At each stage in life we look at death in a different way.
When I was much younger, say in my twenties, death seemed to be too far away to even bother thinking about. But now that I am much older, the concepts of life and death have become way too close for comfort and in fact the ever thinning line that once separated them can hardly be noticed. I think of death constantly and I keep asking myself what is life all about. Where did I come from, how fast life has passed me by and when is my time to bid this world farewell.
Dropping dead right, left, and center of my contemporaries can not but give credence to fear over my own imminent departure. I wonder how much of the sadness we feel about someone’s death is due to the departure of the poor soul and how much of it is the cold and sobering awareness of our own death.
Having heard me go on about my unreasonable concerns about death, my neighbor Doug came over the other Saturday and told me that he wanted to take me somewhere very special. Fifteen minutes later we were in the children’s cancer ward at our city’s teaching hospital. Room after room was occupied by little boys and girls, some as young as two or three. They were all bald and tubes were coming out of their everywhere. They looked pale with swollen faces that seemed bruised. Their eyes looked tired and half opened, as some of them gazed into the empty space in front of them. Seeing them made me cry inside and my heart ached.
When we got to the games room, where some kids were playing, Doug opened the case he was carrying and took out six or seven little fluffy toys and started handing them out. We got talking with the kids as they played. They were full of life and they laughed a lot. He asked one of them if she ever thought of dying. All the time was her answer. But I never stop fighting to win, she continued. I am not scared of death, because to be scared is to give up. All the other kids nodded knowingly, agreeing with her. I looked at her with my shameful eyes, knowing that this little girl and her very ill little friends were so much wiser and braver than me.
That day those little angels taught me one the most important lessons of my life.
