News
reaches me from NY that a friend from my hiking club passed away few days ago of
lung cancer. I learned about her illness
and visited her last month. When I saw
her nearly lifeless body in the hospital, it deeply saddened me. She was unable to eat, to talk, to move or to
look at me. Her body was unbearablely thin.
A once energetic, healthy, full of promises
woman turned into “vegetation”. I spotted a small tear drop at the corner of
her right eye. I sensed her sorrow, despair
and anger. She was not willing to say
goodbye to the life she used to live, and the world she used to know. This unexpected illness devastated her. “Why me?”
Perhaps, she was still struggling with the question and could not find
peace with her destiny.
I
once read:
If there is
something to desire,
there will
be something to regret.
If there is
something to regret,
there will
be something to recall.
If there is
something to recall,
there was
nothing to regret.
If there
was nothing to regret,
there was
nothing to desire.
If one can
leave this world with such a lighthearted feeling, one has lived!
We
are ordinary mortal, but we can definitely live an extra ordinary life, and if
we did, when time to depart, we should have nothing to recall, to regret or to
desire.
While
most of my hiking friends are still mourning for her death, I quietly applaud
for her new life. She is on her way to a new journey, a new place. We celebrate birth, why not death?
