<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" http-equiv=Content-Type>
<META name=GENERATOR content="MSHTML 9.00.8112.16502"></HEAD>
<BODY style="FONT-FAMILY: Arial; COLOR: #000000; FONT-SIZE: 10pt" id=role_body
bottomMargin=7 leftMargin=7 rightMargin=7 topMargin=7><FONT id=role_document
color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial>
<DIV>Thank you, Jaime, for sharing your columns.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Anyone interested in the right to make their own end-of-life decisions
might want to check out <A
href="http://www.compassionandchoices.org">www.compassionandchoices.org</A>, a
Denver-based group supporting, educating and advocating for "compassionate
end-of-life care in legislatures, courtrooms and at bedsides."</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Jann McGuire</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>
<DIV>In a message dated 8/25/2013 4:43:51 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time,
svesjaime@aol.com writes:</DIV>
<BLOCKQUOTE
style="BORDER-LEFT: blue 2px solid; PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px"><FONT
style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: transparent" color=#000000 size=2 face=Arial><FONT
color=black size=3 face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><BR><BR>
<DIV style="CLEAR: both">j'aime la vie
<DIV style="COLOR: black"><BR></DIV>
<DIV><I style="BACKGROUND-COLOR: white"><FONT color=#000080><B>Yesterday,
appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all,
Celebrate!</B></FONT></I></DIV></DIV><BR><BR>
<DIV
style="FONT-FAMILY: helvetica,arial; COLOR: black; FONT-SIZE: 10pt">-----Original
Message-----<BR>From: Jaime Vergara <pinoypanda2031@aol.com><BR>To:
editor <editor@saipantribune.com><BR>Sent: Sat, Aug 24, 2013 5:38
pm<BR>Subject: August 29<BR><BR>
<DIV id=AOLMsgPart_1_d5af229e-6320-476d-aab3-f5809341e757><FONT color=black
size=2 face=arial>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><B><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">The End</FONT></SPAN></B></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">From the Internet:</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">As I was lying around, pondering the
problems of the world,</FONT></SPAN></I></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">I realized that at my age I don't really
give a rat's ass anymore.</FONT></SPAN></I></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">… If walking is good for your health, the
postman would be immortal.</FONT></SPAN></I></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">… A whale swims all day, only eats fish,
drinks water, but is still fat.</FONT></SPAN></I></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">… A rabbit runs and hops and only lives
15 years, while</FONT></SPAN></I></DIV>
<DIV style="MARGIN-RIGHT: -96.3pt" class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN
style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">… A tortoise doesn't run and does mostly
nothing, yet it lives for 150 years.</FONT></SPAN></I></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">And you tell me to exercise? I don't
think so.</FONT></SPAN></I></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Just grant me the senility to forget the
people I never liked,</FONT></SPAN></I></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">the good fortune to remember the ones I
do, </FONT></SPAN></I></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><I><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">and the eyesight to tell the
difference.</FONT></SPAN></I></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">I love the author’s paraphrase of Francis
of Assisi at the end.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">We are coming to the end of our
writing. As one of my soul mates who went 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.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">My theological awakening, when the
discipline was still considered the queen of sciences, occurred in the 60s
when a strapping 18-yr old Pinoy lawyer wannabe chanced on an ecumenical Youth
Assembly at Silliman University in Dumaguete City (an institution started by
Presbyterians in 1901). I bump into characters like the Nazi-executed
martyr Bonheoffer (Freedom), biblical scholar Bultmann (Question of God),
theologian Tillich (You are accepted), and the ethical visionaries Niebuhr
brothers (Church as social pioneer), et al. We consequently teetered to
the left.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><SPAN
style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline">Add the opening of closed doors and shuttered
windows of the musty Basilica by John XXIII, and I found my mind quickly in
the expansive quadrangle of the monastic cloister contemplating moves not even
common to Jesuits. A sail later, from Manila to SF’s golden gate, by
Greyhound to the woods of Kentucky across the prairie of the Midwest, I
quickly entangled myself in the on-going theological upheaval at the time,
</SPAN><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline">buttressed by a youth revolution
and a civil rights movement with truncheons and live dogs. Those were
heady days to</SPAN><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"> be playing
attention to one’s life.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">A decade later, an elderly couple, a
renowned Princeton University educator and head of Union Theological Seminary
in New York when the fierce winds of Vatican II were blowing wildly to the
Hudson, and his wife, decided to take on “the freedom of the Holy Spirit” with
an intentional overdose of sleeping pills at 75 and 80.
