iLive: The Relationship Continues...

It is an honor to be with you this afternoon. In the last ten years I have been with Vitas, I have never missed this biannual event. It is very special to me because, despite the sadness in this room, love is experienced, comfort is shared and support is felt here. This event is a soul soothing oasis in our lonely journey thru the desert of grief. In this room, I also feel the presence of our loved ones, because they are here with us to help us get thru the pain of their physical departure from us. So today, in his room, we are celebrating the lives of nearly 2400 souls who lost their physical form during the last six months. Yes, we have about 400 deaths a month in the Broward program. I like to specially remember two souls, Morris and Sy, who died 30 days apart on my team. The highlight of Morris's life was having lunch with me once a month, in the small Cafe in the ALF. He was 103 years old; never had children or extended family. I was his family. Watching him lift the soup spoon with his shaky hand ravaged by mild Parkinson's, depositing half the soup in his mouth and spilling half on his shirt, I was inspired by the dignity of this man who was fiercely independent till the very end. The last time we had lunch, he was so weak and confused, that he used the ten dollar bill he took out to pay the waitress, to wipe his runny nose. It was our last lunch. Morris died a week later. Sy who died a month before, was the most cheerful and positive person I have known. He always saw the glass half full; he always made lemonade out of lemons. When his sight faded and could not watch his favorite Marlins game on TV, he said: “60 years ago, in NY I used to listen to the games on radio. At the age of 94, Sy bought a computer and he used to forward jokes to me all the time. Most of them were dirty jokes, but there was this one which he thought I would really enjoy. I will share it with you in his honor. For centuries, Hindu women have worn a dot on their foreheads. Most of us have naively thought this was connected with tradition or religion, but the Indian embassy in Ottawa has recently revealed the true story. When a Hindu woman gets married, she brings a dowry into the union. On her wedding night, the husband scratches off the dot to see whether he has won a convenience store, a gas station, a doughnut shop, a taxi cab, or a motel in the United States . If nothing is there, he must remain in India to answer telephones and provide us with technical support. My ber support group always ended with a joke and some used to wonder if it was proper to laugh when talking about serious topics like loss and grief. I used to tell them that it is OK because, crying and laughter are emotional cousins, because tears show up both when we cry and laugh out loud. The third soul I want to remember today is Apple CEO, Steve Jobs. I just finished reading his biography. The title for my reflection today- iLive - was inspired by Steve Jobs, like his ipod, Iphone, and Ipad. The message that each of our loved ones is whispering in our ears today is this: iLive. iLive. I am not saying this just because I believe in the promises of Jesus. “I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me will never die.” Yes, I believe that, but beyond that, I have other reasons to believe that our loved ones live with us and around us all the time. Because I don't think that heaven is a far away location with a zip code that we can locate on a Google map, but a dimension around us. My father died 8 years ago. Since then, I have often wondered as to where he could be? I am sure, you must have asked that question about your loved ones? Once my wife heard me asking that question and she said: “He is six feet under ground in a cemetery in India.” And I said, I know his body is in the grave but what about his soul? ”His soul is in heaven, I guess,” she said. That was the end of our conversation, but that was not the end of my curiosity. I am not satisfied with traditional answers from holy books and pious preachers. As a Catholic, I used to believed in heaven, purgatory and hell as post-death destinations for the good, the bad and the ugly. But during the ten years as a hospice chaplain, witnessing so many deaths, my thinking and belief have changed. I am a strong advocate of “faith seeking understanding.” So, I like to propose a new understanding of death. When someone dies, we usually say: “the soul left the body,” which implies that the soul came from “somewhere,” inhabited the body for a few years and at the time of death, “left” to go back somewhere. It also implies that the body existed first and the soul came later, to inhabit the body. I think we should reverse that statement and say that at the time of death, “the body left the soul,” because the soul is eternal and ageless; It has no beginning or ending because the soul is part of God who is eternal. The soul that we carry within each one of our bodies, is a “spark” of God. That is what the Bible means when it says that we are created in the image and likeness of God. French theologian, Teilhard de Chardin beautifully expressed that truth in this powerful statement: “We are spiritual beings having a human experience not human beings having a spiritual experience.” So our body is just an impermanent and perishable wrapping for the soul; the seven billion people on this planet are wrapped in different colors, shapes and sizes, but inside, each one has a piece of God, a spark of divinity or the soul. Some have better wrappings than others. Some decorate and maintain their wrappings better than others, but at the end of the day, they are all wrappings. Death removes the wrappings, and the soul continues to live. To illustrate this point, Deepak Chopra uses the analogy of a house and the space it occupies. The space existed before the house was built there. The house is the body and the space is the soul. If the building is destroyed in a fire, the space it occupied is still there, and one can build another house there. (This is also a viable argument for reincarnation, but we won't get into that here). Now, let us return to the life of the soul after the body has died. Imagine you are watching your favorite television program. Fifteen minutes into the program, you shut the TV off and close your eyes. What happens to the program? It is still “in the air” as electromagnetic waves. Just because the television is “off'” the program does not cease to exist; just because the radio is “off” the music does not stop; just because the body has “died” the soul does not cease to live. I believe that everything in life has opposites but life itself has no opposite. Let me explain. There is “black and white,” “up and down,” “hills and valleys,” “night and day.” In fact night “ends” the day and vice versa. So, what is the opposite of life? The usual answer is, death. As a matter of fact, we have “life and death” paired together in common parlance and most of literature. But “death” is not the opposite of “life.” The word that should be paired with “death” is actually “birth.” It should be “birth and death” not “life and death.” Life is the only thing in life that has no opposite thereby making “life” unending or eternal. Look at the letters of the word LIFE which is L-ife I-s F-or E-ver! Steve Jobs was not really a religious person and he had his doubts. Few months before his death, during a conversation with his biographer Walter Issacson, he expressed hope about an after life. “Death could be like an on-off switch, click and you are gone” he said first. Then he paused and said, “may be it is not "And that's why I don't put on-off switches on Apple devices." It was reported that the last words of Steve Jobs before his death, were, “Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.” Is it possible that at the moment of his transition, this tech genius was “seeing” something magnificent and beautiful? Much more magnificent and marvelous than the Ipad itself? Which is kind of impossible! I think an individual soul rejoining with the eternal soul of God is a million times more magnificent and glorious an experience with no earthly comparison. May be that is what Steve Jobs experienced. A wise man once said that death ends a physical existence, not a relationship. I encourage you to forge a new relationship with your loved ones who are with you and around you, before you and behind you all the time, like God is with you all the time, because, at the moment of death, they just melted back in to the heart of God... to start their new life as angels. So, today, I like to leave you with this message from the book of Exodus: “I am sending you an angel in front of you, to guard you as you go, and to guide you, to the place I have prepared” (23:20) When our circle of life is complete, our loved ones will be there to meet us! (speech delivered by Dr. Paul Veliyathil at the bi-annual memorial celebration for VITAS patients on May 11, 2012)