On the afternoon of March 21, China Eastern Airlines passenger plane MU5735 crashed over Tengxian County, Wuzhou, Guangxi Province, with a total of 132 people on board, including 123 passengers and 9 crew members. At present, rescuers have searched for 21 pieces of victims' belongings, 183 pieces of aircraft wreckage and some of the remains of the victims.
In the face of great catastrophe, everyone will begin to think about life and death. Everyone will eventually face the departure of their loved ones and the end of their own lives.
How do those who have faced the goodbye portray all this?
01
During tonight's retreat, I felt that I no longer ran away from relationships and no longer resisted life. I want to open myself up to every dimension of life, I want to take risks, I trust fully that I no longer use my keen mind to make excuses for my own protection and escape, I want to act intuitively, as long as I feel that things are right in my heart, I will do it. If it doesn't feel right, even if it makes sense, I will try to avoid it. I want to drink life and experience everything to the fullest, no longer a taste. I want to embrace everything, to embrace everything.
Goethe once said a poignant quote: "All mature things want to die." "Triya has matured, so she wants to die. As I watched her write that sentence, I meditated in my heart, grace and courage, existence and work, stillness and enthusiasm, submission and will, acceptance and determination, this is the summary of her life. She wrestled with these two sides of her soul all her life, and finally combined them into a harmonious whole—which was also her last words. I watched as she combined the two sides into one; I watched this sense of harmony spread to every aspect of her life; I watched the stillness of enthusiasm define her soul clearly. Her only and most important purpose in life has been accomplished; she has completed the most cruel test of life's situation, and if she does not understand enough, she will be crushed. Her wisdom had matured, and she wanted to die.
It was the last time I would carry my dear Triya upstairs.
- [U.S.] Ken Wilbur
Grace and Courage: Beyond Death
(Life, Reading, and New Knowledge Triptych Bookstore, 2013)
Ken Wilbur was a post-American psychologist and philosopher. His important works include: "A Brief History of Ten Thousand Laws", "Spectrum of Consciousness", "Sex, Ecology and Spirituality" and more than ten kinds. His wife, Triya, was diagnosed with cancer shortly after marriage and died five years after fighting cancer. Grace and Courage: Beyond Death is a five-year account of the two men,written by Wilbur and quoting part of Triya's diary.
02
"I was with her when she first breathed in this world, and I was by her side for the last breath when she died, how many parents can be as lucky as me?!"
— [plus] Christopher Kerr
/ [Beauty] Karin Madolo Zion
"Embracing You at the End of Life"
(CITIC Press, 2021)
Christopher Kerr is a hospice physician. All of his patients die, yet thousands of the patients he once cared for spoke of love, meaning, and grace in the face of death. They tell the world to focus on the meaning of life, even if it is terminally ill, there is still hope. This paragraph comes from a mother whose daughter developed cancer at the age of 28 and eventually died in her mother's arms. Afterwards, her mother confided in Dr. Kerr how she felt.
03
Looking back, it may sound cruel, but in my own experience, the only way for us to understand for ourselves whether or not to make a patient feel a good ending is whether we will feel remorse or regret or unfinished about something. If we can say very calmly that we have done everything we can, then we are already the best we can be. But even so, the result is only meaningful to yourself, because in the end, you are still facing a happy ending. And the truth is, you lose someone after all, and that's not going to feel good. And the most absolute and unshakable thing we have for being in death is love. If, at the end of our lives, we feel that what we are giving is love, I think this is the "good end."
- [Beauty] Sherwin · B. Nuran's Book of the Dead
(CITIC Press, 2019)
Scheven · B. Nuran is a professor at Yale University School of Medicine and has extensive experience practicing medicine. In addition to strange patients, he also sent away his friends. The Book of Death is a summary of his medical career.
Source movie "When the Monster Comes Knocking"
04
To tell you the truth, the Paul I miss the most is not paul, who fell in love with me for the first time, who was personable and physically fit, but the man who was fully engrossed and exuded the brilliance of humanity in the last year of his life, and it was paul who wrote this book - physically ill, but mentally unfailing.
……
Sit down in front of the grave, you can hear the wind blowing, the birds chirping, and the chipmunks hurrying and hurrying. All the way here, he put in a lot of effort. His grave is also full of strength and glory, and he deserves such a resting place - we all deserve such a resting place. This place reminds me of a prayer that my grandfather used to like: "We will rise slowly and unconsciously to the top of the eternal mountain, how cool the wind is, how brilliant the scenery is." ”
But it's not easy to stay here all the time. The weather at the top of the mountain was changeable, and Paul was buried in the windward side of the mountain, and when I came to see him, I was exposed to the scorching sun, the fog, and the biting cold rain. How peaceful it is on a normal day, how uncomfortable it is to be worse than the weather—both lonely and quiet, and affected by the external environment, like death, like grief. But there's beauty in it all, and I think it's good, it's appropriate.
— Paul Caranish
"When Breath Turns to Air"
(Zhejiang Education Press, 2020)
Paul Caranish, a neurologist who diagnosed cancer at the peak of his career, wrote his memoir, "When BreathIng Turns to Air." This passage is from the epilogue written by his wife, Lucy Caranish, for the book. Lucy Caranish is also a physician and currently works at Stanford University School of Medicine.
05
In fact, a person's death may only mean that he is no longer alive, but it does not mean that he is no longer alive.
So I kept talking to her. I think it's both necessary and logical. I told her what I was doing (or what I was doing throughout the day); I pointed out to her as I drove; I spoke of her responses. I keep our whispers alive. I made fun of her, and she turned to make fun of me; we recited the lines. Her voice calmed me and gave me courage. I crossed the table and looked at a small picture of her with a slightly teasing look, and I replied with her teasing, whatever she was teasing. After a brief discussion, the mediocre family affairs also burned: she decided that the bathroom floor mat was really humiliating and should be thrown away.
Outsiders may find this a strange or "morbid" or self-deceptive habit; however, as the name suggests, outsiders are people who have never tasted sorrow. It was naturally easy for me to externalize her because I had internalized her so far. This is a tragic paradox: if I survived these four years without her, it was precisely because she accompanied me for four years. She was still so active that it proved that my previous pessimistic assertions were unjustified. After all, in a sense, mourning may be just a moral space.
—Julian Barnes
The Hierarchy of Life
(Yilin Publishing House, 2019)
Julian Barnes is a well-known British writer whose wife, Pat Kavanagh, died of cancer in 2008. Barnes wrote The Hierarchy of Life to honor his wife, who had lived together for 30 years.
06
Theoretically, the role of these souvenirs is to take you back in time to a moment in the past.
In fact, their role is simply to make me aware of how unshakable and grateful I am in those precious moments.
In those precious moments, I don't know how to cherish, I don't know how to be grateful, and this is something I can't bear.
- [Beauty] Joan Didion, "Blue Night"
(Jiangsu Phoenix Literature and Art Publishing House, 2019)
Joan Didion was a well-known American writer whose only daughter, Quintana, died at the age of 39. Two years before his daughter's death, Didion had just sent off her husband. "Blue Night" is a mourning book for her daughter.
07
If everyone is a small planet, the deceased relatives and friends are the dark matter around them. I wish I could see you again, I know I won't see you again. But your gravitational pull is still there. I am grateful that our cones of light have overlapped each other, and that you have changed my orbit forever. Even if we never see each other again, you are still the reason why my galaxy has not fallen apart, and it is the eternal composition of my cosmic web.
------------------------
You Zhiyou, popular science writer, chief writer of Fruit Shell Network.
May the dead rest in peace
Peace for the living
And love each other
Photo by Manuel Meurisse
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