According to research, the most common cause of death for Filipinas is breast cancer. Will I be one of them? At the age of 40, my chance of surviving this is going to become slim. Yup, I did try to google how I’m going to die…
But I have a short life, I think and I also believe that I’m not going to live long enough to see myself suffer the disease because I’ll never know if I die sleeping tonight. Oh sometimes, I just hope my death is as simple and as painless as that. But when I was young, some psychic foretold that I will breathe my last in the water… well, that’s another thought?
But for now it matters not how I’m going to die. What matters is how I have lived… and honestly, I only want to live without any regrets.
A preacher once shared the following “facts” to his congregation. I was among the congregation.
He said that the average lifespan of a person is 75 years. If we have lived up to this age, we have spent…
20 years sleeping
14 years working
12 years amusing ourselves with movies, malling, watching TV
7 years eating
5 years riding cars or public transports
4 years in the internet
3 years acquiring solid education (Grade school, High School, College)
3 years reading books, magazines, newspapers
3 years on the telephone
1 year texting
4 months tying our shoe laces
11 months of attending the Sunday Service
For the last bit, you can trim that down to 4 months for me. Tsk! now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve only got 35 years to live… supposedly. But then again, I’ve given myself a deadline to only live up to when I’m 50, after that, would be beyond bonus.
So… the crazy me, grabbed a calculator at once and worked out the remaining days of my life. Granting I only live up to 50 years old then I only have like 7,300 days left in the world, that’s 20 years btw.
With this, I would have spent
2,433 days sleeping - that’s 6.7 years because I only sleep 8 hours a day
2,738 days working, that’s 7.5 years
1,520 days - TV, internet, dressing, shaving, phone, texting, malling, spend quality time with the kids & family, reading books, eating & drinking, swearing, fooling around, fighting, writing/blogging, having sex… anyway, that’s 4 years. Bathing and brushing teeth are such big time wasters btw.
Now, I’m left with 610 days of nothing to do. That’s about 1.7 years. But then again… maybe I don’t really have to waste my brain cells thinking about how I’m going to spend this 1.7 years. After all, I don’t even know if I will survive the next 1.7 minutes.
Just as what Jonathan Nolan said:
“Everybody is waiting for the end to come, but what if it already passed us by? What if the final joke of Judgment Day was that it had already come and gone and we were none the wiser? Apocalypse arrives quietly; the chosen are herded off to heaven, and the rest of us, the ones who failed the test, just keep on going, oblivious. Dead already, wandering around long after the gods have stopped keeping score, still optimistic about the future. I guess if that's true, then it doesn't matter what you do. No expectations.”
Now, at this very second, after contemplating on how I might die and lived for that matter… the next plan on my mind is on how I want my funeral service be organized. You just can’t stop me planning eh? Hahaha! And that of course would be minus 3 days in my 50-year life.
Seriously, there are only 2 occasions that I get super emotional with… Weddings and Funerals. (That’s minus 2 months in my life.) I wish I could talk more about weddings but my moment is at my funeral right now. And I’m imagining that somehow it will be as how I describe it below.
No coffin. I would of course expect my loved ones to be a bit creative by probably surrounding me with flowers just like how they do it in the medieval times?
No gown. My whole body will be wrapped with a fine satin cloth preferably colored green (lightest as possible) because that’s my favorite color. My face will be covered with a transparent cloth. So I won’t look like a mummy at least. The one thing I hate most during funerals is the smell of the cadaver. Most times, the dead smell too much of that embalming odor and that really creeps me out. I want to smell as pleasant as my favorite perfume during my wake (and that would be the Burberry Classic, you can call that shameless promotion, anyway it’s free and besides I’d be dead, remember?) I won’t be as beautiful as Murrin in the movie Braveheart when she was buried, but I want to make a remarkable impression even on the last days of my remains on earth. I want to be an inspiration, just like how she became an inspiration to William Wallace. Yap even in death I still dream…
No tributes. Although I know that no people would hate me when I’m dead, just because I believe I am a good person inside and out (thinking if this is true?) but I don’t also want people saying the nicest things about me during my funeral service (ang plastic kasi weh). Instead, I want my good friends to read my poems and stories and play the songs I loved… like “Sinta” by Aegis… Bohemian Rhapsody, “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, and countless more!!! That would be one long service…
It’ll only be 1 day. My wake will only be for 1 day… But if I get extended, I think 3 days would be long enough. Can I add on a “Please” to that?
