Saying Goodbye
Running a race and watching others fall one by one can be scary. Because this race is not about reaching the finish line but by running still... and running more...days, weeks and years. This is about buying time, and if possible, missing the finish line.
Life can be so wonderful, we don't want it to end. Loved ones and friends are treasures that we can't simply leave behind. But sad to say we are all made of dust, and to dust we shall return.
Science had made new discoveries. From cloning to finding a new planet which is earth like in size. They have challenged death itself, by prolonging people's lives through machines. But it remains as a challenge to conquer death itself, except to those who believe in the atoning death of Christ.
I have not really faced the reality of physical death until I had breast cancer. I thought life on earth is forever and it will never end. But visiting hospitals and sitting among others who have cancers too, it was like sitting on a death row.
I learned few days ago that my friend died after battling with cancer for a few months. Many have been praying and interceding for her as we have stayed connected with her husband while she was confined in one of the hospitals in Manila. But despite of pleadings and tears, she had to go. She was a christian believer and she loved serving the Lord. Rene is back to her real home now, although we will be missing her a lot.
Physical death is a sad part of human existence. Yet it is part of life. Many people avoid this topic, although this is one of the two things that are certain in life. Death and taxes.
As I face my own mortality, saying goodbye to those whom I love is the hardest word to say. It is like leaving a home you have grown to love. So many familiar faces and so much memories to leave behind.
But we can't live here forever, can we? We are all squatters in this world. Just like the grass in the fields, we are here today and gone tomorrow. No matter how much we drink anti-aging drugs and applying anti- aging lotions on our skin, we all face but one destiny.
But death for believers in Christ is not saying goodbye. It is about seeing you later, because we believe in life after death. It is the beginning of another journey where there is no more pain, and no more needles.
For us who believe in the atoning death of Christ on the cross, life is like a small dot and after that is an endless line called eternity, where there is no illness, nor death to separate us from our first love, who is God.
Summer at Tambobo Bay
oil on canvas
Watercolors
$2.00 (handpainted notecards)
Monday, December 19, 2011
A Memory
The Gift of Time
“The cicadas are singing intensely because they have only few weeks to live. They have to make most of their time.” My mother said to me as she thoughtfully looks out of her window.
My mother’s name is Rosita. Her soft snowy white hair is covering a portion of her intelligent face, which sometimes becomes puffy with all the medicines she’s taking. It is late afternoon and the cicadas are singing among the trees in my mother’s garden. The sound is deafening but they bring so many beautiful childhood memories for both of us. I come to visit her often in her modest home close to mine, which is surrounded with mangoes, coconuts, and other fruit bearing trees which she and my father planted when he was alive.
Today, she is sick, and my brother Carlos and I care for her.
She came back three months ago after spending four years under my sister’s care in California. Her health is failing now at the age of 81, but she insists to do her gardening despite of her kidney problems. This wonderful woman taught me how to paint at the age of three, and showed me many important things in life that I will always treasure.
Our mornings during childhood were always beautiful because she woke all of her four children with butterfly kisses. She retired many years ago after teaching grade school for more than thirty years. Her beautiful mind is now fading. She forgets everything you said in a few minutes and she asks the same question over and over again.
She remembers the past so vividly that I can paint her childhood in my mind. And today, she teaches me about this beautiful insect that can be found also in other countries like Australia and North America.
The cicadas sleep for about 17 years under the ground and live for only about four weeks above the ground and in the trees. They emerge for the first week, sing and mate for two weeks, and the last week is spent for laying eggs and dying.
Most of the cicadas don’t last that long, since the birds love them too, yet in those few weeks of life, these patient creatures have accomplished their purpose.
In my curiosity, I also found out that since the mothers won’t be there to take care of their young called nymphs, God made these “Nymphs” sleep through adulthood , more or less 13 to 17 years under the ground until they emerge again and live for less than a month. Yet their short existence never seemed to bother them. They sing songs and serenade their mates with the highest pitch possible.
Their life is too short for them to complain. The sounds are produced by the male adults as a mating call and also to distract the birds from eating them. The males will sing to the top of their tymbals, or a pair of ribbed membranes at the base of the abdomen and produce an intense noise beyond 120 dB , which can reach the pain threshold of the human ear at a close range. Other small species of cicadas produce higher pitch songs that it is beyond the range of our hearing.
What is more amazing is that the producer of this noise is protected by its own sound. The cicadas organs for hearing called the tympana, automatically closes so that it won’t be deafened by its own noise.
Experts are still researching on the mechanisms involved regarding the singing apparatus of the cicadas.
Our God made an amazing universe, that our human mind cannot fully comprehend. He reminds us once again that time is a gift. How long we live is not as important as how much we have lived.
