My 3.11.24

In a few minutes, a chime will go off and a moment of silence will stretch over the city I live in, sending us all the tens of thousands of people who lost their lives 13 years ago and the tsunami following the magnitude 9 earthquake that literally changed the shape of the earth slightly.

While I just wrote a blog post about visiting the tsunami preparation center in Shiogama to mark this occasion, I also wanted to remark on what I did after.

The guy at the desk in the tsunami preparation center handed me a piece of paper that invited me to the flower arranging event in memory of the tsunami victims at the tsunami memorial in Shiogama.

It sounds amazing but also like me being there would be overstepping. Honestly, even seeing the pictures from the disaster reminded me of panic that I forgot that I had felt and brought back huge surges of survivor's guilt that I know what to do with, but I'm still not comforted by.

Still, I walked by the memorial early enough that there weren't too many people around, so I didn't feel like I was bothering them by taking a couple of pictures. The flowers looked amazing and I hope that they have a lovely, thoughtful memorial.

Meanwhile, I'll be doing this. Ganbatte-ing, the way they told us to right after the disasters. The catch phrase for Tohoku in 2011 was Ganbatte Tohoku, and it was everywhere. And we did our best.

And here we are.