Life and Death

These past two weeks  has been the most thought-provoking days of my life. The recent series of events made me think about two of the most important things, life and death.

Death, or the idea of death confronted me when someone close to me was diagnosed with Leukemia just this Sunday. The mere thought would send me into minutes of blank stares, deep thoughts and silent moments confronting my worst fears. With the dawn of modern technology, life-threatening situations like this becomes more easier to understand and giving doctors a bit off the pressure of informing family members about their patient’s situation. Researching on our own gives us a more practical way of understanding whatever it is that’s happening with the patient. But even with the latest technology’s ability to inform us about our illnesses, there are still a lot questions that books or the information superhighway can’t answer, questions that leave us hanging in the dark.

People say that life offers us plenty of choices,  at the end of the day, it all comes down to only two important choices that we will have to make, that will define our whole life: the choice of whether to live or to die.

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 If we choose to live, we carry with us the responsibility of living the consequences of having to survive daily, to take more risks, to experience more pain.  Every single moment that we are alive is always a constant battle to do what is right, to do what is best, versus doing what is wrong , which coincidentally is more often than not, the easiest way.

Life gives us the opportunity to help the people who need us most, of sharing the love in its most physical form , hugs and kisses.  

 But if we choose to die, we will be free from the hardships and consequences of life. And with it, all our problems and our fears and worries will disappear.

Death is freedom. But we leave the living with unbearable sorrow, of nights of tears, of ifs and whys that no answer would satisfy. This kind of freedom is something that no one is ever brave enough to face. This is something that we all have to be ready with , in every aspect of our being. Because even though books have told us what happens when we die, by people who had near death experiences, nothing will come close to truly understanding what really happens unless we experience it ourselves.

Religion taught us that we meet our Maker when we die.  This thought should give us the reason to live a life well spent, because throwing our life away by doing senseless things while we are alive is an insult to our Maker.  Death will give us the opportunity to meet Him, but life gives us the opportunity to glimpse of how our life would be in the afterlife.

I have tried suicide more than a couple of times, but I never really understood the meaning of life or death. Maybe it's immaturity, or selfishness. Until lately. I realized, I wasn't really meant to die that day because I have not experienced anything close to what the books had written about near death experiences, instead, I saw a bright light and I heard a voice telling me that it wasn't my time yet. Maybe it was just the effect of the medications I had, or even the hallucinating effect of sleeping pills. Nonetheless, whatever it was, I felt different after hearing that distinct voice.

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I just finished reading Mitch Albom’s  book  “For One More Day” and this gave me new insights of how people, on the verge of dying, feels and what can happen during those crucial hours of our lives.

And I asked myself the question, “ If I am caught in choosing between life or death, which would I choose?” And if I am dying and I would be given one more day to live, what would I do? Who will I spend the day with?

In the book, Chick Benetto spends one day with his dead mom, the one day that he was in a near-death experience.  This one day ended up changing his life. Spending one day with someone you love can really change everything. Although we will all die, when our time comes, when the flame in our candle die, the loved ones whom we leave behind would not be in an unspeakable sorrow, but will have an understanding of how we had lived a life well spent.

What would you choose and do?

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Keeping the faith,

Mei

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