Death

These few days, I have been thinking about death quite a bit. I think of little phrases I pick up from people -

"I'm half dead now"
"You have no life"
"I'm dead meat"

What do the phrases above tell us about the situation they are in?
Tired. Discomfort. Bored. Deep trouble. And other unpleasant states.

Yet I cannot help but think of the dead people I have met in my life. I have been to a couple of funerals in my life.

When I was a kid, my grandfather was cremated. Then my uncle. My family friend. Sophie. There are probably some others I do not remember.

I also seen people before their death - and almost the moment they die. Two church sisters. The same Sophie. My school teacher and a number of people that I have seen in the hospital which I will never remember. But those that I would remember more significant are 3. Sophie, my school teacher.

My school teacher taught me when I was 14. She had cancer when I was 16 and died when I was 17. I saw her when she was alive and well, encouraging me to study chinese when I literally hated the subject. And I saw how different she looked in the hospital. The scene of her quietly struggling under the burden of sickness was ugly. She never looked so ugly. Her friends, relatives and church people came to visit her every other day. Christians came and prayed for her recovery - and we continued praying until the day she died. One night about 12 a.m. when I was sleeping, I heard a beep on my phone. The SMS simply said that my teacher had gone home to The Lord.

The other little girl is called Sophie. I saw her still laughing and undergoing some blood transplant (whatever it is called) and everything was going great. She was smiling, she was telling jokes, she was looking so happy. During Christmas, my friend and I bought her a gift. She looked sickly and I didn't quite like that. Life was just escaping her body slowly and slowly. The doctor decided to perform a surgery on her, which was a major success! she was recovering well, and she could go home after the surgery - living a slightly more normal life compared to her hospital life which lasted for... many months? A few days after the surgery, it was discovered that during the surgery, some equipment was infected, and as her body was too weak to protect itself, the infection killed her within less than 2 days of notice.

Her mother was there. Her father was there. I was there. It was a TOTALLY stupid mistake, TOTALLY stupid kind of shock.

The reason that I remembered them were not so much because I saw them for long periods before their death. But I saw their dying faces, and the dead face. It is pretty wierd to see a dead person. They just look like they are sleeping. They are there... but they are not there anymore.

Their hands are cold, and there is little sign of sickness. They look peaceful.

They literally have no more life in them. Yet, the description differs so far from the few phrases that I mentioned above. When we mention that we are half dead, we are lifeless... it is one of weakness, one of struggling, one of persevering.

These few days, I have been passing pretty sad moments at times. It seems at first that I am fighting a war against my own thoughts. Then I was fighting a losing battle. I was then crying. I was then arguing and struggling and trying to make sense out of things. I feel pain, and I wrestle.

If I was ever alive, these are the moments that I am alive. The days of comfort and pleasure somehow seem so far away. But the pain is present. Comfort and pleasure demands so little energy of me, it keeps my mind at ease - I don't need to do anything... and just "let things happen to me".

If I was ever dead, those must have been the times. My years of struggles are my years of growth. On this side of heaven, my years of pain are my years of living. My years of change are my years of learning. There is just something so wierd about living and dying.

It seems that comfort and pleasure is the way to live - yet idleness is really a sign of death. What kind of comfort and pleasure constantly demands your strength, your energy, your everything? In death, what kind of loss have you experienced - when you are dead... you cease to be "you".

I'm probably a little too geeky for you to find these kind of things interesting.