Last Train from Sendai
Category C: Highly Commended (2025) Monash Short Story Writing Competition
Author: John Holding
No longer could I hold her hand even as she slipped away. What a strange way of putting it. It’s not quite what I meant. Her hand was there but it was no longer hers. It was just a warm appendage. There was no squeeze back, that acknowledgement of existence. It was still warm but in a way, lifeless. I wondered if she could hear or feel, was it for her a private agony. A knowing of the world, with no way of communicating. I hoped that that was not the case. To go in a silent scream.
Those last moments a torment knowing that it was the last time together, physically, emotionally, well not for her. Silent moments now for she no longer could talk. I don’t think she felt anything, I hoped, I dearly hoped that was the case, morphine numbed final hours.
That is how death arrives, silently slipping into the place where life existed. No loud bang, no shouted declaration of defiance. Just a silent death attended with pain.
Pain— the assassin that kills the will to live, easing, facilitating death’s entry. That silent robber of others’ happiness. Was that being selfish? No, not really, it had robbed her happiness at least a month ago. I could see it in her eyes, brave face, crying eyes. No tears though, just the soul crying through her eyes, I wish I had her bravery.
There I was wishing it would end whilst hoping that there was some other way. It does rip the heart out, shred it and leave a crying mess on the floor. A mess that takes a long time to clean up. Well, for those that had a life long love of their partner. Not so much for those just going through the motions. You have seen them, that bickering over the trivial. The need to be right on petty issues. Are they mourned by their partner? Or is it a sense of relief.
It was some time later that the nurse touched my shoulder. I looked up, her quiet nod told me that it was at an end. I took one long last look at the peace of her face, knowing that the torment of the last few months had ended. I didn’t want to say goodbye but what choice does one have.
Life lives in the face, the eyes. When death arrives it empties the eyes, stills the face. I guess that’s why they compare it to a mask.
Have you ever seen anyone wearing those masks that cover the entire face. It’s unsettling, perhaps it reminds of death, that emotionless mask people adopt when they die.
Those soft brown eyes gone now. She used to say they were hazel, but I always saw them as soft brown.
I have a photo of her that I took in the kitchen one day some years back. It’s in that photo I can see the love, the beauty of her. For her beauty did not only live in her features, it lived so, so much deeper. It’s how I want to remember her, that delicate smile, slightly quizzical look, slight bemusement and oh that intellect, that intellect.
That departing was three months ago. Those months will live for some time in my memory.
What followed was the relentless tedium of those necessary bureaucratic actions. Dragging one’s feet through bureaucracy, numbing the soul. Perhaps for a good reason. Task for those who are left. I am not being selfish here, It’s just a fact, the dead can’t do it. It’s always the living. Perhaps we should hire people to do the bureaucratic work while the bereaved mourn. No one gave me time to mourn.
It was testing time convincing the authorities it was okay to bury her in Japan instead of flying her remains back to Australia. It was her wish to be buried there, amongst the beautiful gardens in Sendai, green, treed, manicured. She had loved the vibrancy, the bustle of the city, the balance between its bustle and its devotion to nature.
Eventually I found someone who was willing to help, who understood. Bent a few rules perhaps, He didn’t say he just made it happen.
Deeply sad, I sat and watched as Sendai slipped from sight. Knowing what those at the west end of life have to endure. Waiting for their turn, wondering how.
After all, the final destination is known. It’s just the journey that’s a mystery.
The knowledge derived from years of living. That life, after all is empty. A meaningless journey through time made bearable by companionship. That rare and beautiful thing that so many deserve but so few actually experience. I knew I was lucky when I met her and now she is just a memory.
We had had the best of years, I still remember on our wedding day, her confidence in a long life. “I want forty years from you” she had said.
I hadn’t made the same demand, thinking that my life would be shorter than hers. After all that is the most common pattern. It raised a thought. Do men die younger because they want to? I had read that somewhere in a joke. But jokes hide a truth, a sentiment or thought. Tell me one joke that does not have a sentiment lying behind it. Even more why did it resonate, why after all the years did it come to mind.
