The Spirituality of Death

My mother called me cold-hearted and distant. I confess that I am, but it’s toward only certain people. We’ve had arguments about this before, back when one of my aunts died three years ago. I barely knew her, but my mother forced the family to attend the funeral, and only when I attended did I finally put a name and face together to this aunt that I barely recognized. I didn’t cry. My mother called me cold-hearted.

She also calls me distant. I readily admit to this. As I mentioned in the beginning when I started this blog, I am a private person, and I reveal myself to a very tight inner circle of people. In my mother’s mind, I am distant from my family. That’s not true. I love my immediate family… as for other relatives, that’s a different story. Relatives are people, too; just because they’re family doesn’t mean they’re a priority in my life. Like regular people, if I like them, then I like them. If I don’t like them, then I won’t hang around them.

So, why this talk about family? My uncle died yesterday. When my mother informed me of this, I didn’t cry. I never thought highly of this particular uncle, sad to say. I’ve had negative opinions of him, but I’ve kept them to myself. For the sake of the entire family, I never disrespected him, always acknowledged him when he talked to me, readily conversed when he asked me about college or whatever, etc. I did my part. As he lay dying of cancer for the past couple months, I never went to visit him. I just didn’t want to be around a dying man, especially one that I was never close with. What was I going to say? What was I going to do? “Hi, Uncle. How are you?” That’s as far as I would get. I can’t say, “Get well soon” or “I’ll see you around.” It was terminal cancer.

As my mother told me about his death, she described how my uncle had a vision of Jesus Christ. It reminded me of another uncle who passed away last year. He also had a vision of Jesus. He died on Easter day. Two uncles with visions of the Son of God. I wonder about this: will I get a vision of God or Jesus when I die? Or are those visions only for the faithful? When I die, I would like a vision, too. It would answer my lifelong question: is God really there?

I don’t know if it’s my own discomfort around death, or maybe I just didn’t really care enough about my uncle. Either way, my mother is telling me that I’m a bad niece because I didn’t visit him, because I didn’t cry, because I didn’t do anything. According to Filipino superstition, he’s coming to haunt me soon. Maybe I’ll get a chance to visit him now.