Dear Maureen, Your departure was sudden. Were you in a hurry to join and be reunited with your husband? It is not lost on us that he too died unexpectedly in the month of August, exactly sixteen years ago today, the sad day when the earth is set to swallow the small house of wood that you now occupy, cold and still and without a voice. We remain wondering whether we will see a recorded video of you bidding farewell – just like your husband did – to the land that held you firmly and lovingly in its bosom.
Should this not happen, the gaping hole of longing that you have left behind, the void that we feel, will keep tormenting us for years on end. Your untimely passing, at the age of 61, is a painful reminder of the fragility of life. Yesterday it was your then 59-year-old husband.
Today, it is you. Tomorrow, it will be our turn. The lesson to all is clear: let us be there for each other, take care of ourselves, and cherish the good times we share with our friends and loved ones because it is easy in the bloom of youth and health to forget our mortality.
For in the end, death must come to all. Such is the current order and nature of existence, of life. We come.
And we go. It has been like this ever since it all began. Your lived experience teaches us that the relevance of death lies in its impact on those that live.
It will inspire us to continually improve ourselves because it is in our quest for individual excellence that we truly become witnesses to the greatness of life .