Tag: Death

Cancer and Career

At Van’s Cafe Ho Chi Minh City, if you stayed til the end of their second set of music, you would no longer hear Truc Vy doing her closing songs. She performed her set last week for the last time. Despite her late-stage throat cancer, she gave her best with composure and courage. I did not know that at the time. Just noticed how much of that vocal grace could come out from so little of a body. Now I understood.

Cancer-causing death also took  my friend, an accomplished pianist, two years ago.

And last week, it started to put down the name of its next victim.

There is a new singer in that slot now at Van’s Unforgettable.

The show must go on, like life itself.

But how many would pause to remember  someone, frail and fragile, now under traditional treatment in the country side.

They say when someone sings, he/she opens up his/her soul to you.

Like at the Voice final last night. 4 finalists. Only one winner. But we saw four raw souls on display.

To the watching eyes of million.

Truc Vy perhaps won’t go down as a late great Rock singer in the Hall of Fame.

But her dignity and demonstration of the human spirit actually propels her to the top, however short a time.

In her end, her beginning.

Diva she is not.

But Death is not her enemy either. She seems to embrace it like a part of life, in this case, quite fleeting.

It lends new meaning  to each day, each note, and each number she performs.

Now I know where that inner strength was from. From her months of wrestling with the invisible enemy within her.

Like my friend before her who smiled more than I did when we  met for the last time.

And who gave me more advice and care than I could him.

Why does it take that much for someone to wake up, to be more humanized and appreciative of life!

For me, I notice someone’s absence more than their presence. Call it delay reaction.

But in looking back to my now deceased parents, whose DNA definitely stay on in me,  I learn one thing: their time with me when their lives and mine intersected, was a gift. I opened that gift and used it. It’s a one-time thing. Unrepeatable and fully appreciated only by looking back. “Your children live through you”, like a line in the last stanza of Paul Anka‘s Papa.

Life is such a trip that no one seems to get out alive. But while at it, we make the best of that gift, including the gift of music. In Truc Vy’s case, it’s her performance on stage, with voice riding over the loud instruments and clatter of toasting, to reign supreme in a class of its own. No, Truc Vy wasn’t a participant nor winner of the Voice last night. She was perhaps at home, in the countryside, viewing it  on live TV. But at Van’s Cafe, she will always be missed, especially when it’s time for the last set.

A set is not a set without Truc Vy. Please come back to me….in Casablanca or at the Cafe.

 

To Die Another Day

Those gene combination keeps going, mutating and evolving.

Buddistically or biologically, we aren’t going to die today. Maybe another day. But not today (I am obviously blogging still, 957 and counting).

Unlike a line in American Pie “too much whiskey and wine…this will be the day that I die”. Meanwhile, in the land of the living, some rules stay : what you sowed, you reap; do unto others as you would like to be done unto.

The sun rises and it sets; the usual tempo except when asteroid hit Earth. Death uninvited.

Every day, we got Twitter but not every day we got twister (depends on what region of the country, the impact and differences are quite significant). The later lifted trucks, cows and roofs high into the air.

Who said it’s peaceful when you die in your sleep.

I got a rare glimpse into the process of aging and dying this past week: accompanying elder siblings to doctor visits, pharmacy waiting rooms etc…

My brother is a pharmacist. And he will soon be waiting outside the counter for his own prescriptions. We all will be waiting in front of those counters (unless they streamline the process).

To die another day. But not today.

In Ishtar, Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty shooed away the crows “Go away, not dead yet”. The movie however was a bomb. Just desert sand and deserted seats.

The journey however continues, whether we are on a quest to Mars or to the Mall, in stages: born, live, reflect and die..

I am glad to have been shown by great writers how they searched and sifted through the details of their lives.

Still there are many great stories remain untold, while more mundane stuffs got printed.  Who can tell what sells?

Consumer’s taste is quite fleeting.

We avoid risks, unless it’s other people who take the fall (Oscar‘s host).

It’s called sacrificial lamb. Someone dies in our places. To appease death and atone for sin (collective).