“…you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”-James 4:14
“The cicadas are singing intensely because they have only few weeks to live. They have to make most of their time.” My mother said to me as she thoughtfully looks out of her window.
My mother’s name is Rosita. Her soft snowy white hair is covering a portion of her intelligent face, which sometimes becomes puffy with all the medicines she’s taking. It is late afternoon and the cicadas are singing among the trees in my mother’s garden. The sound is deafening but they bring so many beautiful childhood memories for both of us. I come to visit her often in her modest home close to mine, which is surrounded with mangoes, coconuts, and other fruit bearing trees which she and my father planted when he was alive.
Today, she is sick, and my brother Carlos and I care for her.
She came back three months ago after spending four years under my sister’s care in California. Her health is failing now at the age of 81, but she insists to do her gardening despite of her kidney problems. This wonderful woman taught me how to paint at the age of three, and showed me many important things in life that I will always treasure.
Our mornings during childhood were always beautiful because she woke all of her four children with butterfly kisses. She retired many years ago after teaching grade school for more than thirty years. Her beautiful mind is now fading. She forgets everything you said in a few minutes and she asks the same question over and over again.
She remembers the past so vividly that I can paint her childhood in my mind. And today, she teaches me about this beautiful insect that can be found also in other countries like Australia and North America.
The cicadas sleep for about 17 years under the ground and live for only about four weeks above the ground and in the trees. They emerge for the first week, sing and mate for two weeks, and the last week is spent for laying eggs and dying.
Most of the cicadas don’t last that long, since the birds love them too, yet in those few weeks of life, these patient creatures have accomplished their purpose.
In my curiosity, I also found out that since the mothers won’t be there to take care of their young called nymphs, God made these “Nymphs” sleep through adulthood , more or less 13 to 17 years under the ground until they emerge again and live for less than a month. Yet their short existence never seemed to bother them. They sing songs and serenade their mates with the highest pitch possible.
Their life is too short for them to complain. The sounds are produced by the male adults as a mating call and also to distract the birds from eating them. The males will sing to the top of their tymbals, or a pair of ribbed membranes at the base of the abdomen and produce an intense noise beyond 120 dB , which can reach the pain threshold of the human ear at a close range. Other small species of cicadas produce higher pitch songs that it is beyond the range of our hearing.
What is more amazing is that the producer of this noise is protected by its own sound. The cicadas organs for hearing called the tympana, automatically closes so that it won’t be deafened by its own noise.
Experts are still researching on the mechanisms involved regarding the singing apparatus of the cicadas.
Our God made an amazing universe, that our human mind cannot fully comprehend. He reminds us once again that time is a gift. How long we live is not as important as how much we have lived.
“…you are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes.”-James 4:14
Monday, May 16, 2011
TIME
By Muffet Dolar Villegas
Time, The Great Equalizer
“Lost yesterday,somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever.” Horace Mann wrote.
Time is the greatest equalizer. Everyone has 24 hours, no more and no less. Time lost is gone forever.
Hibiscus or gumamelas or Antulang are beautiful and fleeting. Those which bloom today are gone tomorrow. I collect these flowers with different hues and watch them bloom in just a single day. So to preserve them, I take pictures and paint them forever on canvas or acid free paper.
One of the greatest lessons I learned in life with cancer is that time is a beautiful gift. Most people I met, who have been through this ordeal, seems to have an extraordinary zest for life.
I can’t forget my friend and classmate inside the chemotherapy room, Gingging, who would come inside the room, brimming with smile, thin, bald but beautiful. She wore nothing on her head. She was proud that she was bald and lovely. Her enthusiasm was contagious. She would ask the nurses to find a vein somewhere else , to give her room to move her arm and hand.
She taught me that if I want to draw or paint while having chemotherapy (so she can watch and learn,) I can ask them to free my hand and find for veins somewhere else to use for intravenous. It worked for the first few sessions, but later the good sturdy veins ran out as more sessions continued.
Sometimes at the end of a session, she would become weak, and closed her eyes, most of us do, feeling the intensity of the different chemicals flowing inside our veins.
Most of us wanted our time to go slow, but at the same time we wanted the treatment to be over.
Finally it was, and now we take one day at a time. The precious hair came back, but some of us continue to count the days and wait for that day when remission is over and life ends as it was expected.
Shall we live longer to wait for death?
Shall we not welcome each day with joy in our hearts, not regret, but enthusiasm? In psalms 118 it says, This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Each day is short, so let us love everyday, or take time for someone.
I was touched with what Kojak wrote about his father last week, When his dying dad offered his blue eyes for someone to use. It was a beautiful heart with beautiful blue eyes. I love your column. I get encouraged everytime I read them.
