I LIVED

I recently lost a family member. She had been battling cancer for years. I visited her the day before she passed, and it was quite difficult. The thin, frail body in the bed did not look like the woman I knew. She was in a coma, so all I could do was hold her hand and stroke her hair. We all knew the day would come, but it didn't make it any easier. 

Because she knew that her life was not meant to be long, that cancer was slowly killing her, it was important to her to spend as much time with family as possible. We had just had our annual family trip shortly before her death. And although she couldn't go on hikes, and she was tired and cold and not feeling well a lot of the time, she put on a brave face. I knew it meant so much to her just to be surrounded by her children and grandchildren. 


I was reading The Zahir by Paulo Coelho, and the protagonist asks a nurse if he ever thought of his own funeral. The nurse responded that he hadn't and didn't want to because it frightened him. And that is the answer most would give. 


     "But what if I could choose an epitaph? I would ask to have these words engraved: He died while he was still alive. That might sound like a contradiction in terms, but I knew many people who had ceased to live, even though they continued to work and eat and engage in their usual social activities. They did everything automatically, oblivious to the magic moment that each day brings with it, never stopping to think about the miracle of life, never understanding that the next minute could be their last on the face of this planet."


I thought about what Coelho was saying in this passage. I thought about how we are all so afraid of dying, that we forget to live. We get so caught up in doing what we think we're supposed to be doing according to the rules that society dictates, in making and spending money, in walking paths laid out by others instead of ones we created for ourselves. We become robots, doing whatever we have been programmed to do, day in and day out. Slowly, our curiosity wanes. We lose sight of our dreams. We quit believing that anything is possible. We stop watching the sunrise. We stop looking at the stars. We stop smiling at strangers and making funny faces at children. We stop taking a moment to look at the world around us. We stop being present. We stop truly living.

My family member had to face her own mortality. And it made her cherish every moment with her family. She understood that the time she had with them was precious.

Many people who have been diagnosed with a terminal illness or who have had a near death experience, develop a new perspective on life. They understand that life is a miracle, and that miracle can be taken away at any moment without warning. They don't want to waste whatever time they have. They want to watch the sunrise. They want to count stars. They want to laugh and cry and dance and fall. They want to hold their loved ones close and tell them how they feel. They want to really live.

It sounds morbid to say, but I wish we could all have a near death experience. Or at the very least, I wish we could all think about our own funerals. Face your fears, right? If we could face that fear, then maybe we could let it go, conquer it, and be able to live as we were meant to. Not as automatons, but as living, breathing, laughing, dancing, loving, curious, rebellious humans.

I often think about my own mortality. I think about my own funeral. I wonder when Death will come for me. It could be today, it could be tomorrow, it could be thirty or forty years from now. I don't know if he will knock softly or bang on my door. I don't know if I'll see him as he rounds the corner or if he'll sneak up on me when I least expect it. The only thing I do know is that he will come for me, as he comes for us all. And I want to be able to smile at him and say "I'm ready. I LIVED."

Seeing my family member dying reminded me that we are not guaranteed tomorrow. And so, we must remain present. We must open our eyes and minds and hearts and see and experience the world around us. We must remember our dreams and forget our past. We must wake up from our autopilot stupor and see the beauty of this planet and all its splendid life forms. We must let go of our egos, our fears, our anger, our regret, our sorrows, and let love fill the empty spaces left behind. We must love ourselves and each other. 

Let us not continue to be oblivious to the magic.