Winter is soon over. Spring is forthcoming. Symbols of life are about to show forth and, to remind us once again that life won’t go away.

The gene pool, 99 per cent plus, will go on through the lives of our children. To die another day. Not today.

Love as motivator

Fear, fun, money, dream, passion, human spirits are all strong motivators.

This series cannot end without the mentioning of love.

I came across a newspaper clip which showed two skeletons (male and female),

still clinging to each other. Apparently they died in an earthquake.

At least the saying “live together, die alone” doesn’t apply here.

Talking about dying. We just got news that Pham Duy, one of our great song composers, has just died. He was 92. His son, also a singer, had died a month before.

Live together, die alone.

Among Pham Duy’s thousand songs is Dua Em Tim Dong Hoa Vang.

I will be your guide to a yellow-flower cave.

Love. Where do I begin, to tell the story….

We talk a lot about rights not romance.

It’s not a passable legislative piece.

You come across as “soft”, not clear-headed.

Yet when in love, if in love, we get up earlier, stay up later.

We feel this surge of energy and possibilities.

In fact, when in love, eternity and the temporal intersect.

Motivating? Yes, indeed.

Embedded in love is self-sacrifice, the need to give up one’s self.

Love of the commons, love of neighbors among whom we find that particular person we can click and connect with.

We all know by now which activity we tend to lose our sense of time.

That’s what we love to do.

And a certain person we can’t wait to see.

(not like Meeting-with-Jesus , your sales manager).

Bonnie and Clyde got struck down by a hail of bullets (I saw the car but did not count the holes). They might be outlaws, but perhaps there was love between them.

I grew up hearing about the tale of Hon Buom Mo Tien (they could not marry each other in life, so they turned butterflies forever flirting and flying).

And Ngu Lang Chuc Nu (somehow, the offending God separated them except for an annual reunion).

Then right after the Fall of Vietnam, I have a cousin (female) whose husband MIA. 35 years later, she still was unsure whether to put his picture on the altar. Rumor had it that he had been sighted leading a convoy of refugees fleeing the war zone, and perhaps had been struck down (a documentary showing someone like him standing up next to his jeep driver).

Love. It’s elusive. It’s not supposed to last forever. But motivating indeed.

And in its absence, we feel even stronger. Lobo was singing “I love you too much to ever be your friend..so let the story kind an end”.

Love is more motivating than Like.

That’s why we got the second interview. We want to confirm those first impressions.

We want to “fall in love” with the candidate.

In “Blink”, Gladwell talks about the “first time, I ever saw your face”.

We are wired to decode and detect likability and loveliness.

And there is no better team than a team who love to work on projects with one another. High fives, the long hours and “let’s see where you got it wrong” tete-a-tete.

I hope for Washington the return of love for public services. For the pride and purpose of the Republic, indivisible (let the two become one).

I saw a quote on Facebook, when in love, even in the face of 99 bad things, we still look for that one thing to love. If God had been like men, we would have all been dead in hell. Alone. With no one to cling to. And archeologists of the future would stumble upon grave after grave, lone graves. Not worth noticing. They might label that society as lone-wolf, dod-eat-dog civilization.

Pham Duy, RIP. May you find that cave full of yellow flowers, with lovers (and butterflies) still clinging to each other in life and death beyond.

On “Fraction of a Whole”

We are not invited into this dysfunctional family of three generations, all 750 pages of it.

Crime fiction, social commentary and extremely hilarious saga.

I stayed up late last night for its racing conclusion.

A year and a half ago, I read Freedom by Franzen. As engrossing as Fraction of a Whole.

This family questioned everything, but centrally, they wrestle with Death inevitable (committing suicide is to take the wind out of “natural” death’s sail).

From cover to cover, we learn to think and reason like Martin, Terry and Jasper Dean (Father, Uncle and Son), given ample details for contextual understanding. On the way, we learn to like the women in their lives as well. The settings took us from Europe to Australia, to Thailand and back.

I know a few Aussies. But this book took me deep in the woods, where to warn his family of imminent danger, Jasper had to resort to telephathy.

