The likes of which you’ll likely never see.
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This morning I awoke with this strange urge to listen to The Postal Service. I haven’t felt that way in just about three years.
These have been three long years.
Two of those years were spent convincing myself of my “happiness.”
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That train of thought died.
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Today I read about Randy Pausch, a man terminally-diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
Last September, Pausch, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, gave his final lecture to a packed auditorium. But instead of saying farewell, he talked about his life and what he has learned from it.
Read the above column by Jeffrey Zaslow, printed in the Wall Street Journal on May 3, 2008.
I found Pausch very profound and uplifting.
Death is one of Life’s hard knocks that I had the pleasure of avoiding up until a couple of months ago. I must be honest and mention that I haven’t been dealing with it well. Most often I keep myself busy without any active introspection. The emotions have welled up within me, sometimes rendering me perfectly useless, but I still refused to address or acknowledge them.
I did not have the luxury of spending time with my grandma in her final moments, so I have spent so much time feeling guilty. Reading Pausch’s story helped me a lot today. It is perhaps one of the few positive stories about death I’ve ever read that was not an obituary attempting to celebrate a life passed. Here, the dying man is teaching us how to move on.
The article mentions a quote that an admirer of Pausch passed on to him. The following is taken directly from the story:
The man wrote to tell Randy about Krishnamurti, a spiritual leader in India who died in 1986. Krishnamurti was once asked what was the most appropriate way to say goodbye to a man who was about to die. He answered: “Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone.” In his email to Randy, this man was reassuring: “I know you are not alone.”
It just made me feel a lot better. I sincerely needed something like this.
Jaena Rae 