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Hi! The e-mail didn't work? Gmail can be so weird sometimes. =/ Ah, I thought that might be your question! That's actually my favorite part of the movie. My thought was that since Michiko's mother told her to think about making the person she loves happy, she should do whatever that takes. In general, parents are happy if their children are happy, and if the children are happy in taking care of someone they love, then the parents are happy because of that. So I think Michiko must have decided that in order to allow Shinji to focus on his family and be happy, she had to be out of his life entirely. (This is just a theory, but I doubt Shinji would ever leave his wife and son to be with Michiko. That's not what Japanese men usually do when they have an affair.) I forget the exact details in the rest of the movie, but I think Shinji's constant going back and forth between her and his family stressed him a bit. Also, she may have applied Shinji's father's situation to what Shinji was currently doing and thought that it might break up Shinji's family in the future and cause Shiji to suffer. As for Michiko's mother, I'm sure Michiko felt bad about taking away the joy her mother could experience from having a child, but she probably decided to just follow her mother's advice and put her own happiness and that of her lover above her mother's.

Those are my thoughts on the scene, and who knows if they're right or not. That's one thing I liked about this movie. It makes the audience think about the consequences of the actions and events that happen in their lives. :)