Yayasan Suria JB(YSJB) – Death is real!
Death is certain!
Being a social worker running an NGO, I get to step into the shoes of hundreds/thousands of my clients (the people whom we helped, the Poor & Needy) over the many years.
What a privilege & joy to ‘experience’ so many lives instead of spending our only 1 life here on earth!
Though we try our best to help our clients to live a more meaningful/comfortable lives, sometime they do die.
Along the way, we just learn to care for them before they die. Even doctors cannot prevent their patients from dying when the time has come.
Man proposes, God disposes.
(Manusia yang merancang, Tuhan yang menentukan).
Speaking from my personal experience, some 20 years ago in 2002, I was given a 3% chance to live when I was diagnosed with 3rd stage lung cancer. I live to tell the story of what death is all about, the ‘feeling’, the ‘fear’ of going in unknown territories and the ‘peace’ death brings.
In the course of my work, I have seen many clients die, from sickness (cancer, dialysis, HIV/AIDS, stroke, heart attack, etc) to old age, to accidents, etc. I have handled corpses, cleaned and bathed AIDS patients and carried corpses in my Toyota Hilux to hospital as part and parcel of my work.
I have seen, felt and experienced enough of ‘death’ for I myself was 97% in the grave while battling with lung cancer in 2002. Having experienced ‘near death’ and having seen so many of my clients die, death is second nature to me.
Death is real and certain and must be talked about and confronted head on. It is *not a TABOO* or ‘pantang’ and it’s when you dare to talk about death, you know the real meaning of life, you live every minute as if it might come anytime. Yes, death can come anytime. And it is by ‘this realisation’ that we begin to live, to appreciate, to value and be grateful for what life has to offer.
Like dew in the morning, it vanishes when the sun is out – such is the fragility of life!
We can die any moment, can’t bring along anything when we ‘leave’ but we keep on holding on to material things by not parting with a small percentage of our possessions when our fellow brothers & sisters are facing difficulties in putting food on table, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic.
For me personally, I don’t worry about death for it is beyond my control, I don’t worry about anything I can’t control, including death itself.
Even if I were to die while I am writing this, let it be, I have done what I ought to have done best – serving humanity with L
ve & humility all these years.
I have seen ridiculous taboos about death across cultures, race and religions, most of them ‘hilarious’ with no scientific evidence to back them up, yet people ‘fear’ for some unknown reasons to even talk about death.
I hope this brings out a whole new paradigm shift of dealing with death and dying. Those interested to know more about ‘death & dying’, just google *’Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M. D.’* and you can get tons of materials and the many books she has written.
It does not mean that if you talk about about death, you will die soon and it also doesn’t mean that if you don’t talk about death, you will not die either!
Death is certain, we all die on fine day – when, how and where is the big question mark!