So many eulogies have been said and written. Oftentimes, people cry when they hear one. “Tears are sometimes an inappropriate response to death,” urged Julie Burchill. “When a life has been lived completely honestly, completely successfully, or just completely, the correct response to death’s perfect punctuation mark is a smile.”
“On a day of burial there is no perspective – for space itself is annihilated,” wrote Antoine de Saint-Exupery. “Your dead friend is still a fragmentary being. The day you bury him is a day of chores and crowds, of hands false or true to be shaken, of the immediate cares of mourning. The dead friend will not really die until tomorrow, when silence is round you again. Then he will show himself completely, as he was – to tear himself away, as he was, from the substantial you. Only then will you cry out because of him who is leaving and whom you cannot detain.”
When Fernando Poe Jr. passed away on December 14, 2004, the Filipino nation grieved. However, his death marked the conclusion of his life. People will forever remember him as “Da King” of Philippine cinema due to his numerous box office successes.
His colleagues will think of him as the thespian who received acting awards for his performances in Mga Alabok ng Lupa (1967), Asedillo (1971), Durugin si Totoy Bato, Umpisahan Mo, Tatapusin Ko (1983), and Muslim Magnum .357 (1987).
Moreover, the world will not forget him as the person who challenged Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the position of the country’s leader. His supporters will remember him as the presidential candidate who was “deprived of the election for which he made the ultimate sacrifice.”
Although Fernando Poe Jr. is no longer with us, future generations will continue to recognize him through his films, his life story, and his admirers. His impact on Filipino cinema and his enduring legacy will persist eternally!
Kurt Vonnegut, author of Slaughterhouse-Five, reiterated, “The most important thing I learned… was that when a person dies he only appears to die. He is still very much alive in the past, so it is very silly for people to cry at his funeral. All moments, past, present and future, always have existed, always will exist.
“They can look at all the different moments just that way we can look at a stretch of the Rocky Mountains, for instance. They can see how permanent all the moments are and they can look at any moment that interests them. It is just an illusion we have here on Earth that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a moment is gone it is gone forever!”
“Our death is not an end,” said Albert Einstein, “if we can live on in our children and the younger generation. For they are us, our bodies are only wilted leaves on the tree of life.”
That was what Oscar winner Heath Ledger also said. By having a child of his own, he believed the “circle of life” will continue. Before he died, the Australian actor was quoted as saying, “Having a child changes every aspect of your life – for the better, of course. The sacrifices are large, but what you get in return is even bigger than the sacrifices you make. I feel, in a sense, ready to die because you are living on in your child. Not literally, not ready to die – but you know, that sort of feeling in a profound way.” Prophetic words, these?
Marcel Proust puts it this way, “People do not die for us immediately, but remain bathed in a sort of aura of life which bears no relation to true immortality but through which they continue to occupy our thoughts in the same way as when they were alive. It is as though they were traveling abroad.”
Upon our entry into this world, death is inherently intertwined with life. Indeed, some infants do not survive to celebrate their first birthday. Others live to an old age before passing away. Death represents the counterpart to life. As Henry Van Dyke puts it, “Some people are so afraid to die that they never begin to live.”
No one can escape from death. “Every man dies,” said William Wallace (portrayed superbly by Mel Gibson) in the award-winning movie Braveheart. “Not every man really lives.”
And death does not respect anyone. “You may be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the reaper!” said a quote from the movie, Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey.
But death, as stated earlier, is not the end. In some instances, death is the beginning. So, while you are still alive, work on something that people can always remember when you were still alive. That way, you keep on living.
Perhaps the statement of Ray Bradbury, author of Fahrenheit 451, is a good reminder: “Everyone must leave something behind when he dies, my grandfather said. A child or a book or a painting or a house or a wall built or a pair of shoes made. Or a garden planted. Something your hand touches in some way so your soul has somewhere to go when you die, and when people look at that tree or that flower you planted, you’re there. It doesn’t matter what you do, he said, so as long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that’s like you after you take your hands away.”
Ancient Egyptians believed that upon death they would be asked two questions and their answers would determine whether they could continue their journey in the afterlife. The first question was, “Did you bring joy?” The second was, “Did you find joy?”
Or as one sage puts it, “When you were born, you cried, and the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a manner that when you die, the world cries and you rejoice.”
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