SAPPORO (Kyodo) Rising from her bed, a woman in her 80s squeezed the hands of Reiko Osawa with tears in her eyes when they met for the first time in nine months at a home for the elderly in Hokkaido.
Osawa, 56, is a volunteer who visits elderly people and listens to what they have to say. She had visited the woman, who was living alone, for more than two years until last February, when family matters of her own prevented her from continuing the visits.
The physically weakened woman had repeatedly said she wanted to stay home because she could hold out thanks to Osawa's visits, but after February, she was hospitalized and transferred to a facility for the aged.