This, too, shall pass.
And then, life—no matter how wealthy you are, how many vegetables you eat, how sheltered you might be—ends.
Today, we are affected by the death of an EI’s wife’s passing; she died of cerebral malaria, 20% of the millions of people who get malaria are affected. Last week, someone I knew only vaguely through a conversation by a hockey rink, who’s affected some of my best friends’ lives in so many ways, passed. Blaring headlines scream that at the University of Texas last week, a student majoring in math took his AK47 into a library and left destruction with his passing. In Mexico, a landslide covered hundreds of homes, and in Afghanistan, possible rogue U.S. soldiers killed several civilians.
Here, everywhere, funerals are rampant, and hundreds of mourning friends and families follow the recently deceased to the graveyard. The life expectancy is 44 in Malawi, and the AIDS/HIV epidemic quietly leaves millions more children orphaned and spouses widowed. This is the kind of passing we see here.
It’s just another day. And it’s just so unfair. Life should be warm until you are lying in bed with a loved one, older, wiser, content, natural, at peace. And still, reality is daunting as I sit here and panic about how every day, we learn more about how death, perhaps, can sometimes be averted, by medicine or a senso-status test or better food or a hug.
I don’t want to tell anyone what to feel about death, how to think, never and not at all, I have my own perceptions and my own detriments and my own numbness and my own fear. I’ve been swept away with depressed moments, learned to armed myself through perspective when it comes back against my weaknesses, my anger. But I understand that I am lucky to be able to internalize what a blessing little acts and smiles are, to appreciate with my heart the sunshine I feel and the food that I eat, and I wish with all of my heart that others might, too. “This, too, shall pass,” is not entirely optimistic (“This sadness, too, will soon be numbed.”) or pessimistic (“Happiness is only ephemeral, fleeting”). But moments in life can only be just so; they, too, pass.
And finally, what brought a smile to my face today amidst the unfairness I was feeling, was the answer a six-year-old child had to the question of, “Why do dogs leave Earth first?” after his old dog, Belker, peacefully slipped away. He said, “People are born so that they can learn how to live a good life—like loving everybody all the time and being nice, right? Well, dogs already know how to do that, so they don’t have to stay as long.”
We all don’t stay forever, and maybe nonrefundable moments need to be spent on learning how to be nice, how to love people as they are, and how to live a good life.
