Kairos

(My cousin and his wife) As most of you already know, yesterday early Sunday morning, I received one of the worst and saddest call that I’ve ever had in my life. My cousin Jude (based in California), a 35 year old guy, had a heart attack and died within a few minutes. In the hospital where he was taken, they discovered that he had a huge blockage in his heart of a blood clotting called embolism (which can travel to any part of your body, from your lungs to the heart or to the brain). This disease apparently, is a silent-killer. My cousin appeared to be all normal and healthy. He was very active and wanted to do everything from mountain climbing to swimming, from biking to hiking, kayaking, scuba diving. He loved the outdoors. Not only that, he had a good sense of humor – he was always the life of a party, a one-man act. He was also a handy man, he loved to tinker, to dismantle mechanical stuff inorder to learn how to put them together. His recent feat was when he was able to put toget...

The dreaded time came so very fast-- my Mother's funeral. September 30, 2007 was the hardest day of my life. I sobbed as men carried my Mother's coffin out of the house. This would be the last time that she would enter or exit the house, ever. The funeral march began at 1:30PM. Joseph and I, along with my family and friends marched behind the hearse carrying my mother's coffin on the way to the (Catholic) church. We were walking in the middle of the roadway and proceeded at a snail's pace. Along the way, people passing us tossed peso coins (by the hearse) from their vehicles. This is a Filipino practice that has folkloric origins to it. People here believe that it is bad luck to pass by a funeral march while driving, and that tossing coins would break the curse and prevent the vehicle from having any accidents on the road. At the church, we found out that we were the 3rd in line. There was another funeral mass going on inside, and another one waiting before us. Somehow,...