EDMONTON - After graduating from an Edmonton high school where he was active on the swimming and water polo teams, Michael Yuki Hayakaze floundered for a time while trying to find his life's purpose.
It wasn't until he joined the army that the boy with the big smile started to shine once more, his mother said Saturday.
"I felt he started to live his life to the fullest again, as if a fish out of water had been returned to water,'' said Machiko Inoue.
Hayakaze was killed two weeks ago by a roadside bomb in Afghanistan. The 25-year-old, who was sent to the country after the rest of his regiment to replace a colleague injured in a similar blast, had only days left in his deployment.
"I assume he must have had some bad days here and there, but everything he said about the life in the army was so positive that Mikey's face glowed with joy,'' Inoue told an overflow crowd at an Edmonton funeral home.
The service, attended by 500 people, was closed to the media and the general public. Inoue spoke in Japanese, and her comments were then read in English by Hayakaze's brother, David. A copy of her remarks was provided to the media.
Hayakaze joined Edmonton's Lord Strathcona's Horse regiment in 2006, and soon began training for deployment to Afghanistan. After stints in Fort Bliss, Texas, Wainwright, Alta., and Germany, he was ready to drive some of the heavy armoured vehicles used in the war-torn country.
Members of Hayakaze's regiment, wearing the Strathcona's trademark black hats, carried his flag-draped coffin into the funeral home. They later slow-marched a procession to the back of the funeral home for his interment.
Inoue admitted that when she first heard her son had been killed, with her sorrow came questions about why he was the only one taken.
She then remembered Hayakaze once told her that he worked so hard at being a tank driver because many lives depended on his skills.
"I now have the urge to praise him by saying, `Mikey, you did accomplish your task of protecting others. Everyone else was fine,' '' she said.
"`Isn't it wonderful? Job well done.' ''
Inoue said that when Hayakaze reached junior high school, he tried to cast off his childhood nickname, asking his family to call him "Mike'' to reflect his newfound maturity.
"I am sure that we are going to keep calling him Mikey with fondness,'' she said.
"You will surely let us do that, won't you, Mikey?''
Friends also flocked to an Internet memorial website set up by the funeral home to pay their respects.
Trisha Hearn wrote that she will always think of Hayakaze as a "good, true friend'' and will picture him rolling up the street on his in-line skates.
"You would think that he slept with them on, that's how often he wore them,'' wrote Hearn.
"Mike was always willing to help out a friend no matter what -- even something as simple as letting you listen to his MP3 player on the way home from school,'' she wrote.
The picture on the front of the ceremony's program shows Hayakaze in uniform, holding a gun in one hand. His smile is wide, and he holds his arms open wide to the camera.
Inoue once asked if her son was scared to leave the Kandahar compound for the surrounding areas where Canada's forces are fighting battles.
"He said, `It would be lying if I said I was not scared, But I fight with the belief that we are protecting our country, the people and our families doing this,''' she said.
"These words of Mikey's resonate in my heart right now.''
Hayakaze was the 79th of 80 Canadian soldiers to die in Afghanistan since 2002.
