Ojisan Bobby!

Sometimes you spin a globe to see where you will travel to, other times you travel to a place because you’ve dreamed of the blue water or the crooked cobble stone streets, sometimes it’s to get away from yourself, your life or something in your life. I’ve done them all, but last October when I was sitting on my bed staring at my map and wondering where I should go, I started to dream about the little old man whose been living on top of a hill in rural Japan since the end of World War II. I day dreamed about this cute 84 year old face that looks slightly like mine and much more like others in my family.

Bobby Becka, also known as Father Kimura, is my great uncle who forged his papers to go to war in Japan as a seventeen year old. Bobby, being protected by his superiors, was relegated the operating room to act as the surgeons assistant so not to risk the bloody battles on the beaches. As the family legend goes after standing witness to tragedies of war and the devastating use of the atomic bomb, his heart ached so deeply that he returned to California, only to call off his marriage and become a Catholic priest so he could return to Japan to become a part of the healing of a nation and its people.

When I walked into his room last week in Japan, I heard a different version. He joked so casually, "I was bored in class one day so I wrote to Rome that I would go to Japan, I’d seen a notice that they needed people there. Then next thing I knew, Spring of 1953 I was on a ship to Japan."

He was even cuter then I imagined and had seen in pictures…small with a big nose, very confident, very sweet. Oh, the sweetest thing. When I leaned over and hugged him and told him my sister and mom both sent their love and a hug with me, his bony arms grasped around me and he gave me a good pat and said enthusiastically, “Oh wow, I’ll take em, I don’t get many hugs in Japan.”

He has spent the past 57 years in Japan as a Catholic priest, helping generations of people find hope and community. So many times when my Dad and I were talking to him last week he would struggle for the English word or answer us in Japanese, then roll his eyes and correct himself. He is the brother of my Dad’s mom who died in 1956 when she was only 36. I’ve always been so curious about her, about who helped create one of the sweetest people I know, my Dad, and married one of the gruffest people I know, my Grandpa Bill. When my gruff but so so dear friend Grandpa Bill died last September I felt this strong desire to know Bobby. Maybe it is just because I am obsessed with old people, maybe it’s because I’m so curious about religion and felt I ought to visit a priest as a newly bootleg baptized catholic (I’ll explain later), maybe I felt like it was honoring my Grandpa by making a trip to Japan to visit one of his oldest friends, maybe it’s because I wanted an excuse to pin point somewhere on the map and buy a plane ticket. I think it was a combination of all of them. And the fact that my Dad met me in Japan for the visit made it even more special to me.

In Bobby’s room, Bobby, my Dad and I didn’t solve the problems of the world or crack the code on religion. We shared funny stories about my Dad taking his priest uncle to the bars when Bobby came to visit him in college, about how my Grandma was so straight and always taking care of everyone and making sure everybody was alright (also ironing a lot), about how liberal my Grandpa had gotten in his old age.

We shared some more serious ones too, about Bobby losing his mom at six and how remembers feeling at the funeral that if he becomes a priest he will be closer to his mother, about the tragedy of war and his work to help develop the peace Cathedral in Hiroshima, about the trials of old age and growing up to be 84.

My sister yelled to me when I was in the shower last night in Townsville Australia that we got a sad email from Dad. She told me Bobby died. My heart jumped up a couple inches and just stood there. I closed my eyes as my sister read me the email. Dad thinks he is perfectly happy where he is now, he’s now with my Grandpa and his mom and so many others he hasn’t seen in so long. He said he must have been holding on just long enough to visit with us.

My heart eventually started to beat again and I looked around the stark white hotel bathroom for someone to thank that those day dreams on my bed, led to painfully long wait times with United Airlines, which led to me to Tokyo, which led to a hug with Bobby. Knowing that bony hug is so very important to me.