“My grandma is dying. I am not really sure if I can make it for the seminar next week”, said my friend, in a casual manner.
Before I knew it, I burst out laughing, unguardedly, by looking at his too casual facial expression for such a heavy news. Oh no, I shouldn’t have done what I just did. Regardless, I did.
He seemed not to care much about my disgraced reaction. Instead he just casually joined me, smiling, as if he just told me something not-quite-a-big- deal. Apparently, his grandma-close to 90- has been sick (not sure what). I asked if grandma is in pain. He said, no, she has been in coma, and literally living a vegetative life. She was already discharged from the hospital because not much else can be done. “Probably she won’t last for another week”, he casually put. To that, I casually reacted,“Oh!”
How should I make sense of all these? Somebody is dying. Somebody close to someone I know is dying. Still, he seems ready for that. Where is the pain? Where is the grievance? Is he a cold-hearted person and so am I, for that matter? Then I noticed a lot of dark spots here and there over his both hands. “What happened?”, I asked. “My son got hand, foot and mouth disease and I got it from him”, he picked up the enthusiasm describing the son’s health problem and how he, not his wife, got it from the boy.
Probably, yeah, only probably, he doesn’t think of “grandma is dying” in a sense that he is about to lose someone close to him, but in a sense that his dear grandma is now already relieved from the (physical) pains and soon will be eternally freed from them.
Dying is part of living and living is part of dying. Each is the beginning of the other. Those who want to kill themselves or who are so scared of dying are those who are also scared of living. “Grandma is dying”, hope it comes to her and her loved ones, as natural as “she is living”. And we, too, are dying, so that we can live to the fullest, everyday.
