Forgiveness

Forgiveness by Mark Sakamoto
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

The backbone of this memoir is the alternating stories of Mark Sakamoto's grandparents. On his mother's side, his grandfather, Frank, was a young Canadian soldier who miraculously survived years in prisoner camps in Japan. On his father's side, his grandmother, Mitsue, and her family were forced out of their urban Vancouver homes by a racist government and moved to rural Alberta to work as farm laborers in deplorable conditions.

The true heart of this story is not the tragedies endured, but the markable grace and understanding shown by both Frank and Mitsue. Instead of holding on to bitterness and anger, they chose hope and forgiveness. They chose the more difficult path of moving on instead of living in the past. They became fast friends, and understood each other, without the need to compare or explain their pasts. "Breaking down is the easy part. Anyone, at any time, can break down. The act of coming together again is what makes a hero. Moving on, with an open heart, seems, at times, impossible. But it's not."

I love what Mark writes at the end to his grandparents: "You both fought for your country, your dignity, and your lives. Your victory was not that you lived. Your victory was in the way you both went on to live your lives. You refused to be defined by those most injurious of years. You did not dwell there. You had the strength to move on with hope and optimism. You filled your hearts with faith and forgiveness. You passed that on. Thank God you passed that on." The verse that Frank held to in the prison camp, when he knew he was being rescue, was Mark 11:25: "And when you stand praying, if you hold anything against anyone, forgive him, so that your Father in heaven may forgive you your sins."

The other part of this book that sneaks up on you at the end is the complicated relationship between Mark and his mother. After her death from addiction complications, Mark was wracked with guilt and fear - could he have done for his mom? Did he abandon her by moving on with his life, and away from the turmoil that her life became? In the end, what pulled him out of the fog was being reminded of where he came from - of the legacy his grandparents began of forgiveness, not just of others but of your own past self. In the end, his mother's death was not his fault, and Mark deserved to do as he had advised others at her funeral, to "remember their delight, not their sorrow, to let those memories - those delights - be her final resting place."

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