And after that, can I be cremated? It would be nice to think that the people who had “genuinely” and “unconditionally” loved a crazy fool like me will bring home with them a small urn with my ashes. (Small, because I’m thinking there are countless of you who’d ask for it and my ashes won’t be enough for each one) So that in case you run out of sugar or salt, you can at least have some use of it… Sorry, I really don’t know what a cadaver ash tastes like. (he-he)
My point really is… It would nice to know that my loved ones have never wanted me to leave them. When I was alive (not that I’m already dead) my happiest moment is always when I feel loved and being wanted.
I can’t believe I’m even taking this so seriously. It doesn’t matter for me anyway because I won’t see these happen by then. I never wanted to be someone’s cause of sadness, that’s why I’m hoping to be remembered as someone who had put a smile on a person’s face.
I don’t know how I’m gonna die. But who really knows? I don't wish to rest in peace when the time comes for me to go... I wish more of that for the people I'll leave behind.
*Memento Mori – “Remember, you shall die”
But I have a short life, I think and I also believe that I’m not going to live long enough to see myself suffer the disease because I’ll never know if I die sleeping tonight. Oh sometimes, I just hope my death is as simple and as painless as that. But when I was young, some psychic foretold that I will breathe my last in the water… well, that’s another thought?
But for now it matters not how I’m going to die. What matters is how I have lived… and honestly, I only want to live without any regrets.
A preacher once shared the following “facts” to his congregation. I was among the congregation.
He said that the average lifespan of a person is 75 years. If we have lived up to this age, we have spent…
20 years sleeping
14 years working
12 years amusing ourselves with movies, malling, watching TV
7 years eating
5 years riding cars or public transports
4 years in the internet
3 years acquiring solid education (Grade school, High School, College)
3 years reading books, magazines, newspapers
3 years on the telephone
1 year texting
4 months tying our shoe laces
11 months of attending the Sunday Service
For the last bit, you can trim that down to 4 months for me. Tsk! now that I’m thinking about it, I’ve only got 35 years to live… supposedly. But then again, I’ve given myself a deadline to only live up to when I’m 50, after that, would be beyond bonus.
So… the crazy me, grabbed a calculator at once and worked out the remaining days of my life. Granting I only live up to 50 years old then I only have like 7,300 days left in the world, that’s 20 years btw.
With this, I would have spent
2,433 days sleeping - that’s 6.7 years because I only sleep 8 hours a day
2,738 days working, that’s 7.5 years
1,520 days - TV, internet, dressing, shaving, phone, texting, malling, spend quality time with the kids & family, reading books, eating & drinking, swearing, fooling around, fighting, writing/blogging, having sex… anyway, that’s 4 years. Bathing and brushing teeth are such big time wasters btw.
Now, I’m left with 610 days of nothing to do. That’s about 1.7 years. But then again… maybe I don’t really have to waste my brain cells thinking about how I’m going to spend this 1.7 years. After all, I don’t even know if I will survive the next 1.7 minutes.
Just as what Jonathan Nolan said:
“Everybody is waiting for the end to come, but what if it already passed us by? What if the final joke of Judgment Day was that it had already come and gone and we were none the wiser? Apocalypse arrives quietly; the chosen are herded off to heaven, and the rest of us, the ones who failed the test, just keep on going, oblivious. Dead already, wandering around long after the gods have stopped keeping score, still optimistic about the future. I guess if that's true, then it doesn't matter what you do. No expectations.”
