From the Internet: As I was lying around, pondering the problems of the world, I realized that at my age I don't really give a rat's ass anymore. … If walking is good for your health, the postman would 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 for 150 years. And you tell me to exercise? I don't think so. Just grant me the senility to forget the people I never liked,
Thank you, Jaime, for sharing your columns. Anyone interested in the right to make their own end-of-life decisions might want to check out _www.compassionandchoices.org_ (http://www.compassionandchoices.org) , a Denver-based group supporting, educating and advocating for "compassionate end-of-life care in legislatures, courtrooms and at bedsides." Jann McGuire In a message dated 8/25/2013 4:43:51 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time, svesjaime@aol.com writes: j'aime la vie Yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today, participate. In all, Celebrate! -----Original Message----- From: Jaime Vergara <pinoypanda2031@aol.com> To: editor <editor@saipantribune.com> Sent: Sat, Aug 24, 2013 5:38 pm Subject: August 29 The End the good fortune to remember the ones I do, and the eyesight to tell the difference. I love the author’s paraphrase of Francis of Assisi at the end. 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. 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. 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, buttressed by a youth revolution and a civil rights movement with truncheons and live dogs. Those were heady days to be playing attention to one’s life. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Though the terms hara-kiri and seppuku 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 adieu to this page and the island of Saipan. Our 10-4 is not casual. It ends with a dot. Period. Jaime Vergara _pinoypanda2031@aol.com_ (mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com) yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate! _______________________________________________ OE mailing list OE@lists.wedgeblade.net http://lists.wedgeblade.net/listinfo.cgi/oe-wedgeblade.net