12 days to go...

Just imagine them in their underwear!

“It works everytime,” my daugher said, “when you need confidence to make a speech.”

“What else will you think of,” I asked.

“To speak clear and slow”, she said, “I learned all that from the TV.”

It seemed to me that she’s ready to make her history speech in class tomorrow. And I picked up a tip to use next time I speak!

I told her today that I want to be reborn at 50 next week, and that I would be making a trip by myself to celebrate that passage.

And she responded with a smile that in today’s world living up to 100 is becoming normal, so I would just be starting my second half of life.

I smiled too. We don’t know when we will die. My friend Frank Polman died last week from cancer of the esophagus. He was 60.

We come into this life alone, and we are also alone when we leave it. And during all the years in between we keep busy and avoid to think of our death.

Frank died alone in a hospital, with only a hired nurse present. Due to a combination of circumstances, no family or friend was with him when he passed on.

In truth, each of us is unique and alone. And while we create and follow many illusions in our lives, we actually experience the whole universe within ourselves. That’s why we are always connected, there is no need to seek, and there is no cause for loneliness.

Frank left his family and friends a poem that echoed this truth.












Happy Memories

I’d like the memory of me
to be a happy one.
I’d like to leave an afterglow of
smiles when life is done.
I’d like to leave an echo whispering
softly down the ways.
Of happy times and laughing times
and bright sunny days.
I’d like the tears of those who grieve
to dry before the sun
of happy memories that
I leave when life is done.

When someone we like passes on, there is a message for us who are left behind, and a mantle has been passed for us to wear.

The best of life is inside us.

That’s why I need to spend some time alone when I am reborn next week.

Photograph: Color of the Fall, by Tran Huu Dung, shown in Hanoi’s Hilton Hotel by Mai Gallery (top), and Remembering Frank (bottom).