Somehow, I’m staring out the big
hospital window again. It’s been seven months since wearing the blue hospital
gown and entertaining the millions of nurses and doctors who come into my room.
So much has changed in the last seven months. The tumor has shrunk, then grown
back again. The chemo has worked and then stopped working. I’ve been optimistic
about the future and then started to doubt the thought of a happy ending. I’ve hid
in the comfort of denial towards the possibility of dying and then come to
peace with it. The topic of dying. How sensitive it is. It is not something
that I like to think about, but reality demands that I give it some thought. How
I feel and my views are beautifully articulated by the following two quotes:
"To me, what's important about life is
the living, not the dying. My role is to live only for a while, not forever. I'm
a short strand in a long rope that stretches back to the beginning of life
billions of years ago. I automatically have immortality through my being alive
and influencing the world and the "rope" as it stretches into the
future. The influence of my having lived lasts forever through the impacts I
have on other people and on the physical world. I seek no greater immortality
than that. I try to make those impacts the best they can be. They are my legacy
to the future. As I contemplate my death, I think about how I have influenced
the world and how that legacy will live on after I have died."
- Art
"Death, this being that rides a pale
white horse, the clomps and gallops leaving a trail of lightning behind him,
and then Death picks up the dying person or animal or baby, the person in pain,
the baby that is too tired for this world, and Death brings them to rest in the
bosom of Mercy and the gospel asks us mothers and sisters and fathers and sons
and brothers and lovelorn and grief-stricken and lonesome — not to weep. And
each time I read it, I allow myself to weep. Because when I do that, it’s not
the end of something but rather the beginning."
"I automatically have immortality through my being alive and influencing the world" - so beautifully written. You are doing a great job at making the best out of this immortality. These words have inevitably been woven into the our lives, making a positive and everlasting butterfly effect.
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