When my father died at 41, I thought it was a ripe old age, a good time to go. In my simplistic mind and adoring 10-year-old heart, I thought he had done enough in his life, although I could have used more time with him at home.
I thought I’d go the same way, in a flash. So I was never afraid to be in any kind of aircraft – from a helicopter to a tiny piper cub to a giant 747. Death like my father’s was inevitable.
I am now 30 years older than Dad was when he perished in an airplane crash, and I don’t feel that I’ve lived enough. I think of my dad’s life and what else he could have done, the events in his children’s lives he would have been proud of, the grandchildren he should have had the pleasure of meeting, and I realize that 41 was not a good time to go.
Now I am in The Zone and I have been thinking a lot about death and dying lately. Although I am relatively healthy — my blood pressure and annual blood test results are the envy of my doctors — I can’t help but consider the inevitability of the end of life. I have lost a number of contemporaries recently, and a few more are not well. People close to me are suffering from strokes, heart ailments, dementia, cancer, diabetes, and other serious illnesses. I have begun to grieve for them, the inevitability of their passing, even as they hold on to life and memory.
Besides illness, there is the inevitability of death by other means, the more proximate of which is a 7.2 earthquake in the heart of Metro Manila. Be prepared, the authorities tell us, in the voice not unlike John the Baptist’s, warning that the Kingdom of God is at hand. We are told to fill our backpacks with enough supplies to keep us alive for three days. The list of other needs prepared by the Red Cross will require a small container van for my household of seven and I don’t know where to begin. We will need three liters of water each, plus canned goods, every possible kitchen and household utensil, clothes, toiletries, first-aid kits, gloves, knives, shovels, etc. for digging ourselves out of the rubble. I am daunted by the task of getting together all the stuff we will need to survive.
At my age, I have become quite sanguine about the inevitable. I know I have to go sometime, by whatever means God decrees. I am fine with that. I just hope the process isn’t prolonged and painful. Meanwhile, I am filling my backpack, hopefully with enough supply of goodness and grace to see me to Eternal Life.
I am more fearful of losing others to the inevitable. I am not ready to be deprived of any member of my family. It is too painful to think of losing a sibling, a child, a cousin, a grandchild, a nephew or niece or a friend. I am very protective of my household. I have grieved long and painfully for those who have left suddenly, without warning.
When my mother was in her late 70s, having buried her parents, husband, brothers, in-laws, and many of her high school friends, she spoke of how lonely it was to grow old without them. At 79, she was impatient to leave this world, but, she sighed, a necromancer, a prisoner in Muntinlupa where her father was director of Prisons, told her she would live to a lonely old age, alone, because her contemporaries would have left ahead of her. Mom had a stroke a few days later and fell into a long coma. In the silence of her long sleep, she communicated with us through a medium, saying that she could already see her loved ones across the way, but she could not cross over since she still had lessons to learn. She finally met her Maker after two-and-a-half years.
Living in The Zone, the lesson I take from Mom’s experience is to let time and gravity take its course. I will live as long as I am permitted to, and die in the way I am called by God to. Meanwhile, I am grateful for the life I have lived, the lessons I have learned, and the love I have been gifted with beyond measure in the bosom of family and friends.
Life is still good in The Zone for now. Bring it on. HEART & MIND by Paulynn P. Sicam