Obasan: Chapter 3 Summary & Analysis

Naomi visits Obasan and finds her in the kitchen. She asks her aunt if Uncle suffered, but Obasan simply replies that everybody dies someday. Obasan pours Naomi some tea, and Naomi sees a loaf of bread baked by her uncle. She wonders if baking that bread was Uncle’s last act, and she remembers when she and her older brother Stephen helped Uncle bake his first loaf. She and Stephen used to tease Uncle about how he always burned the bread, but Naomi recognizes that those days are over.

Obasan explains that she didn’t know Uncle was dying when she brought him to the hospital, and because the nurses sent her home, she wasn’t at his side when he died. Naomi wonders what Uncle thought about in his last hours of life. Obasan speaks little about her late husband, and Naomi understands that silence is “the language of her grief.” She doesn’t know how to help Obasan, and she knows that Stephen travels too often to be of help. Obasan keeps repeating “Everything old,” referring to both her body and the home where she made a life with her husband.