So much to do but so little time
Seems like it was just yesterday we sang Christmas carols. As we grow older the days and years seem to get shorter. Been there. Done that.
Seems like it was just yesterday we sang Christmas carols. As we grow older the days and years seem to get shorter. Been there. Done that.
Once we hit 50 and more, we wonder where time has gone.
It's the defining moments when time seems to pause -- like when you witness your first child being born or a loved one dying.
In the good moments, time fleets by.
In the bad, time just drags on. But time heals, they say. What reason cannot fathom, time will. Which, I hope it will for a friend's family by Christmas next year.
In her late 40s, my friend, a doctor, was last week diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer. Inoperable.
She has about six months, her doctor said. Which is six months less than the average survival span for pancreatic cancer.
With four children still in school, the eldest 16, and her husband, also a qualified doctor but who chose to work in full-time Christian ministry, I can only imagine the shock, distraught, numbed confusion and sadness that take over at times like this before resignation to the inevitable sets in. Even, in questioning God's purpose.
‘Have I not been a faithful servant, Lord?' Why ‘bruise me with a tempest and multiply my wounds without cause?' As with Job, the suffering Gentile in the bible, their comfort rests on their faith in a merciful and loving god.
Just a year ago I felt the fear and despaired at the uncertainty when my wife's mammogram showed what seemed like a tumour.
A mountain of concerns
All our worldly concerns, complaints and plans were suddenly insignificant, trivial, meaningless. Sights, sounds and senses collapsed into a lingering mess of mixed emotions.
The surroundings suddenly seemed as pallid as the ashened grounds after a dust storm. Cancer. The word reeks of fear and premature finality.
It was not an untimely death my wife feared, but what she'd leave behind - our teenage son and daughter, and me.
We felt it just wasn't the ‘right' time. The week leading up to the recall and a second mammogram was our longest.
The result showed it was a benign cyst. The dark clouds that shadowed us lifted as quickly as they came. That week, I think, changed our perceptions and perspectives on life.
We now live one day at a time. And, live it well, we will for those we love.
For my friend, knowing that this Christmas will likely be her last with her family, what is she feeling at this moment?
What's she thinking with each tick on the calendar dates? When she puts her children to bed tonight, what will be her prayer?
With each sunset a painful reminder of time unfairly fast running out on her, whither now her hopes and dreams for her children? ‘There's still so much to do. I want to live.'
When growing old sucks
What should we feel knowing a friend is dying before she reaches 50?
Indeed, what and how. Age has somehow programmed us to pause and lay over into a more reflective mode as we journey towards the 72-year mark - your average life span if you're male, born and have been living in Malaysia. It's about 77 for women.
Life is good when you've got things going your way. But to some, growing old sucks.
Like the old man down the street, wrecked by Parkinson's, wheel-chaired by rheumatoid arthritis, who wishes to die but life hangs on like a shadow.
It's not death he fears. But the slow process of dying, feeling a once virile body breaking down and biding time.
I've come to a stage in my life - but still fairly far from the final mark - where I'm beginning to read obituaries to keep track of long lost friends. Nature runs its course of inevitability.
I'll soon be seeing my 82-year-old mother who is suffering from Parkinson's and a weak heart pass on, followed by older siblings and childhood friends.
"For certain is death for the born," as the Hindu scripture says, "and certain is birth for the dead. Therefore over the inevitable, thou shouldst not grieve." Bhagavad Gita (250 BC - 250 AD).
But grieve we do when friends and loved ones die ‘before their time is up'.
And, somewhat affected too we are when the music of our time die its ‘untimely deaths'.
Death chooses its time
Like when Ritchie Valens, Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper in a plane crash in 1959. Sudirman, the ‘singing lawyer', in 1992, aged 37.
Michael Jackson, the ‘king of pop' in 2009, aged 50. Or just this week, actor Brittany Murphy, aged 32 from an eating disorder.
While the right to choose is one of man's great gifts, how long we live, when and how we die is not a choice we hold - except where the law allows one to choose to die the ‘good death' or when despair drives one to suicide, leaving the living to bear the pains and to wonder what could have been if life had taken a different turn.
As a doctor, my friend would perhaps wonder why her pancreatic cell did not behave the way it was genetically coded to behave.
Why did it mutate?
This Christmas would be so different. There's still so much to do. But, so little time.
With next year coming in a week, we're back again to reviewing how we've used our time this year. Was much of it ‘wasted' on activities without experience?
What have we really achieved over the last 12 months? As we count down towards the ‘new year' what would we change - if we had only six more months to live, like my friend?
Would we live as the Greek playwright, Euripides mused in 422 BC:
"Our lives are but a little while,
So let them run as sweetly as you can,
And give no thought to grief from day to day,
For time is not concerned to keep our hopes,
But hurries on its business, and is gone."
As we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, and pull the popper at midnight, let's also spare a kind thought for friends and strangers weakened and wretched before their time.
Understand their grief. As we count our blessings for each extra day we receive to live a good life, and live it well for our loved ones, let us grow in compassion for others near and far, share what we can give, and comfort the afflicted.
May peace and contentment continue to fill the limited time we have as we negotiate through another new year.
To all Malaysiakini readers, best wishes for a happy, holy Christmas.
DR ERIC LOO was a journalist and lecturer in Malaysia before migrating to Australia in 1986 to work with the papers before returning to academia. He has conducted numerous journalism training workshops in parts of Asia and Australia. He is founding editor of Asia Pacific Media Educator and has co-edited books in international journalism and cross-cultural communication. His recent books are ‘Best Practices of Journalism in Asia’ (2009); and ‘Journalism in Good Faith: Issues and Practices in Religion Reporting’ (co-authored with Mustafa K Anuar, 2009). He currently teaches journalism at University of Wollongong, Australia, and is actively involved in mentoring journalism students via UPIU , a global journalism-education site run by United Press International. He can be contacted at eloo@uow.edu.au
