[Oe List ...] Fwd: August 29 from Jaime

[Jaime R Vergara]

j'aime la vie


Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate!



-----Original Message-----
From: Jaime Vergara <pinoypanda2031 at aol.com>
To: editor <editor at saipantribune.com>
Sent: Sat, Aug 24, 2013 5:38 pm
Subject: August 29


The End
 
>From the Internet:
As I was lying around, pondering the problems of theworld,
I realized that at my age I don't really give a rat'sass anymore.
… If walking is good for your health, the postmanwould be immortal.
… A whale swims all day, only eats fish, drinks water,but is still fat.
… A rabbit runs and hops and only lives 15 years,while
… A tortoise doesn't run and does mostly nothing, yet it lives for150 years.
And you tell me to exercise? I don't think so.
Just grant me the senility to forget the people Inever liked,
the good fortune to remember the ones I do, 
and the eyesight to tell the difference.
I love the author’sparaphrase of Francis of Assisi at the end.
 
We are coming to the end ofour writing.  As one of my soul mates whowent through chemo and now lives the struggle of a cancer survivor says,talking of end things do not come easy. Everyone avoids the subject of death.
 
My theological awakening,when the discipline was still considered the queen of sciences, occurred in the60s when a strapping 18-yr old Pinoy lawyer wannabe chanced on an ecumenicalYouth Assembly at Silliman University in Dumaguete City (an institution startedby Presbyterians in 1901).  I bump into characterslike the Nazi-executed martyr Bonheoffer (Freedom), biblical scholar Bultmann(Question of God), theologian Tillich (You are accepted), and the ethicalvisionaries Niebuhr brothers (Church as social pioneer), et al.  We consequently teetered to the left.
 
Add the opening of closed doorsand shuttered windows of the musty Basilica by John XXIII, and I found my mindquickly in the expansive quadrangle of the monastic cloister contemplatingmoves not even common to Jesuits.  A saillater, from Manila to SF’s golden gate, by Greyhound to the woods of Kentuckyacross the prairie of the Midwest, I quickly entangled myself in the on-goingtheological upheaval at the time, buttressed by a youth revolution and a civil rightsmovement with truncheons and live dogs. Those were heady days to be playing attention toone’s life.
 
A decade later, an elderlycouple, a renowned Princeton University educator and head of Union TheologicalSeminary in New York when the fierce winds of Vatican II were blowing wildly tothe Hudson, and his wife, decided to take on “the freedom of the Holy Spirit” withan intentional overdose of sleeping pills at 75 and 80.  
 
Euthanasia was the dreadedterm for the act, espoused as far back as Socrates downing the hemlock, restoredat the cutting edge of a Christology that saw Jesus not as a victim of Romanconnivance to Jewish defensive paroxysm but as a willful act of taking thecross unto one’s entire being.  The Van Dusensdecided that the springlike burst of joy at birth and its muted wintry chill ofdeath can no longer be just left to passive resignation in nature.  As increasingly a feature of birth, death hadbecome an item of choice.
 
I was liberal but not thatprogressive.  Michigan was our vacationState, with friends living in Flint when graffiti was still unseen in neighborhoods,and Muskegon still elicited mirth and mystery from foreign lads like me.  There was Jack Kavorkian in Pontiac, bringingsanity to dark corners but later vilified in U.S. media as Dr. Death, sentencedlater to 10 years in prison (served 8) for practicing physician-assistedsuicide.
 
My Dad at 57 rode amotorbike to supervise his assigned territory in Cagayan, a province innorthern Luzon.  One late afternoon, inhis desire to get home before sundown, he taxed stamina too far and ran head-onto a bus.  Medivac to Manila andsubjected to the wonders of reconstructive surgery, he could not go through anairport security without triggering off the alarm bell and flashing redlights.  Steel had been conjoined to hisbones.  
 
Retiring early, he joined my brother in Hawaii.  Later, in his late 80s, he would pray, “Godtake me,” for the pains that ailed his body. My last visit with him was when he was 92 at a nursing home, still smilingbut lost on figuring out who-the-hell I was. He died at 94 after attempting many times to escape from the home, oftenfound wandering in the middle of the night on the busy highway, perhaps, hopingnever to be found alive again.  
 
Unhappily for him, one of his sons is a chaplain withthe Honolulu police department, so he would invariably be escorted in aflashing limo of Aloha’s finest back to the ward.
 
My mother lies in a nursing facility in Honolulu whereshe is assisted to eat at appointed times; she sits and snoozes on her wheelchair awaiting her turn to be guided back to her bed as caregivers are assignedtheir numerous patients.  She turns 94 inSeptember.
 
Ending is not something we decide.  We would rather have someone else decide itfor us.  Most of us would rather be onautomatic ride in the great roller coaster of life.  To those who still reside in a two-storyuniverse, as my father did, we allot a lot of decisions on an external power wecall God.
 
Though the terms hara-kiriand seppuku entered ourvocabulary recently, we are not close to contemplating their actualexecution.  What we do know is thatsetting endings is a glorious liberating thing. We are bidding adieu to thispage and the island of Saipan. 
 
Our 10-4 is not casual.  It ends with a dot. Period.


Jaime Vergara
pinoypanda2031 at aol.com

yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!

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