I’m Namika, a 30-year-old, and I’ve been married for about two years. I don’t have any children yet. My family home is about a three-hour drive away, where my mother lives alone. I’m one of three siblings; my older sister (Misato, 34) and her family live in my neighborhood, and my younger brother (Ren, 28, single) had been living alone in the next prefecture. However, my brother recently passed away suddenly in a traffic accident. While our family is grieving this profound loss, my mother took his smartphone without permission and insisted on looking at his photos, leaving my sister and me deeply troubled.
Even though he’s gone, I feel a responsibility to protect my brother’s dignity.
At the same time, I know Mom probably doesn’t have any photos of him from after he moved out, and I can understand her desperate desire to see pictures of him from his recent life.
The pain of a parent losing their child is unimaginable. That said, I know Mom is the only one who thinks he’s so precious that she needs to know every little detail about him.
That is why I am going to make sure she doesn’t show those photos to our relatives.
If she comes across any photos she wishes she hadn’t seen, I believe she’ll just have to find a way to come to terms with it herself.