Death – it is such a difficult thing to deal with. Loss of friends, parents, children, relatives – we have all experienced the death of someone in our lives. I always wondered why some of us are taken so young, or why there is so much suffering in those that are much older than us?
1000 years ago, when someone was sick, they were just left to die. Whether it was cancer, or a genetic disease, we didn’t have the tools or the medication to diagnose or to help the person live a comfortable life.
Now, we have all those tools to diagnose and to help us, but still, the suffering is so much more. We are so busy trying to fight for our lives, for more years on the clock, for a more comfortable life, but is it all really worth it?
Someone once tried to explain death to me by telling me that when you have fulfilled your role on this earth, then your body will be free to go. And sometimes, we cling on to people so hard, that instead of allowing them to be free of pain and suffering, we put so much pressure on them to stay in this world. And they do it for us. They suffer more for us. That is essentially what love is.
So when dealing with death, we should be grateful. Grateful for the years they gave us, grateful for the time we shared, and grateful for their lessons they have taught us.
I had a friend when I was 16 who got hit by a driver whilst riding a bicycle. I would go to the hospital every few days to go visit him, he was in the ICU hooked on life support. We sat and prayed and hoped that he would wake up, even though there was little to no activity in his brain. We knew all this, but hey, miracles happen. We waited for a good month, but there was no change. Then it was time to decide whether or not we wanted him to suffer like this on machines. Because trust me, they are suffering when they are on the machines, they say they don’t know anything because they are brain dead but their souls are in limbo, watching over how their bodies are being poked and prodded. Our soul is watching as it goes beyond the body.
The most remarkable thing happened when we decided to let him go. When we took him off the machines, his markers on the machine spiked a little bit, its as if he knew he was going to go. Finally, he was gone.
I questioned why I had to witness something like this, or why his parents would have to go through loss of a child. And then I thought about what he had done whilst he was with us. He was a beautiful person, highly misunderstood at our school, but he made a life for himself, he had a beautiful girlfriend, and he was happy. His parents learned from the experience too. We don’t take people around us for granted, no matter their shortcomings.
Recently we had our beloved grandmother pass on. She had been diagnosed with dementia for the last 7 years, but I truly believe she knew exactly what was happening, maybe not in her superficial consciousness, but her deep consciousness. She absorbed everything around her, even though she didn’t know how to react. Kind of like a baby who can see but can’t explain or articulate or imitate. Hence, if they are suffering, we cannot see that side of them. They just push on through for us, because we need them to, even if they don’t want to. But we are heart broken when they are gone. This is only just human nature.
Unfortunately there is only so much we can do when it comes to death. Eventually we all have to go. And there will really be a time when the clock has struck out. But what we can do is just be grateful for the time we had with the person, a thousand years ago, this may not have been the case. And the only way these people so close to us can live on is by remembering their lessons and their purpose on this earth and how it can make us better.