Megumi Naomi Nakane Timeline and Summary

•  Back
• More 

• Naomi walks through Uncle's favorite valley, and he says that it looks like the sea. She is not so convinced.
• Fast forward. Naomi is a grade school teacher in Cecil, Alberta.
• One day she gets a call that her Uncle is dead, and she drops everything.
• She heads over to Obasan's house, and finds her cooking and cleaning as usual. She refuses to go to sleep.
• When Obasan goes into the attic to look for something, Naomi sees a quilt that her mother made for her. It makes her question her mother's disappearance all over again.
• The next day there is a package on the kitchen table for Naomi. It's from her Aunt Emily.
• Naomi reads the whole thing in one go, spanning from her mother's trip to Japan to the family's last day in Vancouver.
• In Slocan, Naomi and her family live in a small house in the forest. She and Stephen don't go to school for months. Lucky kids.
• Grandma Nakane arrives in Slocan, but dies shortly after. This is Naomi's first personal experience with death.
• Happy times now. Uncle Sam comes back, and he brings gifts of musical instruments. Everything is a little happier for a while.
• Back to school. Bummer. But she does make two friends at least.
• Not the best friends, though, since they almost let her drown in a river. She stays in the hospital for a while, dreaming about death.
• Months after Naomi returns from the hospital there is happy news. Her dad is back. Not so happy news, everyone has to move again.
• The new town, Granton, is even worse than Slocan. Naomi hates everything about it. You name it, she hates it.
• Naomi grows up in Granton, and this is when she first acknowledges her father's death. Stephen gets great at music and uses it to get outta town.
• That takes us back to the day after Uncle's death. Obasan is reading some letters that Naomi can't read.
• When Nakayama-sensei gets there, he reads the letters to Stephen and Naomi.
• The letters are about Grandma Kato and Naomi's mom surviving the Nagasaki Bombing. It's gruesome.
• The next chapter is dedicated to Naomi coming to terms with her mother's death, suffering, and silence.
• Time for a trip. Naomi sneaks out of the house in the middle of the night. She goes back to Uncle's valley. Yeah, it is kind of like the sea. She finally sees it.