Time, The Great Equalizer
“Lost yesterday,somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered for they are gone forever.” Horace Mann wrote.
Time is the greatest equalizer. Everyone has 24 hours, no more and no less. Time lost is gone forever.
Hibiscus or gumamelas or Antulang are beautiful and fleeting. Those which bloom today are gone tomorrow. I collect these flowers with different hues and watch them bloom in just a single day. So to preserve them, I take pictures and paint them forever on canvas or acid free paper.
One of the greatest lessons I learned in life with cancer is that time is a beautiful gift. Most people I met, who have been through this ordeal, seems to have an extraordinary zest for life.
I can’t forget my friend and classmate inside the chemotherapy room, Gingging, who would come inside the room, brimming with smile, thin, bald but beautiful. She wore nothing on her head. She was proud that she was bald and lovely. Her enthusiasm was contagious. She would ask the nurses to find a vein somewhere else , to give her room to move her arm and hand.
She taught me that if I want to draw or paint while having chemotherapy (so she can watch and learn,) I can ask them to free my hand and find for veins somewhere else to use for intravenous. It worked for the first few sessions, but later the good sturdy veins ran out as more sessions continued.
Sometimes at the end of a session, she would become weak, and closed her eyes, most of us do, feeling the intensity of the different chemicals flowing inside our veins.
Most of us wanted our time to go slow, but at the same time we wanted the treatment to be over.
Finally it was, and now we take one day at a time. The precious hair came back, but some of us continue to count the days and wait for that day when remission is over and life ends as it was expected.
Shall we live longer to wait for death?
Shall we not welcome each day with joy in our hearts, not regret, but enthusiasm? In psalms 118 it says, This is the day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.”
Each day is short, so let us love everyday, or take time for someone.
I was touched with what Kojak wrote about his father last week, When his dying dad offered his blue eyes for someone to use. It was a beautiful heart with beautiful blue eyes. I love your column. I get encouraged everytime I read them.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Saturday, September 11, 2010
Stay Plugged In
Stay Plugged In
I found the story of the cinder and the lamp in one of our old devotionals that is very interesting as I face more challenges in life.
Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “A cold cinder and a burning lamp started out one day to see what they could find. The cinder came back and wrote in its journal that the world was dark. It did not find a place wherever it went in which there was light. Everywhere was darkness. The lamp when it came back, wrote in its journal, ‘wherever I went it was light. I did not find any darkness in my journey. The whole world was light.’ What was the difference? The lamp carried light with it and illumined everything about it. The dead cinder carried no light, and found none.”
Every day is a journey. Sometimes we wake up in a sunny day and in other times the sky is gray. Good days are when the doctor says you are on remission and bad days are when you are back to the same white walls. How can you rejoice if you are dying or you can’t hold your job? How can you smile if you lost a baby or someone you love was figured in an accident? Believe it or not, our emotions may depend on our circumstances.The pain we carry around spreads like a contagious disease.
It is easier to be a cinder rather than a lamp. It is easy to find faults of people and situations and inflict pain rather than praise, to grumble rather than to give thanks.
If you are a boss, you find relief by releasing your anger and frustrations to your employees and make them feel like you. Misery loves company.
Parents can make their children feel inadequate, always short of their expectations, pushing them to their limits to make up for their own failures they had made in the past.
If you have parents, there is always someone to be blamed why you have shortcomings. It has to be their responsibility not yours.
It takes a higher challenge to be a lamp. Can you rise above the circumstance or beyond the ordinary self? Can you see the flowers beyond the rain? Do you find diamonds in the mud? Have you given up hope to a seemingly hopeless situation?
To be a lamp is to be plugged in all the time to the ultimate source of light and love. His lamp never goes out even in the strongest of storms. His love is constant no matter who you are. Your sense and purpose is not determined by others but how God fits you in an intricate design He has made.
The moment you unplug yourselves from that connection, you die inside. A day becomes a long stretch of barren land, with no tree in sight. You are alone.
Every single day has its own purpose and rewards. Stay plugged in.
I found the story of the cinder and the lamp in one of our old devotionals that is very interesting as I face more challenges in life.
Henry Ward Beecher wrote, “A cold cinder and a burning lamp started out one day to see what they could find. The cinder came back and wrote in its journal that the world was dark. It did not find a place wherever it went in which there was light. Everywhere was darkness. The lamp when it came back, wrote in its journal, ‘wherever I went it was light. I did not find any darkness in my journey. The whole world was light.’ What was the difference? The lamp carried light with it and illumined everything about it. The dead cinder carried no light, and found none.”