Now, at this very second, after contemplating on how I might die and lived for that matter… the next plan on my mind is on how I want my funeral service be organized. You just can’t stop me planning eh? Hahaha! And that of course would be minus 3 days in my 50-year life.
Seriously, there are only 2 occasions that I get super emotional with… Weddings and Funerals. (That’s minus 2 months in my life.) I wish I could talk more about weddings but my moment is at my funeral right now. And I’m imagining that somehow it will be as how I describe it below.
No coffin. I would of course expect my loved ones to be a bit creative by probably surrounding me with flowers just like how they do it in the medieval times?
No gown. My whole body will be wrapped with a fine satin cloth preferably colored green (lightest as possible) because that’s my favorite color. My face will be covered with a transparent cloth. So I won’t look like a mummy at least. The one thing I hate most during funerals is the smell of the cadaver. Most times, the dead smell too much of that embalming odor and that really creeps me out. I want to smell as pleasant as my favorite perfume during my wake (and that would be the Burberry Classic, you can call that shameless promotion, anyway it’s free and besides I’d be dead, remember?) I won’t be as beautiful as Murrin in the movie Braveheart when she was buried, but I want to make a remarkable impression even on the last days of my remains on earth. I want to be an inspiration, just like how she became an inspiration to William Wallace. Yap even in death I still dream…
No tributes. Although I know that no people would hate me when I’m dead, just because I believe I am a good person inside and out (thinking if this is true?) but I don’t also want people saying the nicest things about me during my funeral service (ang plastic kasi weh). Instead, I want my good friends to read my poems and stories and play the songs I loved… like “Sinta” by Aegis… Bohemian Rhapsody, “I Will Survive” by Gloria Gaynor, and countless more!!! That would be one long service…
It’ll only be 1 day. My wake will only be for 1 day… But if I get extended, I think 3 days would be long enough. Can I add on a “Please” to that?
And after that, can I be cremated? It would be nice to think that the people who had “genuinely” and “unconditionally” loved a crazy fool like me will bring home with them a small urn with my ashes. (Small, because I’m thinking there are countless of you who’d ask for it and my ashes won’t be enough for each one) So that in case you run out of sugar or salt, you can at least have some use of it… Sorry, I really don’t know what a cadaver ash tastes like. (he-he)
My point really is… It would nice to know that my loved ones have never wanted me to leave them. When I was alive (not that I’m already dead) my happiest moment is always when I feel loved and being wanted.
I can’t believe I’m even taking this so seriously. It doesn’t matter for me anyway because I won’t see these happen by then. I never wanted to be someone’s cause of sadness, that’s why I’m hoping to be remembered as someone who had put a smile on a person’s face.
I don’t know how I’m gonna die. But who really knows? I don't wish to rest in peace when the time comes for me to go... I wish more of that for the people I'll leave behind.
*Memento Mori – “Remember, you shall die”
Comments
Yung words na nasa taas ang gusto ko. Marami na rin akong nasayang na sandali sa mga pagkakamali ko at mga pagkukulang ko.
Medyo emo ka nga. Naaalala ko noon kapag ako ay malungkot ay iniisip ko ang aking kamatayan. Iiyak kaya sila? magdadalamhati? magsisisi kaya ang mga taong nang-api sa akin? May magsasabi kaya na sana nandito ka pa o magsasabing sana panaginip lang ito. Uy! parang makakabuo ako ng tula dito ah hehehe! Sige nga subukan kong gumawa ng tula base sa mga sinabi ko at alay ko sayo para naman sumaya ka.
Smile.
Napadalaw lang ako.
Ang saya naman makaka-buo ka pa ng tula tungkol dito... sige aabangan ko yan! Ang saya saya ko kapag nalalaman kong may mga nabubuong ibang bagay dahil sa akin...
Sa susunod wag ka lang dumaan, maki-kain ka na rin... hehehe!