“YAKU!” MOM EXCLAIMED, a look of pure triumph radiating from her face. Her eyes had that delightful twinkle that I had not seen in months, if not years. Since I had moved her to The Plaza, an assisted-living facility in the Punchbowl neighbourhood of Honolulu, I’d never seen my mother looking so elated, so self-satisfied. I hesitated, wondering whether to tell her that the three Hanafuda playing cards that she had just laid down weren’t, in fact, the right combination for a yaku.
Ever since Dad passed away more than five years ago, my mother’s memory had been slipping. Initially it was just her short-term recall – forgetting things I’d just told her and repeating herself multiple times in the same conversation. But then her memory of past events began to falter, as she continually asked me when I would settle down and get married, not realizing that I had already been married and then divorced in a protracted, acrimonious battle.
Finally, after a battery of tests at a neurologist’s office, where she couldn’t remember the day of the week, her age, nor that George W. Bush was president, she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and prescribed Aricept. This was more than a year ago, and as far as I could tell the medication had failed to slow the progression of the disease.
Mom could still recognize the yakus of the ten-point Hanafuda cards because those were simple enough: three purple banners, or three plain red banners, or three red banners with writing. But
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Alden M. Hayashi has been an editor and writer at Scientific American, the Harvard Business Review, and the MIT Sloan Management Review. After more than thirty years covering science, technology, and business, he has recently begun writing fiction to honour the memories of his grandparents’ immigration to Hawaii, as well as to preserve stories of the lives of their many descendants. His first novel, Two Nails, One Love, was published in 2021 by Black Rose Writing. www.aldenmhayashi.com