A year after my brother left, Dad could not stand up at work and literally fell down on the job. Naturally, he was let go by the hotel. He went to the doctor, and the neurosurgeon gave him one year to live because he was deteriorating so rapidly. My mother and I sat in the living room to discuss the options. She was distraught and confused. I stayed calm and added up what she earned as a power machine-sewing operator plus my check from a part-time job in the supermarket. I tallied our expenses, food, mortgage, insurance, and everything I could think of. We came up about $100 short a month which is equivalent to at least $1,000 today. I lied and told Mother that everything would be fine. We really did not have any options other than to hope for the best. Mother and I were in denial and never told anyone about my father’s prognosis, not even my brother in San Francisco. We also did not tell Dad because he surely would have died — he always followed the doctor’s orders.

To this day I cannot understand how we survived. During that time, I tried to live a normal high school student life. There was no one I could turn to for help.

I knew we were in deep financial trouble, but I kept quiet and waited for the inevitable to happen. I thought for sure we would lose the house and be turned out into the street — a teenage boy, recovering mother, and mentally deteriorating father. To this day I cannot understand how we survived. During that time, I tried to live a normal high school student life. There was no one I could turn to for help. There were no government agencies that would assist us that I knew of. I felt if we could make it until I graduated from high school, I could find a job and support the family.

During that time, I woke up every day wondering if something were going to happen. We took it one day at a time until weeks passed, months passed and finally one year. To our amazement, my father recovered and applied for a job as a janitor, which required that he pass a boiler-licensing exam. He was studying in the living room when he asked me for help. This was the first time he ever did such a thing. I read the textbook, which was full of technical and difficult terms. I tried to explain the boiler operations and concepts to him. We studied and reviewed the materials for hours, but he just never understood it and never passed the exam. I felt frustrated because he could not understand the material, and remained jobless.

Jimmy, his friend from the hotel, arranged a part-time job at Seattle University for him as a janitor in the gym. That was the happiest I ever saw him. He would come home and say that he danced with some pretty girls today. The gym class was short of men, so the girls recruited him to be their partner. Naturally, he would always say yes and routinely swept nearby whenever the dance classes started.

The second time he asked for help was when he was eighty-three and at a nursing home suffering from delusions about Hiroshima. When the drugs wore off and his mind cleared, he asked if I would take him to live in our house. I refused because I had my own family and a small child. There was no way I could take care of him. He kept asking until he passed away a few months later. Before he died, my mother wanted him to convert to Christianity, and he agreed because he wanted to be with her in the next life. This meant that he would break away from Buddhism, cutting his connection with his late mother and all his ancestors going back hundreds or possibly thousands of years.

To save his soul, my mother brought a Presbyterian minister to baptize Dad in the hospital. To my mother’s surprise, the pastor did not baptize him but asked my mother to join him in prayer. Shortly afterward Dad passed, my mother arranged a Christian funeral. When his body was on display at Butterworth’s Mortuary, his sister from San Francisco slipped Buddhist prayer beads over his hands. My mother discovered them and removed them. Over the next hours, Mother policed his body to make sure no more beads appeared, and they did not.