When death is ever so imminent...

Just a few days ago, I hear of a friend's niece returning to Singapore from Australia and went straight into the hospital for some serious medical problems. She is only 29, just completed her studies, but ran into some health problems that is life threatening. She apparently had extremely low blood platelets, kidney failure, blinded, brain hemorrhage, and lung failure. She passed away yesterday. The cause of her whole series of problems has yet to be determined.

Yet a few days ago, the newspaper reported of a female employee who worked on her laptop for hours, then collapsed and passed away.

A few years ago, I had a fellow colleague (in his late 20s) from my department who ran into a major road accident in the US. For months he has been warded in ICU in the states, and later on returned home presumably for recovery. He was re-warded upon into a local hospital for blood infection problems, and passed away soon after with his luggage still unpacked.

When I was in my 20s, I had a schoolmate who passed away after he was allegedly stabbed in the stomach while he was returning home from a night out. He was a close friend of mine, so the lost I felt was bad and I didn't really know how to deal with losing a friend at that time.

As I think of these cases, as well as the many other lost of lives around the world be it young or old age, I feel a sense that death is ever so imminent and omnipresent. It is like death is always around us waiting for the chance to pounce. One wrong doing or a single lie may possibly unhook death from its hanging above our heads and drop right on us anytime anywhere. Honestly, I am not worried about the fact that one day I will die because I believe one have to come to terms with the fact that one will have to die one day, like it or not. Resisting it and be overly worried about it is only going to bring misery for as long as one is still alive.

I believe in the buddhist way of thinking, death is actually to be celebrated. I remember at my father's wake a few years ago, the monk encouraged us to hold our tears in front of my father's altar and explained that death to a buddhist represents a form of relieve from worldly sufferings, and hence is to be celebrated for his passage to the 'western' world. Of course I tried very hard, but failed to hold my tears on several occasions however hard I tried.

If death is to be celebrated, then in the buddhist point of view it is like a gift. We celebrate when we get a gift at the right time and right place, like a b'day gift on b'day in a b'day party, or x'mas gift on x'mas day under the x'mas tree. Which also means that claiming the gift of death will also have to depend on the time and place as well; gift of death on death day in a death party... make sense? Unfortunately, while some 'spiritual' forces may know when and where the gift is going to arrive on us, we are not able to know it ourselves, unlike b'day and x'mas day. Which is why it always seem arrive in shocking ways, leading to grieve and sadness as a result of our inability to anticipate the gift of death bestowing on our loved ones in advance.

The only preparation we can do is to think about what we want to be remembered for on D day. Then live a life that is compatible with those words in the eulogy.