生者如斯
All that is left is to cherish the living. Somehow, we are to transform the weight of death into strength for living.
TW // suicide, death.
Earlier this month, I learned about the passing of a highschool friend.
I haven’t spoken to them in years prior to this. We drifted apart, as with many friendships post graduation and during the pandemic. I didn’t doubt that we might casually stumble across each other some day, on the university campus or at a church event. Nowhere within the boundary of my imagination would I have envisioned our last encounter as the last one.
Countless familiar faces show up at the visitation — high school teachers, church acquaintances, old classmates. What an occasion for us to be here, I thought, encountering each other for one of the first times since the pandemic. Exchanging conversations half-filled with chuckles and half-filled with tears, holding onto joy one moment and leaning into grief the next, remembering a life in light of its passing.
It is the first time that I have experienced the passing of someone that I knew personally. All of a sudden, the realization at the ephemerality of it all magnifies. There is nothing on this earth more absolute and immutable than death. The twentieth year is merely the sprouting — almost an entire lifetime awaits yet no more.
I remembered them as an enthusiastic optimist, someone starry-eyed about what life has in store. Yet I catch myself in my naivety — the credulity in assuming that the fragmented glimpse of what I have seen reflects the entire truth. Our interactions rarely surpassed lighthearted conversations — her innermost thoughts remain soundless. I wondered if I have laughed alongside them, oblivious to the amplifying storm abiding beneath their skins. I wondered where they believed that they would go after death — whether they have been losing their faith, or if they still believed in Heaven. I wondered what could have possibly occurred differently along the labyrinthine unfolding of the butterfly effect for this ending to be rewritten.
A note on my laptop reads: “you have not seen everything you are meant to see.” I recall scribbling out these words at the exhalation after a point of suffocation, as a reminder to stay. How much do I wish to tell them that these dark wintry woods is not the extent of what they will see. How much do I wish that they could find the willingness to linger for another sunrise. But all things remain stagnant and soundless in death. All that remains is to hope: may their pain be alleviated, may whatever they could not find in this world be encountered in the afterlife. At the very least, may there be peace.
逝者已逝，生者如斯 — something once said by Confucius. Notwithstanding the subtlety that is lost in translation, it approximately means “those who are dead have passed, yet those who are alive are to be cherished.” Upon first sight, the quote left a lingering impression on me, although the extent of its meaning is only more vividly realized now. All that is left is to remember. All that is left is to tread forward, do what you wish you could have done. All that is left is to cherish the living. Somehow, we are to transform the weight of death into strength for living.
And I borrow the words that I wish I could have said and draft to the second-person — to who is yet living:
I do not know you. Even if I do, I do not know your innermost thoughts, which you might painstakingly attempt to conceal. Maybe you are weary of the void-like numbness that you carry upon your shoulders. Maybe your emotions feel like relentless waves that you drown under each night. Maybe right now the most ordinary task feels like the most insurmountable mountain to climb, and you are gradually losing sight of what there is left to tether onto.
But I do know this: as long as you are still breathing — with each inhale and exhale — you are not yet stagnant. You have not seen everything you are meant to see.
There will be so many moment worth living for. There are places you have yet to be where you already belong. There are people you have yet to meet who will feel like coming home. There are dimensions of yourself that you have yet to grow into, beyond the confinement of who you thought you could become.
You will find gather serendipitous pieces of meaning in art that remind you of the strength that has been yours all along. You will stand underneath the radiance of the sunlight and bask under the kaleidoscopic hues of the eventide sky. You will share laughter-filled conversations with other souls and feel joy so bright as though sunlight is contained within your chest. You will be the coauthor of a million small miracles.
I do not know you but I know that you resemble an unparalleled thread in the tapestry woven by every soul that has ever existed. Your absence will be the eruption of a devastating hurricane, the most heartbreaking of butterfly effect.
So I pray that you will stay, to see yet another day. I pray that you will see this fractured and perplexing world as somewhere worth staying in. Perhaps the definition of resillience is simply the willingness to linger for another sunrise. You will tread through the woods and into the wake of daylight — the woods you have survived becoming an inextinguishable strength within you. This hope will a rebellious wildfire setting these wintry woods aflame.
I do not know where there is left to go beyond death. I do not know if you know — whether you still believed in Heaven, have started your losing faith, or have never pondered upon this question at all. But I do know this: as long as you are still living — with each inhale and exhale — there is still somewhere left to go. And there is so much left worth living for. You will be the coauthor of a million small miracles. And you will always find your next breath again, no matter how streneous it feels.