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In our little Japanese American community of Del Rey, California, 40 or so farmers once grew crops and reared families. I am now one of the few who have taken over the family farm. A bittersweet benefit is that, no matter how old I am, I’m still considered young among this group.
I am an organic farmer of peaches, nectarines, and grapes in California’s Central Valley. My father and I do most of the work ourselves, and with our budget getting tighter every year, the farm demands more and more backbreaking labor. If we miss a few worms that appear on young fruit, a ruinous outbreak can ensue that we can’t fix with fast-acting chemicals; instead, we must dig the nuisances out ourselves. Sometimes I whisper to myself, “This farm is going to kill me." On a February day, I drive to our farmyard on a tractor, dragging a plow that broke when I hooked a vine. I had been working too fast, trying to keep up. I’m hoping that my 76-year-old father will help me fix it. He’s always been a great repairman. He had to be, to make things last. Because he’s so good, I’ve never pushed myself to his skill level, selfishly assuming that Dad would always be around to fix things.
He’s behind the shed, wandering around his tractor. As its engine roars, he looks perplexed, as if he’s trying to listen for something wrong. I walk up next to him, and together we lean in. Then I look at his face.
The right side is drooping. His eyelid is almost sealed shut; his eyes are glazed. He doesn’t recognize me.
He is having a stroke.
As my father begins to limp around the tractor, I hold on to him. I turn off the engine and start to maneuver Dad inside. But he insists on returning to his tractor. With his good left hand, he reaches for the seat cushion and flips up the pad so that the morning dew won’t collect on it.
Even now, Dad is thinking of the equipment.
Then, finally, he lets me guide him toward the house.
With peach blossoms blooming and grape buds swelling in the warmth of early spring, I have regularly called on Dad to help work on the farm. Answering my plea fits his willingness to work. Often he labors late into the evening. It is work and his belief in the value of perseverance that have defined him over his lifetime.
One hundred years ago, my grandparents emigrated from Japan with dreams of owning a farm. Instead, they encountered racist Alien Land Laws that prevented foreign-born “Orientals” from buying property. So they worked and waited, expecting that their American-born children would be able to purchase land and establish a farm. But World War II intervened. They were relocated to internment camps, together with all Japanese Americans from the West Coast. Because they looked like the enemy, my family spent nearly four years behind barbed wire in the Arizona desert. Afterward, they wandered back to Fresno, and in 1950, after more years of fieldwork, Dad finally realized his father’s dream and bought our farm.
When I came back from college in 1976, I had an interest in organic farming. I wanted to grow crops without herbicides, fungicides, or pesticides. So, since I’d inherited my father’s passion for hard work and his love of heirloom fruits, he and I became partners. Dad taught me the power of recognizing problems, analyzing them, and identifying new solutions. And when I married Marcy and we had our two children, we began to pass on the legacies of the farm to them as well.
I believe that my father was happy when I took over the farm, but he rarely says it. He is a gentle, quiet father.
Now, several days after the stroke, my mother and I talk to the doctor at the hospital. I hear the doctor tell us softly yet clearly, “In my opinion, he won’t recover.”
There is silence. The doctor avoids saying “vegetable,” but my family is thinking it.
Mom finally says, “He might become a vegetable.”
We share an image of keeping him alive in a vegetative state—tubes sticking out of arms and cavities, fluids pumped in and out of his system. To a farmer, however, the term vegetable carries other connotations: Fruits and vegetables are the ultimate expression of life for certain plants. So taking care of Dad as a vegetable implies something very different to us than to others.
Dad would die. But the doctor does not say when.
As he lies unconscious, Dad tosses and sometimes groans. He keeps raising his left arm and hand to his forehead, rubbing the skin and pushing his fingers through his hair. I start to stroke his head and hair too.
“Is he in pain?” Mom asks.
The doctor says no.
Just a few days ago, my father was out on his tractor, working the land. Preparing for the future. Now the question is, Where will we take him to die?
He no longer requires acute care, and his hospital insurance coverage will end soon. When we ask what other families have done, we’re given a list of acute-care nursing homes. We’re faced with a decision.
Can we bring him home to die? Dying with dignity sounds simple, but there are specifics: Which room do we put him in? How do we care for him? Bathe him? Change his catheter? What if there’s an emergency?
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