Every day is a journey. Sometimes we wake up in a sunny day and in other times the sky is gray. Good days are when the doctor says you are on remission and bad days are when you are back to the same white walls. How can you rejoice if you are dying or you can’t hold your job? How can you smile if you lost a baby or someone you love was figured in an accident? Believe it or not, our emotions may depend on our circumstances.The pain we carry around spreads like a contagious disease.
It is easier to be a cinder rather than a lamp. It is easy to find faults of people and situations and inflict pain rather than praise, to grumble rather than to give thanks.
If you are a boss, you find relief by releasing your anger and frustrations to your employees and make them feel like you. Misery loves company.
Parents can make their children feel inadequate, always short of their expectations, pushing them to their limits to make up for their own failures they had made in the past.
If you have parents, there is always someone to be blamed why you have shortcomings. It has to be their responsibility not yours.
It takes a higher challenge to be a lamp. Can you rise above the circumstance or beyond the ordinary self? Can you see the flowers beyond the rain? Do you find diamonds in the mud? Have you given up hope to a seemingly hopeless situation?
To be a lamp is to be plugged in all the time to the ultimate source of light and love. His lamp never goes out even in the strongest of storms. His love is constant no matter who you are. Your sense and purpose is not determined by others but how God fits you in an intricate design He has made.
The moment you unplug yourselves from that connection, you die inside. A day becomes a long stretch of barren land, with no tree in sight. You are alone.
Every single day has its own purpose and rewards. Stay plugged in.
Priorities
Priorities
It was difficult to tell whether he was aware that he would die in a few months or not. His doctor said that the extent of metastases to his other organs was massive. But his calmness and hopefulness baffled his family. They wanted to tell him about the truth. His last wishes meant a lot to them. But the consequence might be more fatal than death itself. Depression might pull him down and the precious few months will turn into nothingness.
How do you talk about death? How do you break the news and allow it to sink and never be afraid? Who would dare to break the news? Are you brave enough?
This is a common dilemma to those who have encountered the big C. Others die without even knowing that they had cancer. Others simply didn’t want to know, or even cared.
It is easy to ask someone what clothes is she going to wear when she attends a birthday party. But choosing a dress that leave the last impression to her family and friends forever is another story. Most answers might be “That’s the least of my worry.” But what if she does? What if she wanted something special to make a meaningful exit? What if she had set aside many things that she had wanted to do in life thinking that there will always be time for that? What if she had waited for the right moment to tell her husband how much he had made her life complete? What if she had reserved some praises for her children, words like, “I thank God that He gave me wonderful children who made me very happy and proud?”
There is nothing wrong with hoping and praying and bargaining with God for more years… but sometimes His answer is Yes and sometimes No. We all live in a borrowed time. We live by His grace.
Five years ago, I was confronted with my own mortality when I had invasive breast cancer. Surgeries and chemotherapies followed. There were good days and dark moments. My oncologist gave me a hint that preparing a video of myself would be helpful to my family to preserve memories.
I reflected upon it thinking that to be prepared at all times wont alter God’s appointed time. I always believed that God’s plan is perfect. His purpose is always good. Death can be a taboo to humanity, but for those who hope in the salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, death is just a beginning of an eternity.
It was difficult to tell whether he was aware that he would die in a few months or not. His doctor said that the extent of metastases to his other organs was massive. But his calmness and hopefulness baffled his family. They wanted to tell him about the truth. His last wishes meant a lot to them. But the consequence might be more fatal than death itself. Depression might pull him down and the precious few months will turn into nothingness.
How do you talk about death? How do you break the news and allow it to sink and never be afraid? Who would dare to break the news? Are you brave enough?
This is a common dilemma to those who have encountered the big C. Others die without even knowing that they had cancer. Others simply didn’t want to know, or even cared.
It is easy to ask someone what clothes is she going to wear when she attends a birthday party. But choosing a dress that leave the last impression to her family and friends forever is another story. Most answers might be “That’s the least of my worry.” But what if she does? What if she wanted something special to make a meaningful exit? What if she had set aside many things that she had wanted to do in life thinking that there will always be time for that? What if she had waited for the right moment to tell her husband how much he had made her life complete? What if she had reserved some praises for her children, words like, “I thank God that He gave me wonderful children who made me very happy and proud?”
There is nothing wrong with hoping and praying and bargaining with God for more years… but sometimes His answer is Yes and sometimes No. We all live in a borrowed time. We live by His grace.
Five years ago, I was confronted with my own mortality when I had invasive breast cancer. Surgeries and chemotherapies followed. There were good days and dark moments. My oncologist gave me a hint that preparing a video of myself would be helpful to my family to preserve memories.
I reflected upon it thinking that to be prepared at all times wont alter God’s appointed time. I always believed that God’s plan is perfect. His purpose is always good. Death can be a taboo to humanity, but for those who hope in the salvation by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, death is just a beginning of an eternity.
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