The other side of life

    3991
    0
    SHARE
    Two weeks ago, one of my co-office mate, died of cardiac arrest.  He was still young and left the world so early in life.  A day after he was buried, I read that my favorite Hollywood actor, Paul Newman, succumbed to cancer.  Then, yesterday, I learned that my former classmate died.

    “Death?” wondered Charlotte Perkins Gilman.  “Why this fuss about death.  Use your imagination.  Try to visualize a world without death!  Death is the essential condition of life.”

    Life, without death, is no life at all.  Henry Van Dyke commented, “Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.” Italian artist Leonardo Da Vince thought so, too: “While I thought that I was learning how to live, I have been learning how to die.”

    Death is part of the equation of life.  On the day we were born, we are already counting our days on earth.  “Our birth is nothing but our death begun,” Edward Young said.  But we don’t exactly know when we will depart from this world but we are going there.  Like taxes, no one can escape from it.

    Oftentimes, however, people say, “How hard it is that we have to die.”  Indeed, a strange complaint to come from the mouths of people who have had to live.  As American humorist Mark Twain said, “The fear of death follows from the fear of life.  A man who lives fully is prepared to die at any time.”

    The Bible states so: “Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return” (Genesis 3:19).  We should never be afraid to die.  We should all be ready to face our Creator.  As American inventor Thomas Alva Edison thought, “It is very beautiful over there.”

    Those were the famous last words of Edison.  English writer Oscar Wilde said, “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”  He did first. Lord Palmerston asked, “Die, my dear doctor? That is the last thing I shall do.”  Indeed, it was!

    No one knows what happens after a person dies.  So Henry Ward Beecher last words were: “Now comes the mystery.”  But some people have a hard time accepting that they are dying.  ‘Get my swan costume ready,” ballerina Anna Pavlova said before she died.  “Curtain! Fast music!  Light! Ready for the last finale! Great! The show looks good, the show looks good!” exclaimed showman Florenz Ziegfeld.

    According to one of his daughters, when on his death bed, Bob Hope was asked where he would like to be buried. The comedian-singer raised an eyebrow and answered, “Surprise me.”

    Although the Elvis Presley’s undertaker didn’t want anything to be placed in the coffin with him, for fear of theft, he did actually allow the singer’s daughter Lisa Marie to place a small bracelet on Elvis’s wrist. The bracelet was covered by the king’s sleeve so nobody could see it.

    James Brown, who died on Christmas Day 2006, insisted on being laid to rest in a 24 Karat gold coffin. Apparently it made him feel good.  Queen Victoria wanted to feel close to her long-dead husband while being laid to rest. She insisted on being buried with Prince Albert’s bathrobe, and a plaster cast of his hand.

    Oftentimes, loved ones surround the dying.  So, when Lady Nancy Astor, woke briefly and found herself surrounded by her family, she asked, “Am I dying or is this my birthday?” After saying those words, she died.  Hollywood actress had one request: “Is everybody happy? I want everybody to be happy. I know I’m happy.”

    People all over the world have strange ways of burying their dead.  In Northern Vietnam, for instance, the deceased are buried in the land in which they lived. They will generally be laid to rest in the middle of a rice paddy. After two years, the deceased’s family will dig up the body, clean all of the bones, and then re-bury the body in the family garden.

    In parts of China, it’s believed that the more people that attend your funeral, the more luck will be bestowed upon your relatives. Therefore, to attract more “mourners,” strippers have fast become an integral part of an after tears party. Needless to say, men turn up to these functions by the truck load.

    In ancient Rome, when someone was on their death bed, the eldest male relative would lean in close, inhale and catch the last breath of the dying person. According to the great Greek historian Herodotus, the Calatians ate their dead. It was thought to be the family’s sacred duty. Queen Artemisia apparently mixed the ashes of her lover with wine and drank it.

    In the Scottish highlands the deceased would be buried with a small amount of salt and soil placed on their chest. The soil implied that the body decays and becomes one with the earth. The salt, however, represents the soul and like the soul does not decay and die.

    When a person dies, he will always be remembered by those he left behind.  As Antoine de Saint-Exupery puts it, “He who has gone, so we but cherish his memory, abides with us, more potent, nay, more present than the living man.”

    Mark Twain is even more descriptive: “A man’s house burns down. The smoking wreckage represents only a ruined home that was dear through years of use and pleasant associations. By and by, as the days and weeks go on, first he misses this, then that, then the other thing.  And when he casts about for it he finds that it was in that house. Always it is an essential — there was but one of its kind. It cannot be replaced. It was in that house. It is irrevocably lost… It will be years before the tale of lost essentials is complete, and not till then can he truly know the magnitude of his disaster.”

    Hollywood actress Gilda Radner, who died of cancer, said, “I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next.”

    Are you ready to die?  British statesman Winston Churchill said, “I am ready to meet my maker, but whether my maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter.”

     
    For comments, write me at henrytacio@gmail.com

    LEAVE A REPLY

    Please enter your comment!
    Please enter your name here