Terry Dean later resurfaced as huge as could be. With the locals taking the law into their own hands (machetes etc…), it reminded me of a scene from Apocalypse Now “horror, horror”.

It’s Jasper Dean who played memory keeper. He had his own set of problems: trying to find as much as possible about his deceased Parisienne mom.

This book  raises an important question: are we 100 per cent ourselves? How about our neighbors? Perhaps we all try to blend in, interacting with the lowest  common denominators (in the age of carefully crafted image on social network). If so, then, let’s turn the page and hear Martin Dean’s speech on the night his grand idea got implemented (making the population of Australia all millionaires).  Even fools sometimes got a point. And for someone whose debut got a finalist vote on Man Booker‘s prize, this is as good a read as can be. For me, it’s a rare treat,to follow the Deans in Vietnamese version. Fraction of a Whole. And that “whole” will soon be 9 Billion souls by 2050.

Each with a story to tell. In Deans’ case, a fraction turned out to be quite a hand full.

Wrong Track

I came across a brief piece about the suicide of an Orange County man. At Orange Metrolink station. Nguyen was his name.

The report said he calmly stood facing the oncoming train and seconds later, got run over. No fuss, no self-preservation.

I also came across that piece about victims of Temple shooting in Wisconsin. One of those people, an old lady, used to work 60-hr week and came there to pray all the time. A regular. A faithful.

Random lives. Random deaths. No grand legacy or leaflets to leave behind.  No “closure” of any kind.

They did not even die for a cause. Just gone, in 6 seconds. That window, between life and death. Close out!

Dream and doubt swallowed in death.

Both deaths were noisy (oncoming train and oncoming bullets).

Suburban deaths. Incomprehensible. Wonder if there were any relatives and loved ones who cared when Nguyen committed suicide that day. Poor train crew. They were trying to stay on schedule. Now with the investigation, and all.

I also read that the PhD student who shot people at the mid-night showing in the movie theater in Aurora, got glowing recommendation from faculty (mature judgment?).

He must have sent them on the wrong track. He must have kept his hair straight, his face composed (unlike the night before, when he went out and had his hair dye bright red).

Train track, academic track and religious track, all on the wrong track.

All happened within a span of a few weeks here in America, the Beautiful.

At least in the case of Nguyen, he did the job himself. He was not a victim of hate crime or anything. Just “calmly and deliberately stepped in front of an oncoming train”. Must have looked at the schedule, and was familiar with the track.

The wrong track that led to death.

I feel sorry for the lady. The laborer (60 hours a week) which wound up with nothing. By the sweat of your eyebrow shall you receive food on the table. She certainly put in more than enough for her shares. And all the hours of faithful prayers.

I hope she RIP. I hope the gentleman who stepped out in front of an Orange County train also RIP. I  hope the shooter get the justice he deserved, since he came highly recommended as “mature”. Now, his lawyer is trying to argue otherwise.

Wrong track!

Holding hands in Saigon

The old couple holding hands walking down the street.

They looked at me, I at them.

What did they see in me? Younger version of themselves? Old man looks at my life? I am a lot more like you? Should it be the other way around?

What did I see in them? Grey and withered, still attached, like glue?

I thought hand-holding was for lovers, young lovers.

Like Virginia‘s motto “Virginia is for lovers”.

Here in Saigon, old couples still hold hands, walking down the street.

It gives me  hope, the public display of affection part.

It is affirming, affectionate the whole way through.

Leo Buscaglia once extolled the virtue of Love.

We have Dr Love and Dr Death (assisted suicide).

Both sides of the same coin.

Then we got Dr Strange Love, about bombing and mutual destruction.

The ultimate scare!

Humanity courting disaster.

He who has the bomb holds the key to life.

Archeological dig found a grave with two people holding each other in life and in death (earthquake victims?).

What motivated them? That force which we all felt at times, and recognized when seeing it.

In business, we shake hands upon conclusion of a deal.

In love, we hold hands walking down the street.

Any place (Valentine in the park).

Old man looks at my life, I am a lot like you.

