Colleagues ask what the 2031 number is in my email
address, and I give them a precise answer: December 15, 2031 is the terminus to
my existence. I shall be over 86 years
on that day, and that is the length of my “one moment in time” covenant I parceled
out into five phases of 17 years each.
That’s actually 85 years, which gives me the luxury of a one-year mas o menos to “play” with.
This came powerfully to me again this week, as it did
when I survived a car accident on the day MLK Jr. was assassinated, and I was
“born again” in a literal and secular sense.
One of my friends in the Bay area of San Francisco upped-and-away on
Wednesday to attend her Uncle’s funeral in Tabango, Leyte in the Philippines,
and I went along in spirit.
I was at her Uncle’s farm five years ago, advised him
on his property that he wanted kept whole to sustain the robust secondary
forest growth in the ranch. He sent five
children to College on his farm’s output, five well-off professionals now
off-country, none willing to take over, or inherit the land and the task to
preserve it.
Our metaphors on death vary though the experience is
common to all. My friend and her family
are devoted members of a tradition that uses the metaphor of a two-story
universe, and the radical split between body and soul, so the “crossing over”
to the other side is an appropriate metaphor for them. Add the picture of the Nazarene shepherd
cuddling a lamb on the crook of his arm, and the picture powerfully allays
fears that accompany the sentiments of death.
I am reminded of a Hindu saying that made me
understand the sanctity of the Ganges.
It says, “When you die, you do not cross over to the other side of the
river; you become the river.” Om! Will have to tell my friend that.
At the same time last week, an acquaintance whose
daughter goes to school southwest off Shanghai in Wuhan, Hubei (“to be away
from Mama”, she says), had her father succumb to old age after a 7-mo hospital
bout. I know the family a bit because my
acquaintance brought her daughter when on vacation to the University so she
could practice her oral English with this teacher.
This mother dabbles in real estate and made a little
fortune funding construction work on a five/six 30-day loan basis (illegal in
China as it is in the Philippines where I learned of the loan practice, also
discovered it to be widely used in Saipan - “I give you five, you give me back
six, in 30-days”). When not paid, she
got an apartment unit as payment; she developed ulcer and grey hair at 49 as a
result. She tried very hard to prove
herself; she did not attend College and she married a staid but solid
government worker who did. He lives his
unhurried and secured life, while she anxiously bites her fingernails.
She hardly spoke English when I first met her, but I
knew she studied a lot of English in post-Mao’s curriculum, mostly on reading
and writing with nary a sound on speaking.
I shared methods that she could do to practice her English, to speak
simply on what she saw, heard, smelled, tasted and touched. I suggested that she goes around her house
pointing to things like, “This is the door; that is a curtain”, etc. I also asked her to know the English names of
the parts of her body, e.g., “This is my hand.
These are my ears,” etc., and most importantly, I suggested that she
forgets “face” so she can speak English without worrying about “others may say
or think”.
In her grief, she managed to say: “Someone, they
pick-up me five o’clock morning, go my mother house, make prepare for
funeral.” I quietly admired the effort
though given the occasion, I will have to wait another time to tell her so.
I am neither close to the family (not even sure the
grand daughter came home from the University since school is still in session)
nor invited to participate in the “celebration of a completed life” (my
description) but I know enough of what will transpire. In the old dispensation, a rich family hired
a professional wailer; it was not proper to emote in public. This time, China has swung to the other
extreme. Folks express feelings at the
slightest trigger so I expect to have a lot of pent-up feelings fluidly cried
out and flowing at her father’s funeral!
“The completed life” is my metaphor for my dying. Raised in the Christian tradition, I heard
the Prophets struggle with whether Reality (capitalized for emphasis, not to
suggest a special reality), the way-life-is, (YHWH was their term), was
one. Or, as some claimed, two: one good
and the other evil. They decided on one,
and considered themselves the chosen people with the single mission to act out
in rites and declare in rituals their faith, their assurance, and their
knowledge that the way-life-is brooks no other.
Christians carried this understanding beyond the
chosen people, to the chosen one, who called out spirited ones, individuals
free to take their singular existence, and inject it into the annals of human
history. The Leyte gentlemen farmer, and
my acquaintance’s father are done with their ingesting. Have you decided how long your ingesting is
going to be? Mine ends in 2031.