was wearing his fedora and his black-rimmed glasses. His suit smelled of mothballs. “Ohay?¥,” he said. Good morning.

“Ohayo, Oj?Æchan,” I said, sitting up and rubbing the fatigue from my eyes. “So what’s it like on the other side?” What else do you say to a dead man?

He thought for a moment, took off his hat, then stared for a while at the mounds my feet made under the blanket. The silence was long, but comfortable, familiar. He wiped at the sparse gray stubble that covered his head. “I don’t really know yet. I feel like I’m preparing for a long journey of some kind.” Then he grinned. “You’re a missionary‚Äîyou tell me!”

I responded without hesitation. “Well, first you go to the spirit world, where you wait for the resurrection, and you’ll be taught…” This wasn’t right. He was dead‚Äîhe should be telling me. But didn’t I know? Hadn’t the Spirit confirmed the truth to me? I had borne witness of these things a hundred times before‚Äîwhat was different this time?

“I don’t know, either,” I said.

He smiled. “It’s a great mystery to all of us,” he said. “The only way to know is to go there ourselves.” I watched his face. His eyes were focused on something beyond the walls of this little room. He was thinking, preparing for something. I could feel energy and power building up within him. This was the man who led coal mining strikes long before I was born. This was the man who survived for three days on the wreckage of his torpedoed ship with a foot-long gash in his thigh. This was the real Oj?Æchan.

He turned to me again and continued.

“I was old, and I had the opportunity to experience much in my life. I died quickly and painlessly. Your grandmother is well taken care of. I am ready for a new adventure.” He stood up.

“I wish we could have had more time to talk. I’m sorry I was such a terrible letter-writer,” I said. He was slowly moving away from me.

“Don’t go, Oj?Æchan,” I pleaded.

“It’s time. I’ve got to go, John-kun,” he said. “You will have your chance, too.” He lingered for a moment, but the force that drew him away was too powerful. Or perhaps the bond between us was not strong enough. He stared at me for a moment, eyes moist. Then he turned resolutely to face the unknown. As his body turned, I watched the wrinkles on his face smooth, then disappear altogether. Black, wavy hair pushed its way out from underneath his hat. His curved back straightened, and the unseen weight on his shoulders was removed. His glasses disappeared. Then he was gone.

I sat in the dark for a while, listening to Christiansen’s rhythmic breathing. Then I crawled back into my futon and slept more soundly than I had in a long, long time.