November 2025
I’ve been wanting to place a couple of last posts here for some months. I say “last” because years have passed since there was anything much for me to report regarding Rui and me, or regarding what was a long, dreary narrative that was petering out, that of parents trying vainly to find a means of recovering their children from cross-border child abductions to Japan. Others have continued their efforts and their stories have been told in variously elaborated ways (not least of which is a French film that has not seen release in the United States, and that I haven’t been able to see, called A Missing Part (or in French: Une part manquante).
The wound never heals, but I confess that I lost the reins holding onto the story in the ensuing years. Time is deleterious to parent-child relationships under circumstances such as these. I find I no longer know the tone in which I can commemorate milestones any more. So just to say so in plain words, my son, Rui – who was born in Queens, NY and raised here by his mother and me until at the age of 4 ½ he was abducted to Japan and never heard from any more – turned 20 years old this November, 2025.
I’m told that at 20 there are coming of age rituals observed by traditional Japanese parents. I learned of that expectation, or was reminded of it, in February of this year. The news I got then was harrowing, and I couldn’t post about it directly at the time. That’s when I posted this (link below) in order to hint at and register my shock and strong emotions at what I learned then. Even so, I couldn’t really tell the story directly then, reasons for which should become apparent momentarily.
https://forruiboy.com/2025/02/08/before-all-the-water-disappears-february-2025/
At the time I had to settle for a few cryptic lines hinting at the actual news. Now, eight months on, it no longer seems like my responsibility to guard my former wife’s secrets, revealed to me then.
February, 2025: Machiko, Rui’s mother, wrote me an email, the first she had sent to me since 2011. In it, she told me that late in the preceding fall of the year, she was diagnosed with a glioblastoma, a very dangerous and invasive cancerous tumor in the brain; a cancer of the tissue of the nervous system itself. Machiko was genuinely afraid. She told me she’d had two surgeries, and due to the regrowth of cancerous tissue, was facing the possibility of a third which could result in severe impairment of her capacity. She was fairly open to me about how deeply traumatizing this is, and was able for the first time since taking Rui and holding onto a cold, deep silence ever since, to communicate to me her fears regarding herself and Rui’s well-being. It was evident that she feared Rui could end up without a relationship with a living parent before he turned 20, and she asked me to do what I had struggled to do the entire time he has been separated from me and growing up, to renew my relationship with him. I could tell from her words that she was then doubtful as to whether or not she would still be living by the time Rui’s 20th birthday came.
—
I don’t know a lot about what has happened there since her last mail reached me. I wrote back and forth to Machiko 25 times (I counted!), and earnestly tried to convey to her my sympathy, to share her fear, and to tell her my desire to communicate directly with Rui at last. I could sense in the mail that communication had become hard for her. She struggled for words; she’d been through a medical hell that was still unfolding. Upon receiving more of my replies, she soon became more cagey, as if in the throes of her illness, she hadn’t considered very specifically how she would really feel about a request from me to communicate directly with Rui. I’d given her my address and telephone number and begged her to put him on the line and make a phone call. I stressed that they could both write if they wished to, and that she could trust me not to bring her any harm or legal trouble under the circumstances. She seemed to fear the return of the threat of consequences for the crime she had committed, although it was also suggested she couldn’t see a crime as such. I asked for the information necessary for me to begin, after more than 15 years of long-languishing absence of communication, to let me become a part of her network of support as she suffered through the ordeal of gravely serious illness. I wrote a letter to Rui as well, not knowing how it would be received, just urging him to help me to get to know more about him. It felt like we needed to be introduced, and I wanted Machiko’s help.
Over the next couple of months, Machiko got more treatments, and reported to me that she believed the tumor to have gone into remission as a result. She wrote that she had shared all of these communications with Rui, and had left it up to him to decide whether or not and how to communicate with me. Then the line went silent. He hasn’t replied.
What happened next was a profound experience of my own here in New York. My intention is to briefly tell what that’s been about in another, “next” post, addressed to my friends and to anyone who has followed my story with Rui and wants to know how things stand. I want to tell, so I will do that soon.
It finally hit me emotionally on the evening before Rui’s 20th birthday that a meaningful milestone had been reached.
I was here in my apartment alone. As I so often do, I was turning to poetry and music in search of comfort and help in saying what I feel. I remained quiet and listened to the late night air.
Reconciliation and letting go has never been an easy thing to do. All we can do is declare our feelings and hope that they appear worthy in the eyes of the world.
Rui is 20 years old!
“The same thing I would want today,
I would want again tomorrow.”
For Rui Boy 