Milestones

As we walk down the path to adulthood, there are several stops that we make. Certain events that make a significant milestones in our lives. Our first paycheck. Our first car. Our first night. If attending weddings on a monthly basis seems to be a certain milestone that signifies certain adulthood, wearing black to the funeral of a friend's father is certainly another. Although a sadder milestone that comes with passing age.

Dressing up in sober colours for the solemn, sombre affair - as Shameless Shalom put it... ash gray, dust-to-dust brown and charcoal black - certainly marks the occasion and it's hard not feel how fragile mortals actually are when you're standing close enough to the crematorium to imagine - if not feel - the heat of the undying flames. And it had to come at a time when I'd just managed to finish the last season of Six Feet Under which had one of the most terribly final conclusions ever made for a television series :) Death certainly made itself felt in that last episode.



As a doctor, laypersons frequently ask me what it's like to work with death on an almost daily basis. With the hours I log in at the intensive care unit, it has become such a common daily occurrence that it's hard not to feel almost blasé over the fact that someone is actually dead. Fortunately, it's still almost and despite the trying situations I'm exposed to, I haven't turned dead inside yet. There are times when I still feel a slight pang but mostly I feel... a keen sense of how short life is and how much we should enjoy and appreciate how much time we have left here.

And how wonderful love can sometimes be - that it can last even beyond death.

All these sobering thoughts went through my head even as I wondered how anyone ( that Shalom! ) could possibly buy hideous blue dahlias for a funeral bouquet.