Stranger in a strange land

a healthy interest in the process of death our whole lives. I read the obits with a particular interest in those that reveal the measure of that person’s life. And I find that many are written with great flourish and insight here in my adopted home in the Cordilleras. As I read the final remembrances of family and friends and look at the favorite family picture of the deceased, I often feel an overwhelming sense of regret that I didn’t know that person as a friend.

I love that show on HBO, “Six Feet Under,” where death is rather incidental and the storyline is more about the ups and downs of the family whose business is death on a daily basis (they run a funeral home).

But mostly, looking at death and how we all deal (or don’t deal) with it helps me to practice compassion and face each day I have as the great adventure it should be.

When I first opened the Bliss Cafe, we had a regular guest from Switzerland. Her name was Joy and it was a very fitting name as that is what she brought to all those she encountered. She had fought breast cancer for some years and was a regular visitor of Baguio to see the psychic healers.

Finally, death did catch up with her. She spent her last several months in a hospice in Switzerland and I would like to close by sharing part of a remarkable email she sent to me just shortly before she died.

“I’m now in one of the most beautiful places in the world. In a big old house with a magnificent garden dedicated to people on the way to leave their bodies. It is a place with so much love you cannot imagine it does exist. I am beginning to leave my body slowly, slowly. The body begins to lose earth, water and sometimes I feel the fire. It is a real delivery! I am in big labor, giving birth to another entity lying in my bed with nurses busy all around me. For the body, it is sometimes difficult. I have such pain but I try to transform that pain into a gift dedicated to all human beings.”

“But for my mind, it is ecstasy. I feel so strong, so high and all is full of beauty and light. Each minute is a gift, all of my friends are coming to speak about all that we have shared. And also forgiveness is here, then we say how much we love each other and then we say bye-bye.” How deep for the heart.

How deep indeed. Miss you, Joy.

JIM WARD