I need someone to see me the whole way through.

I held my dad’s hand on his death-bed.

I saw him struggle with those last attempts at life.

One more try, one more beat. One more refrain, then fade out.

Rather try and fail, then never at all.

Old man looks at my life.

My turn to look at younger men. I am a lot like you.

Start seeing

In two weeks, I am up for new pair of eye glasses.

But today, upon first examination, the eye care doctor revealed what was obvious to her, but not to me: I have had a minor stroke (vein # 7), which pulled my left eye up

and if I were able to ask someone to watch me while I am asleep, he/she would see that it’s not completely shut.

Hence, the dried eye and the need for artificial tears (contact lenses for the past thirty years).

I could have died five years ago while fainted and fell down.

Now, reflecting and meditating on that near-death experience, I realize I have not focused while living on borrow time.

Steve Jobs was known to pay attention to how an I-phone was packaged and shipped. User’s experience was important to him just as the original design itself. The Devil is in the details.

Yet, all along, he had known about the cancer that was eating him up.

Start seeing!

Start making choices!

Start focusing .

Mozart Requiem, working backward from your visualized funeral.

That face, those fingers, the lips and those eyes.

We all die, not being able to see our own faces (only their reflections).

I want to start my memorial museum: stuff I wrote, things I said, people I hurt and loved, people who hurt me and loved me. (In “the Museum of Innocence”, our protagonist even collected what his lover would call trash, to be displayed in his personal museum. He predicted that in the future, museums will get to be very personal, more intimate than boutique ones.)

Circumstances I could have acted more bravely and opportunities I could have had a better jump on.

Emptying out my desk, emptying out my shell. Shed the pretense and nearsightedness.

This is me.

This is how I see you.

Unfiltered and with suspense of disbelief.

I see your inner and hidden beauty. Your perpetual struggle and sabotage.

We are all injured creatures, by life, and subliminally by death.

I know I have.

Have you?

Death reaches back with its long arms, its odious toxicity and sure-handed destruction.

Death separates us, unless we all end at once in a calamity.

Because of the fear of Death we became overly self-protective.

We put up a shell, a  shield. We want to buy ourselves some time.

We want to live in denial like Twin Towers’ jumpers buying a few more seconds.

I couldn’t for the life of me understand what happened to me until today.

It was a wake-up call. I felt lucky. I still have another shot at life.

I want to add to my new eye prescription an added dimension, a new context, a different angle and a zoom-out capability. I want to feel the bond of common humanity i.e. struggle to get home in the smog, to put food on the table and to put the children to bed. I want to  see the child’s future and possibilities.

Try it yourself this very day. Take public transportation for a change, and observe. People-watching. Start seeing.

If this were my last day

I would hold the door for the person behind me as always.

I would call people whom I have avoided and face those dark alleys once petrified.

I would lay down my guards, strip off my veneers, and empathize with others.

I would clean up my desk, make my bed and re-arrange my shoes. One movie touched on this subject, whereby our cancer-contracted heroine went out and charged for her Manhattan flat, ordered in electric guitar and decided to live a life she had always wanted. Another movie, called “A Single Man“. Once his partner was dead, the main character tried his hand at suicide. But he was anal when it comes to being spotless.  This helped thwarting his plan: he tried to put the gun in his mouth, imagine  blood splat on the wall and bed sheet.

He even tried to slip inside a sleeping bag to avoid leaving behind a mess.

Last day or first day, we are creatures of habits.

Doing the same thing and hoping for a different result (like squeezing the toothpaste the same way, hoping for magic).

At the end of the movie, our “single man” said he had a moment of clarity.

We can see things as they are ironically in hindsight more than in foresight.

George Harrison put it in “While my guitar gently weeps” that “with every mistake, we will sure be learning”.

Enlisting death to live better sounds like a poor strategy, but

pre-mortem works better than post-mortem. Begin with the end in mind.Those of us who have been 7-habit practitioners know this all too well (BTW Steven Covey, the author, did leave a good legacy as a Master trainer of human potential).

