Death and Life

Dear diary,

Last night I had a heart-to-heart conversation with my sister Sarah who is settling down in Canada now with her husband and baby Annie. It had been a while since the moving, we did not really have time to talk and confide in each other like all the old days talking on phone at night for hours until we fell into sleep. 

Actually we wanted to make an appointment for me to talk to baby Annie :’) However, out of sudden, she got a message from her mom in Vietnam about her father’s end-stage cancer, maybe around one or two months to count. He could no longer speak or move at the present, everything must depend on her mother.

If this situation happened a few years ago, I must have wept together with her and become extremely emotional to share with her agony at the moment. Somehow when I heard the news, I could not find any way to pour comfort into heart but keep silence only. 

I wanted to pray for her father when I practice Buddhism on the following day at home but she rejected since her family is Christian, they only believe in God. 

Somehow I started to wonder if Christians do believe that when they pass away, God would come and bring them to God’s kingdom for the enjoyment of heaven, what’s the point of feeling grief when your loved ones are going back to their real home? 

Please don’t say that I’m heartless or emotionless. I do have heart and emotions. I also feel bad for seeing my sister like this, but perhaps the way of seeing life to me right now has tremendously changed through the lens of Buddha. 

Life is impermanent. Happiness always comes with Sorrows. Buddha taught me the truth of life and the true nature of human-beings. Sometimes we are sad because the fear of separation, of being left alone, of all the memories between us and the patients, off all the good things that we want to hold on to BUT we never really consider about them - the patients’ true happiness. 

The more they live, the more painful they are suffering every single day. We can’t even wholeheartedly rejoice to know that they are going to a better place than this life :) What we think only about us, we only want them to be here in pain to let us feel safe and at ease when someone is still around. Should I call this is selfish?

To be honest, when it comes to my own situation, I doubt if I’d be able to talk like this? But there is one thing for you, I will strive to not let my parents be anywhere else but Heaven or more fortunately the Pure Land of Amitabha Buddha. This is more important than my feelings, emotions or all the reasons to keep them alive in pain.

Death is a certain thing. Nobody can deny it. Even if you use so many ways to keep someone alive, he/she must leave sooner or later. And if surviving every single to count down the time left, seeing people around mourning, is it really good to keep wasting your life here? Sometimes death is better than to live a meaningless life, innit?!

This is not the first time I’d heard about death. Death to me is something not so scared anymore. What matters to me now is how to life a meaningful life so that when I die, I have nothing to regret and must be sure exactly where to go after life. 

Thankfully my honored Buddha’s teachings saved me life and gave me the courage to walk on the path with all confidence and belief. I’m grateful for being a Buddhist and becoming His student, although this student is not nice all the time :)

Send all the best wishes to ss Sarah’s father. If only she could fly back to Vietnam to see her father for the last time during this pandemic :) C’est la vie! But I do believe this shall too pass for sure.

*praying*

Hal