on d

The most vivid fear I remember I have about death probably occurred when I was a little boy, when one day I heard a wild story at our kids' hang-out about a mother in our neighborhood who mysteriously disappeared and never returned. The thought of "what if this happens to my mom" caused great fear in my little mind.

And when I first heard the saying: "Death is part of nature," it was an uneasy and incomprehensible concept to me. Death is a terrible thing that ends life. If it's not outright anti-nature, it's definitely un-natural, I thought. 

We Chinese are pragmatic people, who don't think about things that are not of much practical value or grand ideas that are too much out-of-this-world. The old Confucius saying "Don't ask me the meaning of death, I am yet to figure out the meaning of life" (未知生, 焉知死) is pointed out by some as reason why Confucianism never developed into a full-blown religion in Chinese culture, because it shied away from that big "D" question. Without at least exploring and trying to understand the meaning of death, you can't understand the meaning of life either, they say.

So the Western (and other) religions delved deep into that question and came up with some answers, that our life on earth is transient by design, that it's a trial to better our character, and we'll have a perfect life in heaven once we get there, (or we may need to reincarnate quite a few times before we reach that Nirvana, according to Buddhism) ...

And there are people who say "I don't know if I even care for an eternal life, all I do is live one honest day at a time, and when my time is up, it's up." To these people I salute their integrity and even more, their continuous conscientious living. For not even the best of the Christians I know can maintain that "pray without ceasing" practice 24/7, and many people "live like they didn't know they will die one day, and die like they had never lived"--inertia seems to be the only force that keeps many hang on to life. 

Is there life after death, does our life continue to evolve in different form after our earthly body disintegrates? All right, I now accept decay is part of nature, just like growth is part of it, they form a cyclical process, like sunrise and sunset, flowers blossoming and wilting, and so on. But how about our spiritual or mental strength, that continues on an upward path through our life if nurtured right, so when we reach the end of our bodily existence, we are supposedly at the peak of our spiritual or mental climb. Do they then just drop out and disappear like our physical body?

My mother passed away some 19 years ago. It was a shocker for all of us. She was only 67, for one thing, and other than feeling a little short-breathed and palpitations just a couple weeks prior for which we took her for a thorough exam and the doctor assured us everything was OK, she showed no signs of illness. I still remember the shock and heart rending pain I felt when I received that mid-night phone call from my sister in Taiwan that Mother had just passed away in her arms.

The shock came from the loss of something I thought I would always have but now realized it's gone forever. It's no longer the fear, but the great pain that came from the sudden, ruthless take-away of my dear mother, and then the deep, nostalgic sorrow of feeling things better in my life have been lost for good.

In the end we sob for the dead not because we feel sorry for them, but because we feel sorry for ourselves. Rather than saying we fear death, we love life. Even those little, routine emotional highs and lows--those that make up inertia living, you may say--are enough to carry us through the day, every day, even though our hard-to-please soul always fancies something grander. 

And where do these precious little contentments come from mostly? Relationships, I gather. A bear hug from father to son, a complimenting smile from wife to husband, an encouraging note from one friend to another... These are what happy living is made of. 

Some relationships we have in life are born, such as familial relationships (parents, siblings, relatives); some are chosen (spouses, adoptions, business partners); and some are in-between (co-workers, classmates, church members). We tend to hold on to born relationships closest and longest simply because it's most natural thing to do, hence the pain deepest when that relationship is severed from us--like a death in the family, literally. 

But the truth is all relationships--like spiritual and mental growth--get richer and deeper if nurtured properly and continuously, and will give us same satisfaction whether it originates from familial, social, or cultural background. Thus we all have experience having friends with whom we are more intimate than with our own brothers or sisters, and adopted children are in general closer to their foster parents than their biological ones.

One dear uncle of mine just passed away last month. Out of the four brothers my father had, this was the one closest to him and to us since we were kids. It was again a sudden thing: In March he started coughing severely and went to the doctors, where it was diagnosed to be lung cancer at its terminal stage.

I visited him a couple times when I was there last month, didn't get a chance to talk to him. But then I heard from my sister who had once had a long talk with him at the sick bed, and he told her, after reflecting back on his life, "I have no regrets."  I was somehow quite moved and comforted hearing this.

No fear, no dissatisfaction, only peace at the end.

God rest your soul, dear uncle.