All Jayme

Facing life and death

When the lights are off and my two babies are asleep, I lie awake staring at the ceiling and thinking of the days to come.

That’s how I’ve been for the past week.

I think that’s what happens when you get a glimpse of death. You suddenly realize your own mortality and ask yourself the dreaded question:

Am I ready to die?

And I know I am not.

I still want to fulfill a lot of dreams.

I still want to travel the world.

I want to be there as Jamaine grows up into a fine young woman.

I want to make more happy memories with Kernan.

But the fact of life is it will end.

When I was a kid, I was so afraid to die because I didn’t want to be “locked” inside a coffin where I couldn’t move and breathe. I guess I forgot the fact that when you die, you’re no longer breathing.

I’ve always thought I would die old.

Watching the movie “The Notebook,” I got an idea of how I want to die: sleeping right next to my husband, holding each other’s hand as the two of us depart together in our sleep.

Sometimes though, the uncertainty of life is scary. Even if I want to live until 90, God knows if I may die today.

Death wishes

Pink flowers, ashes in a pink urn, pink balloons and a slideshow of all my beautiful photos.

These would sum up my requests for my funeral.

I want my dead body to be burned because the moment my soul leaves my body, that is no longer me.

I would rather that my loved ones see my photographs and reminisce the highlights and happy moments of my life.

I want pink all around because I want my funeral to look happy.

I don’t want people to mourn my death. I want them to celebrate my life and give thanks that I’m off to a better place, my own piece of heaven.

What Dreams May Come

Since I was a kid, my image of heaven was this faraway place high above the clouds because whenever I ask where heaven is, I would be asked to look up.

From watching TV and movies, I gathered that heaven must be a happy place where everyone gets to wear flowing white robes and sit on fluffy clouds as angels flutter all about.

But the movie “What Dreams May Come” changed all that. It became etched in my mind forever because I love the way it depicts heaven as a place that you imagine it to be.

In the story, Chris (portrayed by Robin Williams) died and he found himself in the mountainside with a colorful landscape.

There were beautiful flowers everywhere which, as it turned out, were from the paintings of his wife.

Whatever his wife painted in the living world, appeared in Chris’ heaven.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could choose your own piece of heaven?

When I think about it, I want heaven to be a beautiful house by the beach where I can watch the sunrise and the sunset everyday.

I want my loved ones to be with me and there we will live happily ever after.

I’d still want to wear a light white robe though.

Living in the now

I’ve been thinking about the way I live my day to day life and the goals I’ve set for myself.

I realized it’s so easy to fall into the trap of “busy-ness” by wasting each day on “important things” that, in the big scheme of life, don’t really matter.

We postpone doing the things we want and take the people we love for granted because we always think there’s “another day” to make up for it.

But the truth is we are never sure that there will always be another day.

We always hear people saying, “Live everyday as if it were your last.” But we never do.

Everyday, 151, 338 people die but we hardly take notice until death hits close to home or knocks on our front door.

If you knew this day were your last, what would you do?

101 Goals

I’m making a list of 101 goals that I intend to fulfill in this lifetime. And one of my top goals is to choose to be loving and to be happy everyday.

Recently, I read this quote from poet Stephen Vincent Benet:

Life is not lost by dying. Life is lost minute by minute, day by dragging day in all the thousand small uncaring ways.

I think when life is viewed from that perspective, you’ll realize how important it is to seize every moment.

Do something good.

Capture all your chances to make a difference.

Make happy memories that would live forever.

Love everyone more.

Make this world better.

I am making a commitment to myself to do just that.

And when death comes for me after I close my eyes at night, I know I’ll die smiling.

Posted in: Miscellany

This entry was posted on Friday, September 14th, 2007 at 5:22 am and is filed under Miscellany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.