But that is just a digression, life with her was such a joy. Her care and time devoted to healing my broken soul. The years we spent forging a life together, working hard in synchronicity. To achieve, to raise our sons as best we could.
I had always admired her intellect, her compassion and her passion. Not to say we didn’t have a disagreement of two— but never in that heated vitriol, that leads to regret, a wish to undo the words spoken in anger.
Sendai
Sendai, the city of trees, beautiful, vibrant, full of youth. Laughing, talking, moving, caring, cheeky. We had loved Sendai, taking that evening walk down to the tree lined avenue. The gentle stroll back to the hotel, an earlier night. Ready for the next day's trip to Matsushima Bay.
One might say that I had been Sendaied for some of my life. Could that be a thing I wondered, could I say to someone you are a Sendai, an accusation, an observation, no not those a compliment?
The thought lingered for a while drifting, thinking of how meaning is derived from experience. Unique perhaps, obscure yes, then back to how the vibrancy of a city could represent a person. Conversely, I guess, the opposite could apply.
Sendai, a label, probably never to be used except by me and then needing an explanation. If it did catch on, and I don’t know how it would.
The usage of it, reserved to those I knew, who have that special companion, and only if I chose to explain its origin. More a term of endearment, a recognition that they were beautiful in heart, considerate, caring and loving. All the things we found so nice about that Japanese city, Sendai.
Her final journey had started at a Matsushima, seaside town east of Sendai. Some sort of irony I guess, not that I really believed in fate or destiny. To start death in the east when its the west end where one dies. That start in Matsushima was not something I liked to dwell on. Rampaging memories hurt. The rapid onset and then the slow decline to death, a four month journey through the rest of her life.
We had decided to stay in Sendai for that duration, cruelly perhaps for our sons.
An agony of time.
Our sons came to say goodbye and like all young people, these days, did so with grace and beauty.
We left the area where my Sendai was wrapped in earth’s cloth, the only place where earthworms’ song can be heard. What a strange thought, earthworms singing. I kind of liked that sentiment for she was always singing, her voice always on pitch. No horrendous nails on blackboard with her. I used to delight in listening to her life sing out loud.
Our sons with their time constrained, with work and family demands, did not stay long. Just long enough to show their care of me and their mother.
Sadder, in some ways, than her leaving, I hate seeing the pain of death reflected in the living’s face. Hate is the wrong word, it’s their pain that pulls me apart.
I could hear her laugh echoing in my memory, soft melodious laugh. Was that why she could sing so well? Then there was her beautiful smile. Leaping from her lips, lighting her eyes. The appreciation of my wit. I think that was what first attracted her, over dinner, laughing at my wordplay. I know her laugh attracted me, such a beautiful laugh, musical, telling of life’s joy. It’s very seductive to be found amusing in a nice way. Even till the last month she laughed.
The last train from Sendai
Now a new journey had to start, mine, through the rest of life, my west end of life.
We all live an origami of a life. It’s the being bent, folded, twisted. To adapt, adopt to the pressures of living. All that bending and folding leaves us frayed at the creases. Some of us, from those bends and folds end up as swans, beautiful. Some of us, flowers, waiting to blossom. Some end up as things better left unsaid. My Sendai was a swan.
We all go on bending until the fraying overcomes the fibres of life.
Seated, alone, sad. Gazing out the window at the passing green, reflecting on my companion of so many years. That companion who could read me like a book. That companion who always cared.
It’s now that a wish of more tangible memories arose, to have more photographs. Not captured, life’s pace taking the opportunities. That’s the excuse, maybe it’s just laziness. It didn’t matter I just wanted the photographic memories, things I could hold, that told of our life together. To pour back over photographs, immerse myself in what was now lost. Better to do that than find empty solace in a bottle, Jack’s amnesia—not that I liked whisky that much.
Memories fade, the faces get lost, the things that were so important go, washed by time. Maybe I should have said memories bleached white like a coastal fog, opaque, was that closer to poetry, a more polished ending.
Slowly Sendai faded from view— its lights dimming through the misty rain—until it was no more.