Death comes in groups it seems.
Tessie, who took care of my kids for 17 years was the first to experience it this time. Her father passed away a few days ago followed very shortly by her mother. The old couple must have wanted to be together I think. Both had their chalenges in the last few years and Tessie often messaged me about them - the old man had some form of dementia it seemed while the old lady was increasingly frail and needed oxygen and then hospitalisation.
A few days later, my KL friend Julie rushed up to Butterworth to attend a cousin’s funeral.
Then just this morning my best friend Gan’s brother passed away. I still don’t have all the details, but I know Chong Wan fought Leukaemia some years ago so I’m assuming it came back.
All this has caused me to revisit the idea of death and what it is and what it means. I am not afraid of death and never have been. I may have my nervousness about the way I die - please, no fire and no drowning - but I think the main thing is that I would miss life terribly. Life, despite, or even sometimes because of, the challenges I face every now and then, is such a beautiful and rich experience. There’s so much still to do and I think on my death bed I would be thinking of that one more thing I still want to build, or that place I want to visit or the old friend I want to have one last chat with.
In a way this is the idea I’ve often espoused - that we should just forget about this whole Life After Death thing and instead focus on our Life Before Death. I don’t measure my worth in dollars and cents (or Ringgit and Sen as teh case may be) but instead on the positive impact on the people around me and the world in general. There will be haters of course and people whose life journeys and mine just simply do not match up. That’s fine. I don’t live for them. I live for people who were put in my life for a reason. And I feel incredibly proud that some of those people have benefitted from my being in their lives, and I feel chuffed too that others have helped me be better or more enlightened for them having been put in mine.
We’re all here for a reason and a big part of that reason is always to learn. I reckon that when we’ve learnt enough, our reason to exist ceases and we go. Or, when we’ve shown we just are completely incapable of learning, then the Universe probably thinks ‘Alright, enough is enough, let’s yank you outta there…’.
This may sound like growth is a limited or limiting thing. Well, I think in some cases it’s got a short plan and in others the projection is much greater and the timeline correspondingly so too. We are, after all, all individuals. And though this sounds just so Monty Pythonesque, the reality is that we are indeed unique, with unique traits, offerings, desires and needs. And plans.
Our lives are really a constant process of renewal - of learning and in some ways, unlearning too. We grow yet we revert to a childlike state.
Death too, is part of the process of renewal but here’ the interesting insight I had today: Death is not just a part of renewal for the departed. It is for those who are left behind too.
Interesting that death, by its very nature, gives birth - in this case to an important idea. Well it is to me, at any rate.
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