Beautiful Distance
The azaleas growing by the new hospital’s gates are in full bloom, a bright pink that makes my eyes sore.
新医院门口的杜鹃花盛开了，鲜艳的粉红色让我眼睛酸痛。
May is my wife’s favorite month.
五月是我妻子最喜欢的月份。
She’s always said that May evening skies are the most beautiful, with their layers of orange, yellow and blue.
她总是说五月的傍晚的天空是最美丽的，有层层橙色、黄色和蓝色。
Back when we were engaged, we treated ourselves to an evening out at a fancy hotel.
当我们订婚时，我们在一家豪华酒店度过了一个晚上。
The May sky looks just like the cocktail she sipped that night, at the bar on the top floor: a gradually deepening ultramarine, with a scattering of twinkling stars.
五月的天空就像那天晚上她在顶楼酒吧喝的鸡尾酒一样：逐渐加深的群青色，散布着闪烁的星星。
She could have spent hours looking at it.
她本可以花几个小时看它。
Last month, she was transferred to her third hospital.
上个月，她被转移到第三家医院。
It’s not as small as the first one she stayed in, nor as big as the second, but somewhere in the middle.
它不像她住的第一间那么小，也不像第二间那么大，而是介于两者之间。
The automatic doors open, and I step inside.
自动门打开，我走了进去。
This hospital interior looks like a hotel, its curtains and walls in matching pink.
这家医院的内部看起来像一家酒店，窗帘和墙壁都是粉色的。
I’m almost always able to keep my promise of visiting on Mondays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays.
我几乎总是能够兑现周一、周四、周五、周六和周日来访的承诺。
I’ll pop in on other days too when I can, even if just for a half hour.
如果可以的话，我也会在其他日子过来，即使只是半个小时。
It’s caused a few difficulties at work – I’ll bow to my superiors, peers, and subordinates and excuse myself early, or sometimes I’ll ask them to take on some of my workload.
这给工作带来了一些困难——我会向上级、同事、下属鞠躬并提前告退，或者有时我会要求他们承担我的一些工作量。
Some of my professional relationships are starting to feel strained, and work has begun to pile up.
我的一些职业关系开始感到紧张，工作也开始堆积起来。
Most people are kind.
大多数人都是善良的。
They’re sympathetic and ask me to pass on their best wishes when I go to see her.
他们很同情她，并要求我在去看望她时转达他们最好的祝愿。
So far no one’s seemed to mind my adding to their workload.
到目前为止，似乎没有人介意我增加他们的工作量。
So when I say these relationships are ‘starting to feel strained,’ I might be overthinking it.
因此，当我说这些关系“开始感到紧张”时，我可能想得太多了。
Whenever I tell people about my wife, they want to know what she’s been diagnosed with, what stage her illness has reached, how long she has left.
每当我向人们介绍我的妻子时，他们都想知道她被诊断出什么病，她的病已经发展到什么阶段，她还剩下多久。
I’ve had these questions thrown at me from more people than I can count.
向我提出这些问题的人多得我无法统计。
Everyone is curious about death.
每个人都对死亡感到好奇。
They want to know how long a stranger has left.
他们想知道一个陌生人离开了多久。
But we’re all moving toward death.
但我们都在走向死亡。
It starts seeping into babies’ cells right from the moment they are born.
从婴儿出生的那一刻起，它就开始渗透到婴儿的细胞中。
No one – ill or otherwise – knows how long they have.
没有人——无论生病还是生病——知道自己还能活多久。
It’s like that story about the god of death, who gives us each a candle.
就像那个关于死神的故事，他给了我们每人一支蜡烛。
The candles are all different lengths, gradually burning out, and there’s no way of knowing how long each one is.
蜡烛的长度各不相同，逐渐燃尽，无法知道每一根有多长。
None of us has an eternity – only our allotted time.
我们没有人拥有永恒——只有我们被分配的时间。
Most people here don’t see it this way, though.
不过，这里的大多数人并不这么认为。
We’re all born equal, they think, so we all start out with the right to live to the average age.
他们认为，我们生而平等，所以我们一开始就有权利活到平均年龄。
But certain people lose that right, they imagine, because of choices they make.
