I remember one time when I was 10; at this age I enjoyed to explore and analyze different topics/ideas and one of them happened to be death. And once I began to start thinking about this topic I couldn’t stop, I started to shudder and all wanted to do was curl up in a ball in a corner. The thoughts going through my head what happens to me after, will I just rot while those around me will forget about me until one day no who knew me will be alive and my name would be forgotten. So I decided to go ask my mother about it, needing answers and hopefully some comfort as well. So I asked my mother if she was scared of death and she told me no that we were all going to die someday, but she told me not to worry to enjoy life and to remember that if we follow God’s commandments we will then join him in heaven. Me being ten I thought to myself, oh cool I’ll just follow these rules and I’ll go to heaven. Now age 17 I believe there is more to this, so hearing other opinions and religions and their views on death is interesting. But growing up with Catholicism I believe it is true that we will go to heaven or hell and it personally brings me comfort that I may be in heaven in the end and can watch those I left and loved from above.
Today asking my mother again this time about illness, she told me that when someone you know or when you are sick especially when the sickness is serious, it is sad but one must be strong and have the will to continue living what ever life you have left. We also should look for a treatment or cure that will help us get better. And that one must always pray to God and/or the Virgin Mary to become healthy once again. The Virgin Mary for my family and I the religion I follow is an important figure being the mother of Jesus. Because coming from a Hispanic background, and being Mexican on top of that, she is very important in my culture. When you walk around any Mexican neighborhood, restaurant (actually owned by Mexicans) or the Catholic churches in Mexico there are huge portraits and/or sculptures of the Virgin Mary. So sometimes in my prayer I am told to pray to her as well as to God, because she will listen me as well, and Jesus loving his mother dearly he will listen to her about my prayer. In my culture, religion plays a huge role in our lives and when I went to Mexico this summer I saw it even more. Every time someone walked by a church they made a sign of the cross, the churches tare usually overcrowded during mass which surprised me because here in NY it is not like this. The reason I believe this is, is because they find comfort to many issues in their life, including the topic of death. It brings reassurance that when we die, it is not the end that there will be an after and that after depends on what you believe in.
When I asked my dad about death he told me it's part of life, and is what completes the cycle of life. I asked him what he imaged when he was telling me this and he said the image in his mind was of a tree and continued to say that humans must die so makes room for the next generation of humans. He said when we die we transform and give life to others, his example was of a dead rabbit that turns into fertilizer for the dirt which then a plant grows in. He took it differently then my mother did, she took it more as a sad occurrence while my father was more calm and it's just part of life while shrugging his shoulders. He continues to say that our ancestors (Aztecs) worshiped death because they would sacrifice people to make Gods happy and wouldn't send them illness, calamities, bad crops, or a drought. And when something like drought occurred they believed it was because the Gods were angry with them so they sacrificed even more people. This and watching the news made me think why is it OK for people to take other's life? Isn't life sacred? Nowadays we honor the dead, my father ended.
This talk with my parents definitely has impacted the way I see it now, never before did we have a full length conversation of death, it's a topic most families avoid. Because it is a hard topic to speak of the answers can be depressing and just plain tiring. But it goes to show that we shouldn't wait for death or illness to live our life to the fullest, instead of wasting so much time on the technology. I'm trying now to just spend 2 hours not 4 hours on my computer the amount of time I usually spend on it and instead going to volunteer to walk dogs until I get my own which I hope will get soon. A dog that will also someday die... but I know death is something that is unavoidable no matter if dog, human or fish.
No comments:
Post a Comment