</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><SPAN
style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline">Euthanasia was the dreaded term for the act,
espoused as far back as Socrates downing the hemlock, restored at the cutting
edge of a Christology that saw Jesus not as a victim of Roman connivance to
Jewish defensive paroxysm but as a willful act of taking the cross unto one’s
entire being. </SPAN><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline">The Van
Dusens decided that the springlike burst of joy at birth and its muted wintry
chill of death can no longer be just left to passive resignation in
nature. As increasingly a feature of birth, death had become an item of
choice.</SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">I was liberal but not that
progressive. Michigan was our vacation State, 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, bringing sanity to dark corners but later vilified in
U.S. media as Dr. Death, sentenced later to 10 years in prison (served 8) for
practicing physician-assisted suicide.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><SPAN
style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline">My Dad at 57 rode a motorbike to supervise
his assigned territory in Cagayan, a province in northern Luzon. One
late afternoon, in his desire to get home before sundown, he taxed stamina too
far and ran head-on to a bus. Medivac </SPAN><SPAN
style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline">to Manila and subjected to the wonders of
reconstructive surgery, he could not go through an airport security without
triggering off the alarm bell and flashing red lights. Steel had been
conjoined to his bones. </SPAN></FONT></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Retiring early, he joined my brother in
Hawaii. Later, in his late 80s, he would pray, “God take me,” for the
pains that ailed his body. My last visit with him was when he was 92 at
a nursing home, still smiling but lost on figuring out who-the-hell I
was. He died at 94 after attempting many times to escape from the home,
often found wandering in the middle of the night on the busy highway, perhaps,
hoping never to be found alive again. </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Unhappily for him, one of his sons is a
chaplain with the Honolulu police department, so he would invariably be
escorted in a flashing limo of Aloha’s finest back to the
ward.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">My mother lies in a nursing facility in
Honolulu where she is assisted to eat at appointed times; she sits and snoozes
on her wheel chair awaiting her turn to be guided back to her bed as
caregivers are assigned their numerous patients. She turns 94 in
September.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Ending is not something we decide.
We would rather have someone else decide it for us. Most of us would
rather be on automatic ride in the great roller coaster of life. To
those who still reside in a two-story universe, as my father did, we allot a
lot of decisions on an external power we call God.</FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif">Though the terms <I>hara-kiri </I>and
<I>seppuku </I>entered our vocabulary recently, we are not close to
contemplating their actual execution. What we do know is that setting
endings is a glorious liberating thing. We are bidding <I>adieu </I>to
this page and the island of Saipan. </FONT></SPAN></DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><SPAN style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"></FONT></SPAN> </DIV>
<DIV class=MsoNormal><FONT size=3 face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"><SPAN
style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline">Our 10-4 is not casual. It</SPAN><SPAN
style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"> ends with</SPAN></FONT><SPAN
style="VERTICAL-ALIGN: baseline"><FONT size=3
face="Times New Roman, Times, serif"> a dot. Period.</FONT><FONT
face="Times New Roman"></FONT></SPAN></DIV><BR>
<DIV style="FONT-FAMILY: arial; CLEAR: both; FONT-SIZE: 13px">Jaime
Vergara<BR><A title=mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com
href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</A><BR>
<DIV><I>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In
all,
celebrate!</I></DIV></DIV></FONT></DIV></DIV></FONT><BR><BR>_______________________________________________<BR>OE
mailing
list<BR>OE@lists.wedgeblade.net<BR>http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net<BR></FONT></BLOCKQUOTE></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>