Culmination Address for the Class of 2026

It's been eleven years now that I've written a culmination address for my students. The first time, it was to honor the class of 2015, the group I taught the year after my mother passed. This year, it is for the group of students who saw me through the loss of my dad. It was a heavy year, but I'm so grateful for those who helped lighten the load. 

For the Class of 2026

One morning this spring, in the middle of third period, I got a text from my sister. “Hi Nori, call me when you get a chance.” My face must have betrayed me, because one of you asked, “Everything ok?” I shrugged. I wasn’t sure. Dad had been in hospice for months, but I still wasn’t prepared for this kind of text. 

I flew to Portland that afternoon and spent the next couple of days counting my dad’s last hours, last minutes, last breaths. After letting him go, I returned to school. You welcomed me back with sweet words and gestures. You helped ease my loss, but it has been a tough couple of months.  

Grief is a strange companion. In the poem, “Neither Time Nor Grief is a Flat Circle” Christina Olson describes it “like a dog that wants to be close but doesn’t really understand physics. Like it is a dog, I push my grief away and then I feel bad and invite it back, pat the cushion next to me, smell its wet breath. It’s oppressive, this grief, yet without it I feel terribly alone.” 

This is how I have felt this spring as the weight of grief forced itself into my days, and I pushed it away as it threatened to smother me. 

Through these heavy days, you, my students and colleagues, parents and friends have been there for me, offering your condolences at first, but then, you were being the eighth graders in my class the spring I lost my father. 

The other day, one of you asked, “Are you going to miss us?” I looked up from whatever work I was absorbed in, looked out at your faces, and answered, “Yes.” As afternoon light fell into the room this spring, I already knew I would miss you so very much. You have been a welcome distraction from my grief. Some days it was ridiculous, rage bait, getting tissue, annoyance, other days it was a poem or a thoughtful question. Sometimes it was just a smile or, “Hi,  Ms. Nakada.” 

So, yes, I will miss you. We have been through three challenging years at Emerson. You have seen historic shifts in leadership like we never seen before (eight different principals!) and you stuck with us. Families, friends, graduates, colleagues, thank you for sticking together through your challenging sixth grade year, for growing so much in your seventh grade year, and for your hard work this eighth grade year. We made it, and I am so grateful for all of you. As you make your way off to high school, know that our shared time together has been sacred just like my last days with my dad were sacred. In tough moments, poet Gwendolyn Brooks reminds us: “See what the news is going to be tomorrow. / Graves grow no green that you can use. / Remember, green's your color. You are Spring.” I can’t wait to hear about the news you will bring in all of your tomorrows. Congratulations!

for Dad

This past May, family and friends remembered my dad. All of his grandchildren and children shared beautiful reflections on his wonderful life. Here are the thoughts I shared. 

I’ve been writing about my dad for decades. He is an easy hero for any story, but now that he’s gone, it been challenging for me to put his life in perspective. There is so much to say about his 95 years, but it isn’t the length that has been so extraordinary. No, it is the quality and the creativity of the life he lived.

Jackie Robinson says, “A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives” and as I look around this room, we are a tiny fraction of the many lives he impacted. So many dear friends from Bend and Portland, friends of Dad’s, friends of family, all here to honor him, to stand alongside his children and grandchildren. Nakadas, Okamotos, Yamamotos, and Striegels, so many nieces and nephews here and far away, are remembering Dad today. For all of us, Dad’s life has been important. He has made such a difference.  

My siblings and I came together when Dad’s health quickly declined. Through days of stormy skies, we sat with Dad sharing stories and looking at pictures, listening to his labored breathing. On a cold March 14th, the sun came out, and Dad took his last breath, leaving us... adult orphans. From his room, I took home a plant and this magnetic picture board, one that I always remember being in our parent’s home, and there is a picture of us from 1978, sitting together on the floral coach in the house on Shepard Road in Bend, this multiracial family in Central Oregon, a family unlike any Bend, or many other places, had ever seen.

Dad created a life that wasn’t like the one he was born and raised in, but that was heavily influenced by the strength of his mother, and the work ethic of his father. When he fell in love with our Mom, he was already an orphan, but together, they imagined a life. We are the ones who have benefitted from his vision of possibility when he bravely asked: who do I love, how do I love to spend my time, and what kind of life do I want to imagine with those I care for?

In building this visionary life, while Mom often shared her regrets with us, her doubts, her wonderings if they had done things differently, stayed in LA, not bought this house, moved to Portland earlier, Dad never seemed to regret anything. Maybe this letting go had to do with his incarceration as a teenager during the war, something he learned staring into starry skies on desert nights in Montana or Arizona. Shikataganai. “It can’t be helped. Nothing can be done.”

Wherever he learned this, he walked through our childhood, into the pews of St. Francis, into the gyms at Mountain View, onto cross country courses, baseball fields, standing tall, proud, never seeming to notice that he was the only Japanese person around. He never seemed to regret a single decision, even when he retired early and without Mom’s blessing. Shikataganai.

As I make my way through raising kids, I continue to learn from Dad about how to live each day. When I’m rushing kids off to soccer or baseball or basketball practice, or sneaking in a workout in the early morning hours, or putting words on the page, Dad’s life reminds me not to worry about what else I might have done. There is nothing that can be done about that now. Shikataganai. 

When my mom was in her final days, I read Ruth Ozeki’s A Tale for the Time Being. This equisite book taught about living in the now, and about life’s changes. I’ve been reading it again, in the wake of Dad’s passing, and so many of its lessons are the same ones Dad has left for me to find. Toward the end of the book, Nao, a teenage girl, recounts a visit with her Buddhist grandmother, Old Jiko, who says: “Everything in the universe was constantly changing, and nothing stays the same, and we must understand how quickly time flows by if we are to wake up and truly live our lives. / That’s what it means to be a time being, old Jiko told me, and then she snapped her crooked fingers again. / And just like that, you die.” 

Death is part of life, and now Dad is teaching us from the other side. Dad’s life taught me not only to imagine and create a unique and creative life, but also to let go of regret and savor each moment, each now. 

Ozeki, in that same book says, “The ancient Greeks believed that when you read aloud, it was actually the dead, borrowing your tongue, in order to speak again” so thank you, Dad, for letting me borrow your tongue today, for letting us hear you now as you remind us of the powerful impact your life and death can have on our lives if we stay here, in the now. Thank you for reminding us to envision the life we want for ourselves and to spend our time doing what we love close to loved ones. 

We stay listening, to you Dad. 

Now. Now. Now.