shōganai / しょうがない
it cannot be helped
my grandmother, born in 1932, lived through the second world war. she lived just miles from hiroshima, but she was lucky enough to have been staying with family across the country when the bombs were dropped. her mother died, her father died, all three of her brothers died. when she came home, she came home to nothing. she had not gotten a letter, a telegram, or anything -- there was no one left to send one.
i have never met her & i think i never will, but she lives on in me. on my fifteenth birthday, she sent me a collection of hundreds of diary pages & postcards. they dated back to as early as 1942, three years into the war. frankly, the pages are unreadable. the handwriting is that of a ten year old who was taken out of school & living in the midst of a warzone. it isnt pretty, but i can read bits & pieces of it.
for nano, i am going to be transcribing everything into english. i know that isnt traditional & it might not count, but this is very meaningful to me. i am going to be filling in those bits & pieces of missing information with my own writing. in a way, i am writing a biography for my grandmother. her story should be told.