但他们想象，某些人会因为自己做出的选择而失去这项权利。
They try to make sense of other people’s timelines and seem to think that only those who have been given a life expectancy by a doctor are moving toward death.
他们试图理解其他人的时间表，似乎认为只有那些被医生告知预期寿命的人才会走向死亡。
Everyone else is moving toward life.
其他人都在走向生活。
If I avoid telling the story of how long my wife has left, saying vaguely that I’m ‘looking after my wife, who is ill,’ I’m asked whether there are other people who could look after her, and if I might not be better leaving it to the professionals.
如果我避免讲述我妻子去世多久的故事，含糊地说我正在“照顾我生病的妻子”，我就会被问到是否还有其他人可以照顾她，以及我是否最好将其交给专业人士。
Taking leave is not seen as an employee’s ‘right’ in Japan, and few think that someone’s quality of work could improve if they’re able to live fully, without regrets.
在日本，休假并不被视为员工的“权利”，很少有人认为，如果员工能够充分生活而没有遗憾，他们的工作质量就会提高。
I’m sure I’m in the minority in managing to reduce my hours for a while.
我确信我是少数设法暂时减少工作时间的人。
I probably wouldn’t have been able to do even this much if I were working elsewhere.
如果我在其他地方工作，我可能连这么多都做不到。
Still, I struggle to feel any straight-forward kind of gratitude.
尽管如此，我还是很难感受到任何直接的感激之情。
We have ‘condolence leave,’ but what’s the point of having time off once someone is dead?
我们有“哀悼假”，但一旦有人去世了，休假还有什么意义呢？
Maybe I’m asking too much, but I can’t help wishing that my colleagues would understand why I’m taking time off without needing me to tell them how long she has left.
也许我要求太多了，但我不禁希望我的同事们能够理解我为什么要请假，而不需要我告诉他们她还剩多久。
My wife is still facing forward, toward life.
我的妻子仍然面向前方，面向生活。
She’s trying to move in the direction of light, and not to let herself be swept away by this singular current.
她努力朝着光明的方向前进，不让自己被这奇异的电流卷走。
I wonder how to get people to understand, without succumbing to the countdown narrative.
我想知道如何让人们理解，而不屈服于倒计时的叙述。
Without showing them that I’m losing hope.
没有向他们表明我正在失去希望。
Recently I’ve started just plainly stating what’s been happening:
最近我开始简单地陈述发生的事情：
‘The hospital called us in urgently three times last month, saying “She’s in critical condition, please get here as soon as you can.” They told us things like “She’s losing consciousness,” or “The oxygen in her blood is falling.” I jumped into a taxi in the middle of the night.
“上个月医院给我们打了3次紧急电话，说‘她情况危急，请尽快赶到。’”他们告诉我们诸如“她正在失去知觉”或“她血液中的氧气正在下降”之类的事情。我半夜跳上了一辆出租车。
Her condition improved, but it seems like these kinds of things could happen at any time now’
她的病情好转了，不过现在这种事情似乎随时都有可能发生。”
Still, it feels like this has less impact than something as simple as a life expectancy.
尽管如此，感觉这比预期寿命这样简单的事情的影响要小。
The doctor who told us about my wife’s condition, that time in the conference room, was a man I guessed to be in his early fifties.
当时在会议室告诉我们我妻子病情的医生是一位五十岁出头的男士。
His thick-rimmed black glasses and short hair peppered with grays made him one of the more memorable doctors.
他的厚框黑框眼镜和灰白的短发使他成为最令人难忘的医生之一。
He had a calm air about him and was well-attuned to how we were feeling.
他给人一种平静的感觉，很能理解我们的感受。
I understand that this word is a hard one to hear.
我知道这个词很难听。
He was careful to leave a pause before it.
他小心翼翼地在这之前留下了停顿。
After our initial silence, he listened patiently both to the questions we asked and to all our various grumblings, muddled up as they were with shock and confusion, and concerns about money and work (which of course had nothing to do with him).
在我们最初的沉默之后，他耐心地听着我们提出的问题和我们所有的各种抱怨，因为震惊和困惑以及对金钱和工作的担忧而变得混乱（当然这与他无关）。
He looked at my wife when he spoke to her, respecting her intelligence and without trying to hide the details from her.