So, if this were my last day, I would live fearlessly, unleashing and emptying my reserves.

And perhaps there comes a moment of clarity: seeing myself and understanding myself as others have seen it all along.

I would forgive both friends and enemies: friends, for not being true, and enemies, for being so true. You see, life comes as a package.

And up to us, to make order out of chaos, to find beauty in the beast: a single mom struggles to raise a deformed child while juggling another ball in the air (aging parent), the damn residue of Agent Orange or the Anniversary of Nagasaki. Chemical companies and cleaning products, weapon merchants and nutrition vendors, fast food and slow growth, mortgage lending and housing bubble. What do they took us for? The already-dead? Even if we sit still, practicing yoga or eating yogurt, the aging process is taking place, regardless.

I now understand that less is more. Live simply, and die tidily.

And if it’s the end, then, it’ s actually the beginning (T.S. Elliot).

Many people actually become influential more in death than in life (Van Gogh, Proust).

So if this were my last day, I would still be eager to see what’s next, invent and open to possibilities. And if I lived tidily, I would leave behind only few loose ends.

Oh, and I would say thank-you to the many whose help I couldn’t do without.

Like a book’s acknowledgment section, my list is long, but I know I am bound to leave out someone. That’s the part I need to work on right till the end, where the book closes. For now, it’s still an open one, full of surprises at every turn. No, it’s not my last day. I’ve only just begun, with the weight of death fully accounted for and acknowledged.

He who knows the why can endure the how.

Think of me, next Memorial Day

How much time do you have left?

Life expectancy average has been up, but individually, it’s an open question.

The question.

And this question should stand Maslow scale on its head i.e. if you knew you were going to die tonight,

would you be moving methodically up the Need pyramid? Or just go ahead to think that thought, say that word

and do that deed? Fearlessly.

Every week, I drove by Rapids, a water park, but haven’t once entered it.

The last time I tried jumping from the Devil‘s tower (vertical drop) I fainted for a few seconds.

Maybe this weekend, I will try again.

What’s your “water park”?

The chairman of Giant -Taiwanese bike Lord– has tried to do just that. He is going to repeat the national track on his 80;’s birthday. So did George Bush, the father, when he celebrated his birthday by jumping out of a plane, as he did in his youth.

A vet friend of mine, tall and friendly, used to karate-kick really high ( this was junior high when we used each other as human punch bags).

He went to war and came back injured.

We spent a lot of time catching up over the last decade after we had met again on the West coast.

Gone were the kicking. Just the sense of irony and humor left between us.

Imagined if he had died and never come back.

We wouldn’t have had those extra hours over coffee, computer and chicken rice (his 3 C’s).

Yesterday Gary Coleman, the star of Different Strokes and lately, Pay Day Advance spoke person died at the age of 42.

A doctor I know of the same name same age, died a few months back. He was adamant about checking other people’s cholesterol level. His cause of death: heart attack.

The hard part is to know when your time is up. The easy part is to choose how to live each day as if it were your last.

And since it’s my last blog, metaphorically, I hope to leave with you that sense of appreciation for life, as is.

We couldn’t negotiate our arrival, and our departure. So I guess, life as presented to us, is a non-negotiable package.

I am glad for the internet (1 and 0), music (7 notes) and the alphabet (hope and history rhyme).

And I appreciate those role models who exploit those infinite combination and permutation to show us what life was all about..  Their en-code have become my source code.

During those Kung-fu fever years (90% of our group took up Kung-fu of one form or another) I thought I could skip the law of gravity. I ended up with a broken arm.

And this weekend, perhaps, I will try to jump again.  But this time, it will be safe. It’s a water park, for God‘s sakes. And recession admission is buy one and get one free.

Someone has to watch and make sure I don’t faint again. A little attention for the living is much better than a ton for the dead.

Think of me next Memorial Day anyway regardless the outcome.

P.S. As of this edit, I have just gone back from my morning job. Passed by the noodle house. They were putting up funeral wreath. It was the noodle man’s last day. Perhaps I will think of him next Memorial Day. And the Syrian victims of Sarin.