Thursday, October 29, 2009

life's to short

In the past two days I’ve come to the shocking conclusion that life is to short. We have to stop focusing on the negative and start searching for the positive. We have to stop carrying grudges and start forgiving. We have to stop hating and start loving.

Yesterday morning I got a call just after I arrived at work, it was this one lady I work with, her mother-in-law of 93 that stayed with her had collapsed and she needed someone to help her. I rushed over to lend a hand. What I saw I wasn’t expecting. Now I’m in general I’m a fairly compassionate person, children, the injured even animals… but old people… that’s a different story, I feel rotten about this but I can’t help it, I’ve tried to change but to no avail. I don’t have any compassion for old people, I don’t like being around them, maybe it has something to do with the fact that I never knew my grandparents, maybe I’m just a mean heartless person, I don’t know, but I don’t like old people very much, I never know what to say or do or how to react. Thing is, it breaks my heart to thing that once upon a time they use to be young and full of life and fun and independent. They were strong and self sufficient and now, helpless, old, ailing and that I can’t stand, its reality walking around. One day everyone will lose there fire and passion and seize to exist, just breathe and wait for death. I don’t like thinking about it and old people are a constant reminder of that.

So here I am helping this lady to dress her 93 year old mother in law. The only thing wrong with her is the fact that she has inflammation in het knees and cancer, she doesn’t have reading glasses of a hearing add or anything, that was the first thing.

Then I got back to work only to find out this on kid 17 years old was laying in a coma in hospital. He and a few friends were out having fun, they were all on the back of a “bakkie” – pickup- he leaned forward to tell the driver something just as they went over a bump. He lost his footing and fell from the bakkie; they drove over his head,

Today this other lady I work with got a call, she burst out in tears and was crying uncontrollably, a few months ago her sister came to South Africa to come visit and to get chemo treatment, she had cancer. The lady was planning on going to see her sister this weekend; she’s been putting this trip of for about a month, every time something else would come up. Her sister died this morning. She was about 45.

What I’m trying to say death doesn’t discriminate between race, sex or age, if its your time its your time, and we spend our lives bickering, fighting, complaining, criticizing, hating, being jealous and being dissatisfied, is it worth it, al these little things that annoy me seems so trivial all of a sudden…

1 comment:

  1. I know this comments are months late, but I think this was the right time for me to read it and I want to say that I do not think you have no compassion with old people, maybe you have too much compassion for you to handle at present. Hang in there, this post shows that you are still maturing in your feelings of compassion.

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