"When the heart weeps for what it has lost, the spirit laughs for what it has found.” – --Sufi Aphorism

The End of Life

Cle S. Estrera, Jr.

CIM share of unfortunate events
    It’s unfortunate that two of our colleagues made an early exit with a tragic death in the same month of April 2005. One is Charity Sarmiento Jamero of the CIM Class 1973. According to all the information floating around in the CIM alumni e-mail, the fatal accident happened in Van Nuys, California where Charity was living and working. A dump truck hit her while she was about to cross the street. She sustained multiple internal injuries and pronounced DOA in the hospital.

     Another one is Dr. Mario Sanchez of the Class 1980. Dr. Sanchez was the Chairman Professor of the CIM Department of Physiology. According to Dr. Tapia, Dr. Sanchez was also a beloved overall PBL (Problem Based Learning) coordinator of CIM. Dr. Sanchez developed MI and died in Chong Hua Hospital, Cebu City, Philippines. If there is any consolation for both deaths, at least Mario and Charity did not suffer.

     Both tragic events are hard particularly for the family and friends to deal with, a great loss to grieve for. Someone whom we depend so much on for lots of things, or someone who made an impact on our profession or who had given meaning to our life, is gone. It’s hard to look back without the pain of what we have lost, but we can also look back with joy and appreciation for that life we had the opportunity to share even for a short period of time because it changed something about us. Events like these can bring us to our knees, and into the arms of God.

A reality hard to accept
    Grief, like joy, comes and goes. They are the same in a way that both are life's processes. Both have a way of cleansing us, leaving us open for new life and new experiences. Grief affirms our ability to love and to acknowledge our losses, and as such, it cleanses us and prepares us to move on with life. Joy affirms our humanity, makes us more alive, and reminds us that we have the ability to soar beyond the stars. The difference is what we do with them. All too often we push away grief, while we try to hold on to joy. But when we refuse grief, it stays; when we try to control our joy, it leaves. It’s when we make ourselves aware of these processes that we can truly appreciate God’s wisdom. But whatever, grief and joy will come to pass. As the Bible says, "And this, too, shall pass away."

    Acceptance that we develop of one’s death doesn’t mean that our loved one is forgotten – it only means that the death of our loved one is accepted as a fact, a final event in one's life, and although the place our loved one had in our lives will never be filled, there is nothing we can do about it but to go on with our own lives. It is useless to refuse, deny, fight and struggle against such reality as if it’s our personal enemy. Resistance to dealing with grief and pain can lead to an emotional and physical breakdown, rob us of life’s meaning and enjoyment, and prevent us from making progress. Instead, the earlier we think of surrendering to our grief and to the reality of the event, the earlier we can become free to move on to new dreams.

    Death is change, and change is a basic fact of life. Death is not a mistake that can be avoided; it’s a part of life – the last stage of living. It completes the cycle and makes life whole. Whether or not we believe in the afterlife, two practical truths emerge from death. One, the person who is dead has no problem – our problem is our sense of loss. Two, acceptance of death, like acceptance of our past, is the way to go.  It is wiser. It restores hope.

Now is the time
    When someone dies, many of us would often imagine what happens after death, and speculate about reincarnation and talk about eternal life. I don’t know about you, but as far as my life is concerned, I don’t really care about the afterlife, whether I get burned in hell or I float around smelling flowers in paradise. Life on earth is enough for me. I see no reason to ask or long for more. I’m contented with what I already have. I just want to put more meaning into my life, explore and hopefully discover more of my potentials, and do the best I can to become a better person. I also want to help my children and make sure that they are able to take on the world by themselves in their own way.

    I had noticed that when death occurs in someone we loved or we knew of, story after story about love and affection, gratitude and appreciation seem to pour out of us. We find ourselves remembering the good things or good qualities about our friend or colleague, or the beautiful things we would have wanted to say or do to our loved one. Depending on how closed we used to be with the dead, our mind may become filled with guilt and our heart may burst with regrets – the apology we did not make, the forgiveness we did not give, the words unsaid and things undone, etc. But now the person is gone.

     Indeed it’s our culture to wait until somebody has passed away before we tell them how much we love them, how much we appreciate those moments we shared, the laughter, the help unselfishly given, the offer of moral and emotional support, and those wonderful things we’ve learned from them. It’s a culture that has never made any sense to me, but a culture that perhaps I should be grateful because it always has a way of making me think deep philosophical thoughts, and it also reminds me often to tell my children how much they mean to me that I always look forward to the day when I hear their voice or open their e-mail, because it’s an opportunity to express our love and affection for each other, to say not only what’s on my mind, but also what’s in my heart. Unlike the family and culture I grew up with in Camotes, Cebu in which words meant very little or nothing at all unless you give everything they kept asking for, with my children, words mean a lot to them.

     Anyway, why do we wait until someone’s ears can no longer hear before we let them know how much they mean to us? Why do we wait until it’s too late before we recall the good qualities of a person? Why do we build someone up or express our admiration, gratitude and appreciation of someone’s positive qualities in life after they have gone into eternity? What good does it do then? The only good thing it does is that it helps us cope with the grief and it brings those who are coping closer together. But our words fall short of the ears that most needed to hear them. These words might have made a difference in someone’s life. But for whatever reason, or perhaps we take life for granted, we failed to tell them. Now, that someone is gone and will never hear anymore what we have to say.

