The Life of Death

Flipped through the newspaper today and read an article about the highly successful but morbid tv show called "Six Feet Under" about a dysfunctional family who takes care of a business related to human's death. Read a book entitled "The Lovely Bones" about a raped and murdered girl watching how her family deals with her death from heaven. Heard about another interesting book called "The curious incident of the dog in the nigh-time" relating the story of a dead dog and how an autistic boy traced the story leading to its death. On Monday, watched a tv programme called "Summerland" about how a fun-loving, single aunt copes with taking care of 3 kids after the death of their parents, even though now the series is getting more soapy than ever(yucks!), nevertheless still entertaining to watch.

Funny how the story of death has now been the central topic in many art forms. But I am not at all suprised that these are the types of stories that attract high viewership and readership. I would be interested to know how people deals with the grief and torment that comes together with the death of loved ones.

In life, there are only twp things that are imminent: tax and death. Dealing with tax calls for only one form of reaction: sighs of exasperation. Dealing with death however creates different types of reaction to those affected, some in forms of denial, some in lighter actions. It is nice to see how the son of the parents in Summerland reacted to his parents death by trying to find out the meaning of 'heaven' and tried his best to go there despite putting his life in immense trouble. The daughter meanwhile stresses herself by taking over the responsibilities of her mother and father and as a result was penting up all her frustration and anger in the form of fulfilled responsibilities.

Who could say how heaven or hell looks like? Well, the image of hell in movies like Constantine is enough to instill fear in human to not create and perform sins or else they might be punished incessantly in hell. Who is to say whether any of this is right or wrong. All that matters is to take those scenes as learning points so that we appreciate the short life that we have to spread love all around and to give more. At the end of our life, it is the quality of life that matters. Thus, create a life that lead to numerous respect and honour from all those you care about. Just like Pope John Paul II. :)