Dealing with Terminal Illness-2

Dealing with Terminal Illness-2

This is the nature of Nature. Everything must return to its source in its pristine form. All tiny things merge into bigger ones and we too must return to our source one day. It's not about living or dying, it's restoration of our original state. Vedas call it moksha meaning the extinguishing of all attachments and freedom from all fetters including that of body, elements and relationships. Death is not the end of life, but the beginning of it. The drop becomes the ocean and eternally transcends scarcity, struggle, fear and pain. An ocean remains unmoved, it does not dry up, it does not wait for the rain or sunshine. It exists beyond those shackles. Death is not sleep but awakening.

I have only slipped away into the next room.
I am I, and you are you,
Whatever we were to each other, that we are still.

Call me by the old familiar name.
Speak to me in the easy way which you always used.
Put no difference into your tone.

Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.
Laugh as we always laughed
At the little jokes that we enjoyed together.

Play, smile, think of me, pray for me.

Let my name be ever the household word that it always was.
Let it be spoken without an effort,
Without the ghost of a shadow upon it.

Life means all that it ever meant.
It is the same as it ever was.
There is absolute and unbroken continuity.

What is this death but a negligible accident?
Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?
I am but waiting for you, for an interval,
Somewhere very near,
Just round the corner.

All is well.
~Henry Scott Holland.

Titled Death is Nothing at All, this is not a just poem but a beautiful sermon, I feel. Let's not make our lives too serious. Let's be merry, play, laugh it out. Nothing is worth clinging onto. Let Nature roll. It is what it is.

A dying man was visited by the local priest. "Do you surrender yourself completely to the will of the Lord and accept him as your savior?"

"I do, Father."

"Do you renounce the devil and his works?"

The man didn't answer.

"I've come to absolve you. Tell me, do you renounce the devil and all his works? Say you hate the devil and detest him thoroughly," the priest spoke with even more rigor.

"Reverend," the patient said, "with the kind of life I lived, I don't know where I'll end up. So, I don't think it's the time to make enemies."

A little bit of humor makes everything divine. Hence, the joke above.

Let's pray for a better world, with each one of us doing our part. Let's be compassionate, loving and giving. It's every bit worth it. Such a life becomes larger than death.

Sarve bhavantu sukhinah, sarve santu niramayah।
Sarve bhadrani pashyantu, maa kashcid dukha bhagbhavet॥
May all sentient beings be at peace, may all be free from diseases.
May we see nobility everywhere, may no one ever be in suffering.

Om Namah Shivay