Meanderings on Life and Death

[Originally posted last night on Dave@Xanga]

Things are getting better. My apologies to those who were worried by my last post, I haven't been myself lately. Also, my thanks goes out to the great friends who have provided encouragement and support through the times when I needed someone to lean on. Sometimes, a little extra help is needed to face up to the real issues in our lives, even when a person is unwilling to admit that they need it.

Today Professor Griego, my Public Health professor, reminded us of an important mantra that students often use while taking tests, "This too will come to pass". It's not the end of the world, we just have to weather the personal storms that we are thrown into, regardless of whether those issues are caused by internal or external factors. So what can we do when things go beyond our control? Cut our losses, accept the fact that we cannot control everything around ourselves, and adapt. Adaptation, after all, is one of the key determinants to our survival.

I have to accept the fact that I cannot control suffering and death; no one can. The other night, I received an email message from Vietnam updating me on Thầy Hùng's condition. He is in the final stages of his illness, suffering from a combination of liver cancer, tuberculosis, and hepatitis - his liver is essentially no longer functioning well enough to sustain him. He has been transferred from the public, Vietnamese hospital to a French hospital where his pain is being managed more adequately. Thankfully, he will be able to pass peacefully and with dignity, surrounded by loved ones such as Leslie, his fiance, by his bedside.

They are two of the bravest people I have ever met. Leslie is an American woman, a movie director who lives in Paris when she isn't traveling. She once told me her story during a long bus ride and I was amazed at how she has overcome great personal tragedies in her life and followed her heart with her career choices. Her decisions are remarkably led by compassion for others. She and Thầy Hùng don't speak the same language, but over the course of many years they have learned to communicate with each other intuitively through a mixture of French, English, and Vietnamese. Somehow, she always knows what he is thinking and vice versa. I believe the couple, well into their fifties, are soul-mates.

Thầy Hùng has survived war, famine, and communist reeducation in a lifetime filled by what I consider to be the greatest tragedies of Vietnamese history. I believe his illnesses are the the battle wounds of surviving through so many years of hardship. Through it all, he has started two organizations to help street children and families affected by HIV/AIDS. He has changed hundreds, if not thousands of lives and in many ways, saved people from lives of even greater poverty and desperation in the slums. Several weeks before he was hospitalized, he taught me many lessons and I remember someone asking him what Smile Group would ever do in his absence. He responded, with great conviction, "Cái chết đến sớm, hay trể, không có quan trọng." (Death arriving early, or late, isn't important.) That afternoon he taught me that no matter what happens to us, we are at the very least left with our humanity and that death is only the beginning. While he is Catholic and myself a Buddhist, I find great value in his words. If we live fulfilling lives, trying our best to make the most with what we have and helping others in the process, we will have nothing to fear when death comes to take us.

The last time I spoke to him over the phone, his voice was weak but still alive with the fire of great conviction, he told me to try and continue helping the children and doing what I do. Even on his deathbed he is still concerned with helping others and saving the poor children of Vietnam. This, to me, is the most dignified way a person can live.

This too will come to pass - the pain, the suffering, and eventually life itself. Our greatest tragedies come in in the form of holding onto and trying to control that which we cannot. I cannot control death, and ultimately I have to own up to that reality because no matter how much I tell myself this fact, a part of me will never accept it. I will never accept that the world is not a fair place and that people have to suffer unnecessarily, especially when there is hope for change; I understand this value to be my greatest burden as well as my deepest motivation in life.

There is always hope and humanity to hold onto, don't ever forget that. If these great people have come and gone, surviving and adapting, changing the world around them for the better, all the while transcending their own personal tragedy, so can we. Our potential rests in our ability to make the most of what is set before us, even death. Where death exists, so does life, and with darkness comes the light of a better day, we just can't forget about that when our problems overwhelm us.