On death

I have seen many people of all sorts die, and not one of them feared death once it was inevitable. ~ Abbé Henri de Tourville

Have you ever come across this word and just as quickly decided to move along and dismiss the thought as though it did not exist? I have struggled with this reality at a very early age and have come to terms with it on my own. Life to me is synonymous with death in the sense that one is not complete without the other. When I was three years old my grandmother died of a heart ailment and we had to go to our country to attend the funeral. It didn't register to me back then what it meant because as I related in my previous stories I could still sense my lolo's presence even after they told me that she's already gone.

The realization of my own mortality came to me two years later because of an incident that I will never forget. We had a neighbor who lived in a huge mansion in the back of our home. We had some problems with them in the sense they were not too happy in interacting with a non-white family and often used to do things, which irritated my parents. I was too young to get affected and in fact I don't recall exactly now how it came about but they also happen to have a dog that I became attached to and would frequently come over to pet with. But one day out of the blue, this dog bit me on my left ankle. The strangest thing of all, I didn't tell anyone what happened, including my parents. I just kept the whole episode to myself and decided to forget it ever happened.

After this incident, I began to hear stories about how people can die and have died because of rabies from dog bites. Being an impressionable kid that I was, I soaked this all in my young mind until this story was related to me that suddenly hit me like a lightning bolt. I heard somebody said (as to its accuracy today, I cannot really say) that Napoleon died cause he let a rabid puppy lick a wound he sustained during a war. I also do not remember where I got this other information that stuck with me but I also got this impression that it can take up to six years before somebody finally dies of this rabies infection. Of course, I realized much later when I finally surpassed this mental ordeal that this was greatly exaggerated since the incubation period can range from 10 days to 2 years at most.

Nevertheless, I thought to myself that my life was doomed. But being the ever-optimistic girl that I am, I seriously gave myself six years to live! I find that somewhat funny and amusing now but back then it was very real to me. I can still remember that awful day of realization - what I was wearing! The sights and activities that surrounded me, as if it was all trapped in an hourglass. That was tipped over and the sands of time slowly but surely starting to fall and with every grain representing each second of my life that was now slipping away in front of me. All of this at the tender age of five!

Just imagine how this radically changed my thinking and perception of life. In all honesty, I wasn't afraid at all. I just sort of accepted it point blank and made a mental note in my mind that when I reach eleven or twelve at most, I'll be dead.

This event practically made me a mature lady, at least in my own thinking, overnight. My whole perception of the world changed. Before, I used to think that the whole world revolved around me. After that it seemed that I was just a speck of insignificant dust in the cosmos of my existence. And so I made every minute and day count. No amount of self help book today could have taught me everything I have learned at that young age on my own about life and priorities. I came to look at things with a different pair of eyes and what I saw was a beautiful world. John Lenon's song "Imagine" encapsulates all that I envisioned at that tender age. Hence I became an achiever. I studied really hard, polished my talents and smartness, because I knew I did not have much time in hand. I also became unselfish and thought of others first before my own. I became generous and more forgiving.

Some of my classmates in grade school must have thought of me being strange. While all they could think of then was having fun and being care-free, here I was being a diligent student who helped my teacher clean up after school and never wastes time idling around but goes straight home everyday. Not that I did not enjoy my childhood anymore. There was still time for me to hang around with my friends but more than that, I got to talk to them about serious stuff about life although I wasn't quite sure whether they understood me back then. Finally, I turned twelve and everything was anti-climactic to me by then. Through those years I doubted if I was really going to die but if I did then I was surely ready. But nothing happened. So I just moved on with living.

Much later, as years passed by, I went much closer to death and saw it right on my doorsteps as unfeigned and real as it can be. But that’s one more milestone in my life.

If you ask me what I think of death, I'd say death is very much like sleeping. But the strangest twist must be to find out after you died that you were just sleeping and dreaming all along. And you suddenly woke up.