Meeting with a friend

I cycled slowly towards my house, and suddenly saw a figure stand before the doorsteps. Curious, for the person had long blond hair, and none of my neighbours look like that. As the wheels inched closer, I realised who it was and smiled. We gave each other a long, big embrace.

It was a dear friend, with whom I had a bit of a confrontation few months before. But seeing her again, everything seemed to back to normal, and I was really glad that she dropped by like that. She followed her intuition, she said, and sort of knew that I would be there. Indeed, no sooner did she get off her bike I was arriving from a trip to downtown.

She bought lots of cakes and pastry, as well as a big bouquet of white-yellowish roses and lilies. Attached was a lovely card expressing condolences and wishing me strength. The card reminded me of something that I had not realised... within two years, I had lost a number of dear people in my life. First my dad, then a friend I met at the monastery, and now Carmen... and yes, almost on a constant basis I am living with the possibility of receiving a phone call with bad news of mum...

My friend and I sat down, on the kitchen floor no less, and bonded as the cat walked around rubbed herself against us. I confided in her, as I used to when we studied together, exchange notes and mused about emotions and dealing with death and dying. It's been two days since Carmen's passing, and yet I have not shed tears (only moistening at the corner of my eyes from time to time...)... have I become so desensitised to death, have I become numb, I asked?

Numb is when you don't care, when you don't feel, my friend reassured me. But the truth is that I do care... I do care about the pain and suffering of dying, about the hurt and emptiness of the remaining family. I do care about it enough to suddenly pick up my bags and rush back here.
No, I have not become desensitised nor numb. I have just learned to cope by becoming stronger. For there is nothing more painful to someone on the brink of death to see tears flowing down the face of the people left behind... I have learned to cope, to find strength from within so that I will not break down, and not burst out in emotions. How else can I be there to take my mother's hand, to assure her that there is hope yet? How else can I whisper in my dad's ears and tell him to let go and to go peacefully? How else can I sit by Carmen's side and calmly meditate and send her positive thoughts and wellwishes on her final journey of life? It takes courage and self discipline to do that, my friend said as she looked at me intensely in the eyes.

In a mail she later wrote to me, she described me and the circumstances I have been in in such strong words:

Your pain and sense of loss is great, but not greater than the love and happiness that these people have brought to your life. You are strong to carry the weight of so much distress over the last two years and this strength persuades others to live life to its fullest and to daily appreciate the happiness that loved ones bring to our lives; in good times, in bad times and in times when they have passed.

Death... dying... in the end it is only so much. In the end it is the only thing that is certain that will happen to each and every one of us. No prayers, however pious, no words, however eloquent and moving, can cheat or delay death should it approach. Most people only realise or feel it when faced with it...

I am not saying that I know it all already, or that I am ready for the next onslaught of death, or that I am prepared to face my own. But little by little, I am learning, I am feeling and experiencing death, and realising that it is only so much.