Makes a person wonder...
I lost a friend in an auto accident this week.
The car driven by my lovely Russian friend Sergei left the road sometime around midnight, after he had dropped off his daughter at the San Francisco airport. The authorities found the care with his body the middle of the next afternoon, down in a ditch where it was hard to see.
This fellow and his wife survived as Jewish people in Soviet Russia, to come to the US the moment glasnost made it possible for them. They became citizens, and their three kids were all raised here from quite small. Rita is a computer programmer, and Sergei has been driving a local taxi for years. They were a Russian folksinging duo, with a gentle sound and way of playing guitars together that was unique. The stories go that they would have been thrown in prison for playing the kind of music back in Russia that they would gift to us here so generously. After surviving all that, he perished in a freak accident in the middle of the night.
This has made me a little introspective. Death tends to bring that out in Buddhists, I guess...
His death repeats for me a lesson we all receive at least once in our lives: that we aren't guaranteed the length of time we get to walk this Earth, and that we should live each day as if it were our last - because it just might well be. If things need to be said - telling a child or a mate how much they mean to us, expressing gratitude, making apologies for past wrongs - they deserve to be said now, while we're still around to actually say them. Yea, saying these things can sound kinda sappy at the time, but I can tell you from experience that it feels so good to know that they have been said at least once.
When my Mother was in the hospital the night before her cardiac surgery (from which she never fully awakened or recovered,) she and I said all the things that needed to be said. We spoke at length of our gratitude for the chance to spend time together, for having been friends as well as family, for all the things we had done that meant something to the other. And we said good-bye, just in case, because her chances weren't all that good. And even though I was heartbroken when she died, I was able to take some comfort from knowing that I had no "I wish I'd told her"s left over. It had all been said. All the sentences that described our relationship had their respective periods at the end.
But that was a situation that was somewhat expected - my Mom was in her late 70's and had been on hemodialysis for over five years. What happened to Sergei, who wasn't even as old as I am now, is something entirely different. One doesn't expect a man who is in good health and in full control of his faculties to die like that, suddenly. We expect to be able to go on for years, leaving off the important things because "the end" isn't even starting to come into view yet.
But it is, you see. Maybe. And perhaps we need to think about saying what needs to be said, because we simply aren't promised tomorrows. We have Now, and that's it.
Yes, this is a bit of a morbid topic. It tends to be one that most Americans will avoid at all costs. We don't even like to say a person died - we tend to say "he passed away", as if the change in wording makes a difference in the reality. It's part of the reason that death is such a horrible test of faith and character, because so many never take the time to make peace with the fact that there simply "ain't none of us ever gonna get out of this life alive," as my Mom always used to say.
What came to me from this new tragedy was the realization that I was in possession of information on the smooth running of my household that nobody else in the family was aware of; and if something were to happen to me unexpectedly, there needed to be a way for me to pass that information along to the one who would take over that task. No, my health isn't failing - I'm not depressed. I'm not anticipating something bad coming my way - and I sure as hell am not thinking that the world is gonna end in the next few hours. I just know that there are things I need to say to those who mean the most to me - information they need to have so that our household can continue to function when I'm not there holding the reins. And I took the time to say all that needed saying in a document that will sit on my desktop from now on.
In the meanwhile, I think I'm gonna enjoy my time with my family and friends and appreciate the opportunity to spend one more day with them. That time is far too precious to take for granted.
The car driven by my lovely Russian friend Sergei left the road sometime around midnight, after he had dropped off his daughter at the San Francisco airport. The authorities found the care with his body the middle of the next afternoon, down in a ditch where it was hard to see.
This fellow and his wife survived as Jewish people in Soviet Russia, to come to the US the moment glasnost made it possible for them. They became citizens, and their three kids were all raised here from quite small. Rita is a computer programmer, and Sergei has been driving a local taxi for years. They were a Russian folksinging duo, with a gentle sound and way of playing guitars together that was unique. The stories go that they would have been thrown in prison for playing the kind of music back in Russia that they would gift to us here so generously. After surviving all that, he perished in a freak accident in the middle of the night.
This has made me a little introspective. Death tends to bring that out in Buddhists, I guess...
His death repeats for me a lesson we all receive at least once in our lives: that we aren't guaranteed the length of time we get to walk this Earth, and that we should live each day as if it were our last - because it just might well be. If things need to be said - telling a child or a mate how much they mean to us, expressing gratitude, making apologies for past wrongs - they deserve to be said now, while we're still around to actually say them. Yea, saying these things can sound kinda sappy at the time, but I can tell you from experience that it feels so good to know that they have been said at least once.
When my Mother was in the hospital the night before her cardiac surgery (from which she never fully awakened or recovered,) she and I said all the things that needed to be said. We spoke at length of our gratitude for the chance to spend time together, for having been friends as well as family, for all the things we had done that meant something to the other. And we said good-bye, just in case, because her chances weren't all that good. And even though I was heartbroken when she died, I was able to take some comfort from knowing that I had no "I wish I'd told her"s left over. It had all been said. All the sentences that described our relationship had their respective periods at the end.
But that was a situation that was somewhat expected - my Mom was in her late 70's and had been on hemodialysis for over five years. What happened to Sergei, who wasn't even as old as I am now, is something entirely different. One doesn't expect a man who is in good health and in full control of his faculties to die like that, suddenly. We expect to be able to go on for years, leaving off the important things because "the end" isn't even starting to come into view yet.
But it is, you see. Maybe. And perhaps we need to think about saying what needs to be said, because we simply aren't promised tomorrows. We have Now, and that's it.
Yes, this is a bit of a morbid topic. It tends to be one that most Americans will avoid at all costs. We don't even like to say a person died - we tend to say "he passed away", as if the change in wording makes a difference in the reality. It's part of the reason that death is such a horrible test of faith and character, because so many never take the time to make peace with the fact that there simply "ain't none of us ever gonna get out of this life alive," as my Mom always used to say.
What came to me from this new tragedy was the realization that I was in possession of information on the smooth running of my household that nobody else in the family was aware of; and if something were to happen to me unexpectedly, there needed to be a way for me to pass that information along to the one who would take over that task. No, my health isn't failing - I'm not depressed. I'm not anticipating something bad coming my way - and I sure as hell am not thinking that the world is gonna end in the next few hours. I just know that there are things I need to say to those who mean the most to me - information they need to have so that our household can continue to function when I'm not there holding the reins. And I took the time to say all that needed saying in a document that will sit on my desktop from now on.
In the meanwhile, I think I'm gonna enjoy my time with my family and friends and appreciate the opportunity to spend one more day with them. That time is far too precious to take for granted.