“Yay.”
Well, in truth, I’m not usually that miserable about the idea of celebrating my birthday; in fact, it’s quite the polar opposite. It’s just that I have been thinking a lot about death more so than usual recently. No, I’m not thinking about dying; that’s a completely different thing altogether! Just the idea of death and my general feeling towards it.
The tone of this whole post may make it sound like I am in depression but it’s nothing like that all; I’m just trying to unload all my collected thoughts from the past couple of months somewhere.
You see, it hasn’t been a good year in terms of the loss of loved ones. I’ve talked about my cousin’s passing a few posts back and now barely a few months later and before the scars have fully healed, I found out that a close aunt has been diagnosed with almost-certainly terminal Stage IV lung cancer. It’s actually a metastasis from her previous battle with breast cancer and it came out of the blue. We thought it was just a bad cough so we brought her to the hospital for some scans and BOOM! the c-bomb dropped.
Of course, I can’t really be complaining about the grief I will be feeling when it’s my aunt who will actually have to go through the actual pain but it’s a really unpleasant situation to be in right now. Although a bit weakened, she still seems fine and is in fairly decent spirits but it’s hard because you know and she knows that the end is coming and there will come a time when we’ll have to watch her go through the suffering, watch her deteriorate before our very eyes and pass on.
My aunt has more or less accepted her fate and decided not to undergo chemotherapy. She saw what chemo has done to my cousin where two sets of chemotherapy sessions were done and yet there weren’t any positive effects. The result was my cousin being bed-ridden for the final few months of her life while having to suffer the draining side-effects of chemotherapy. So my aunt decided fuck it, I’m going to enjoy the last few months of my life.
Cancer, it really bears repeating, is a fucking bitch. It’s relentless; you beat it one time but chances are it will be back and when it does, it will do so with a vengeance. Seriously Cancer, I hope you get cancer and die.
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The whole “dealing with the grief of losing a loved one” thing has really got me thinking about what my own death will be like, though. I accept that at some point, death may not seem like a bad thing especially when you’ve lived a good life and you’re ready to go.
However, I still think that no matter when I do eventually bite the dust, the following will still genuinely annoy me:
1) The possibility of dying without having a chance to say goodbye.
Like passing away in your sleep or dying on your deathbed before all of your loved ones can gather to say their final farewell. The one redeeming quality of cancer is that you get to prepare yourself and really convey all your thoughts and properly say your goodbyes before leaving.
Death from stroke or a heart attack on other hand, that’s just not cool.
2) Not being able to witness the technological and social progress of mankind.
This honestly pisses me off more than anything. I was thinking about how I sympathize with those who passed away around the 70’s because they never got to see how technology and the internet in particular revolutionized the world around us. Things like our smartphones that allow us to access information anywhere on a whim, the portable computers, the sending of the Hubble telescope to space that allows the capture of stunning images of galaxies light years away, the frankly amazing air, sea and land vehicles we have today, all the stunning architecture and many other amazing technological feats.
Or even significant historic events like the fall of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the handover of Hong Kong back to China, the election of the first black US president among many others. They would have no idea how far mankind as a whole has progressed (or fallen) from their time and that is frankly, a damn shame and I truly feel sorry for them.
Until I realize, of course, that the same would eventually happen to me too. I will never get to see man embark on the first intergalactic space travel, ride hover boards or even, this really pains me to say, come up with the elusive cure for cancer.
Honestly, the thought of not being able to see the first alien contact with man if it does happen depresses me a lot sometimes.
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There are many things about death that are out of my control like having to eventually see my parents and other loved ones die and the time of my own passing. What is definitely in my hands, however, is how I choose to live my life and amidst all the thinking about death recently, I have also been spending a lot of time thinking about life.
I won’t go into too much detail here about the inner deliberations but after reflecting on how things have turned out so far, I realize there really is a lot to be thankful for. Watching my cousin and now my aunt come to terms with their own mortality has reminded me to not take the life that I have now for granted and really think about what I should do with the limited time that I have here.
I just hope that I’ll be able to lead a life such that when I go, I can truly say that I am content and that I am leaving with no regrets. That takes some thinking about what is it that truly brings happiness and it’s a work in progress but it’s all good; no point forcing myself to be rigid about these things.
Life though, fucking amazing, eh?
“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.”
-Gilda Radner-
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