I thought I could have an uneventful day and take a good rest, but ended up doing something totally new today.
You have probably read about the tragic accident in Kashmir involving the death of 3 charity workers from Malaysia. Well, one of the deceased is my friend.
So I decided to do something useful for them, and offered to help a friend who is doing the floral arrangement for the wake of the 3 victims.
I became an apprentice florist today, under strict instructions from my florist-friend. We made NINE floral arrangements – And let me tell you, I’d rather go saving animals – it’s SO much easier! But on a serious note, I wanted to do this today – it’s a tiny contribution to honour the deceased for all the good work they had done.
After doing the arrangements, we sent the flowers to Nirvana Memorial and Jalan Kuching, and paid our respects to the deceased. One the way back, we got caught right smack in the infamous buka puasa/office hours/heavy rain traffic jam. The rest is history and I only reached home very late in the evening.
So that was what I did all day.
On the subject of death…taboo to some people, a matter of fact to others.
People die every day. Animals die every day. This is a fact of life.
But when it is someone that we know, it affects us more and we feel the loss. Some people are shocked and cannot accept the death of a close one. Why him? Why her? Why, they ask.
I guess I am not as shocked to hear about deaths because I see animals dying quite often. You see them on the road, being run down by vehicles. You see them die in the clinic when medical help fails to save their lives. And it truly pains me when they die.
In the last few days, I was faced with three animal deaths. The parvo-cat did not survive. Devi’s kitten that was severely dehydrated also did not survive. The newly-adopted Belgian Shepherd Laekonois blue-eyed kitten also passed away suddenly, her adopter told me. It seems the little one had a mange-like disease running from her body to her two legs, could not move one day, and before they could take her to the vet, she had passed away. I know the mortality rate of young kittens is very high.
So I see death quite often. And I value animal lives as much as I do humans’.
Life is uncertain, death is certain – this saying rings true in our lives.
We will never know when death strikes, and when it does, we hope we have left behind something of value and we hope we have made a difference to the world (in whatever small ways) while we were living.
Then, it would have been a life worthy of living.