     Ecclesiastes in the bible says: ”Remember that death is not to be postponed. The hour of your appointment with the grave is undisclosed. Before you die, do good things to your friend; reach out as far as you can to help him. Do not miss a day’s enjoyment or forge your share of innocent pleasure…. Give and receive…” Life is too short to leave kind and loving words unsaid. So, do or say all the good things you want to do or say now, before someone is gone. Do not wait for your words to become nothing more than good-bye.

The last laugh
    Funerals are generally grim and solemn affairs. In Camotes while I was growing up, when someone died in a family, funeral was like a contest of who wailed the loudest. I guess it’s because the culture implies that the intensity of our wail would indicate or measure how much we've loved and missed the dead. I was reprimanded several times for not crying and for telling jokes and laughing because it’s disrespect for the dead, I was told. Since then I had developed the philosophical thought that a funeral should be more of a celebration for a life lived rather than just mourning of a life lost.

    When it comes to funeral, I came to like the Balinese belief that the body is just a house for the spirit; therefore, when someone dies, the spirit is finally set free. Thus it’s time for great celebration. Anyway, I’ve told my kids time and again especially when someone we knew of has passed away, that when my time comes, anytime, I don’t want anyone crying and I’d prefer no mourning. Instead, there should be at least a night where everyone tells jokes and laugh as much as they can even if the jokes are on me. I’d rather be the source of the last laugh than the last cry. And I’d rather have a funeral service with the priest pointing to my corpse and says: “This is only the shell – the nut is gone.”

    A couple of years ago, a good friend sent me this e-mail, a humorous story told by Terryl Bechol, owner of a funeral home in Florida that took place at his establishment and is one that he says he’ll never forget.

    We had a funeral of an elderly man who had many grandchildren. The room was full and the widow was not handling things too well. She kept saying, “He just doesn’t look right, he just doesn’t look natural.” 
    Everyone in the room was quite uneasy, and the funeral director was trying to tell her that this was the best that could be done, and he looked quite well, but she said once again, in a rather loud voice, “He just doesn’t look right!”
    The room became silent. At that moment, her six-year old grandson looked up at her and said, “Of course, he don’t look natural, Grandma, you ain’t never seen him dead before!”
    After the initial gasp from everyone in the room, Grandma burst out laughing and everyone else in the room did too.

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Quotes of the Year

    “Oh, I wish I loved women, but I don’t. I mean, I love them, but physically, chemically, they just don’t do it for me. I love the way a man thinks. I love the way a man smells. I love the way men look.” – Actress Nicole Kidman, on why she isn’t changing her affectionate preference.

    “SEXUALITY, TOO, is depersonalized and exploited: It increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts. Thus the original import of human sexuality is distorted and falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of conjugal act, are artificially separated.” --- Pope John Paul II in The Gospel of Life.

    “The U.N. is an international beacon of bias ….run by a bunch of crooks and bureaucratic riffraff …. It needs to be sent to the thrash pile, but nobody has the guts to drive the garbage truck.”  --- Ex-Senator Zell Miller of Georgia addressing the college students at the Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia.

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Ingenuity

"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand." Albert Einstein1879-1955, Physicist

    NOTE:The story below is written by Denis Waitley. Denis Waitley is one of America's most respected authors, keynote lecturers and productivity consultants on high performance human achievement. Visit his website at: www.deniswaitley.com You can subscribe free to their weekly Ezine.

The Thread of a Dream

by Denis Waitley

    When I was researching the history of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge as a major illustration for the ideas of success and motivation, I became engrossed with the story of how the first bridge was built over Niagara Falls. You see, to build a bridge over a giant gorge, first you have to get a line over the canyon, from one side to the other. Easier said than done at Niagara Falls.

    The engineers couldn't cross the falls in a boat to take the line from one side to the other because the boat would go over the falls. And the airplane hadn't been invented yet. The distance was also way beyond the bow-and-arrow range, which had been a common method at the time of getting the first line across to build a bridge.

    The designing engineer, Charles Ellet, pondered the question until he came up with a revolutionary idea. He decided that, while solving the problem, he would also have some fun and generate some publicity for the project. Ellet sponsored a kite flying contest and offered five dollars to the first person who could fly a kite across the gorge and let it go low enough to the ground for someone to be able to grab the string. In 1849, five dollars was a prize similar to a small lottery today. The boy who won the prize relished his accomplishment until his death, nearly 80 years later.

    It all began with an idea and one thin kite string. The kite string was used to pull a cord across, then a line, then a rope. Next came an iron-wire cable and then steel cables, until a structure strong enough to build a suspension bridge was in place.

    I'm struck by how that string is like a single thought. The more vivid and clear the thought, and the more you come back to it, the stronger it becomes - like the string to the rope to a cable. Each time you rethink it, dwell on it, or layer it with other thoughts, you are strengthening the structure on which to build your idea, like building a bridge over Niagara Falls.

    But unlike a kite, there is no string attached to how high and how far your goals may take you. They are limited only by the power of your imagination and the strength of your desire.

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