My friend, Maria Franki, became aware of weakness in her abdominal muscles in the summer of 2010. She was diagnosed with ALS, aka Lou Gehrig's disease, in January 2011.
Maria is a Japanese born woman. She fell in love with an American man in Japan, and followed him to the U.S. more than 25 years ago. For the next 10+ years she worked, played, lived, and loved in NYC. She decided to go back to Japan about 15 years ago and now lives in Tokyo.
She is an amazingly atypical Japanese woman, being free to express her feelings and opinions without fear. I met her when I started to work in NYC as an extremely introverted young woman. She was the polar opposite to me. She was the first person who befriended me in the office. Maria is the kind of person who could bring the party up a notch with her mere presence.
She has decided to share her journey with others via blogging. I offered to translate her Japanese blog into English so that her friends in the U.S. could read.
Her writing is poetic and distinctively unique just as she is. With multiple layers of meanings, it is not easy to read what is hidden beneath even in the original language. Maria has authorized me to exercise poetic editting to make it easier for English readers to feel her heart. The English version of Maria's blog is edited to prune some personal references and messages relevant only to those who know Maria in person, some cultural references, and some procedural details, which any PALS and their friends and family must be familiar with.
I also added some background information and my personal observation in an attempt to help the narrative flow and read more like a story.
The first drafts of translation are posted on Maria's original blog upon submission. Once published on her site, I don't have any control over the posting, while I keep on revising them to find better words to do justice to her original poetry.
Maria has also given me her permission to re-post the English translation of her blog entries on my site.
You can also follow her original blog in Japanese.
まりあの記憶 まりあフランキー
http://mariafranki.cocolog-nifty.com/