当他和我的妻子说话时，他看着她，尊重她的智慧，并且没有试图向她隐瞒细节。
He showed her all the scans, used the proper medical terms, and explained the stages of her illness.
他向她展示了所有扫描结果，使用了正确的医学术语，并解释了她病情的各个阶段。
The one thing he never discussed was her life expectancy, but even at that point it was obvious to us that there wasn’t really a future to speak of.
他从未讨论过的一件事是她的预期寿命，但即使在那时，我们也很明显，没有真正的未来可言。
I wonder what made it so.
我想知道是什么造成了这样的情况。
Maybe it was the scans showing that the cancer had spread to her peritoneum.
也许是扫描显示癌症已经扩散到她的腹膜。
But no, I don’t think it was just that.
但不，我认为不仅仅是这样。
It was clear in the little things he said, and his expression when he said them.
从他所说的小事以及说这些话时他的表情中可以看出这一点。
I didn’t want to know what her life expectancy was.
我不想知道她的预期寿命是多少。
What good would it do?
这样做有什么好处呢？
I wanted to hear the name of her illness, and for her to hear it as well.
我想听听她的病的名称，也想让她听听。
For us to hear it together, as husband and wife.
让我们作为丈夫和妻子一起聆听。
I couldn’t see how we’d be able to put our trust in each other, and in the hospital or the doctors, if we didn’t know the name of the thing.
如果我们不知道那东西的名字，我不明白我们如何能够信任彼此、信任医院或医生。
Hearing its name didn’t rob my wife of her individuality.
听到它的名字并没有剥夺我妻子的个性。
The label might be the same as the one given to others with this condition, but that didn’t mean she’d become interchangeable with them.
这个标签可能与其他患有这种疾病的人的标签相同，但这并不意味着她可以与他们互换。
Maybe it helped that the doctor didn’t talk in statistical terms.
也许医生没有用统计术语来说话是有帮助的。
So often, when people talk about the different types of cancer, they also talk about the prognosis: ‘This is what happens to X number of people after Y number of years.’ People are always making these kinds of statements.
通常，当人们谈论不同类型的癌症时，他们也会谈论预后：“这就是 X 人在 Y 年后发生的事情。”人们总是做出这样的陈述。
Percentages are important for researchers and practitioners, no doubt, but I wonder if they’re necessary for patients just living their own lives?
毫无疑问，百分比对于研究人员和从业者来说很重要，但我想知道对于仅仅过着自己生活的患者来说是否有必要？
It’s foolish to spend the everyday thinking in terms of percentages, as if you’re in some kind of lottery.
每天都用百分比来思考是愚蠢的，就像你在玩某种彩票一样。
Some doctor hands you a life expectancy, and you shape your life around that?
一些医生给了你一个预期寿命，你就围绕它来塑造你的生活？
Nonsense.
废话。
Where’s the sense in being that passive?
如此被动有何意义？
Where’s the sense, also, in being brainwashed by clichés?
被陈词滥调洗脑还有什么意义呢？
By platitudes like a peaceful and dignified death and silly words like natural .
受陈词滥调般的平静而有尊严的死亡和傻话般的自然。
Who cares if it’s peaceful or natural?
谁在乎它是平静的还是自然的？
Someone’s life – a happy life – is coming to an end.
某人的一生——幸福的一生——即将结束。
That’s what I think, anyway.
无论如何，我就是这么想的。
I’m not sure if my wife feels the same as I do, but she didn’t ask the doctor for a life expectancy that day or about what caused her cancer.
我不确定我的妻子是否和我有同样的感觉，但那天她没有向医生询问预期寿命或导致她患癌症的原因。
I feel like her mood is darkening, though, as she faces death.
不过，我觉得她的心情越来越阴郁，因为她面临着死亡。
There must be a way to live happily without looking to the future.
一定有一种方法可以不展望未来而幸福地生活。
I haven’t found it yet, but I will.
我还没找到，但我会的。
From Beautiful Distance by Nao-Cola Yamazaki .
山崎直可乐《来自美丽的距离》。
Used with permission of the publisher, SJP Lit.
经出版商 SJP Lit 许可使用。
Copyright © 2026.
版权所有 © 2026。