父もいつか死ぬだろう、その時をずっと持ちかまえていましたが、ついに先日そのときがやってきました。冗談を言いながら、身体のすべてを使いきって生ききる姿を見せてくれました。
父は4歳の時に終戦で朝鮮から引き上げてきて15歳で医科歯科の技工学校に入り、18歳から入れ歯屋として働き、母ちゃんに逃げられ、セガレ三人を、バッタバッタと殴り倒しながら育て、いまの時代にはまったく通用しない持論でツッパって生きた人でした。いつも、「人生なるようにしかならねえから」 と言っていた父ですが、僕らには「俺は子どもの頃から何も選べなかったから、お前らは好きに生きろ」と言っていたので、僕は絵を描く人生を選ばせてもらいましたが、そんな僕に父は亡くなる数ヶ月前「儲かる儲からないに関係なく、好きなことをする人生を選べたことはいいことだ」と言ってくれました。
そんな父でも、こんなハズじゃなかったと思うこともあったのではないかと思うけれども、死んだあとの父に人生どうだった？と聞いたら「おう、上等 上等!」と笑いながら言いそうな気がします。

“He will pass away one day.” I had been ready for it for a long time, and that day finally came the other day. My father had always made a joke and had demonstrated how he lived out his life until his body was worn out.
Coming back from the Korean Peninsula at the age of 4 after the World War II, my father entered a school to learn Dental Technology when he was 15 years old, and started his career after three years. Since his wife ran away from him, he raised three kids by himself with his own principles that would make no sense in this time and age. He was defiant, after all.
“What will be will be”. That’s what he had always said, and there’s one more thing. “As I had no chance to make a choice at all ever since I was a kid, live your life as you guys like.” And I have chosen to live as an artist because of his word. He told me a few months before his death, “it’s good that you have chosen to live doing what you really like, even if you don’t make a fortune.”
I assume he had moments like “it wasn’t supposed to be like this! But if I were to ask him “how was your life?”, he would laugh and say “it was fine!”.

Portrait:植田栄|Sakae Ueda
1941年、釜山生まれ。 歯科技工士.
Born in 1941 In Busan. dental technician.