taxes & death

Whoever said that the only certainties in life are taxes & death deserved the nobel prize for philosophy. how much more candid & poignant can life be defined as a 3-word phrase!?!? let me share my personal experiences.

taxes, i can reasonably deal with - as long as i submit the monthly PCB cheques, fill in & send off the tax returns by march (just to be on the safe side, knowing our postmen sometimes hoard mail) & pray the taxman has a good curry lunch before auditing my file, i can get on with life without the scary image of smiling rotund tan sri zainol dwelling too much on my mind. btw, i just received a refund...yay!!

death is a different ballgame altogether. believe me when i say i'm not averse to dying, partly because i meet with Death ever so often, i might just as well call him "buddy". you see, i know who he likes to include into his close circle of permanent friends - the premature, the critically infirmed, the cancer-stricken, the careless/accident-prone & the suicidal, just to name a few. of course, he has on several visits tried to count me as his own but my Saviour has steadfastly vouched for me, insistent that my time has not come. but sooner or later, we will all come to the end of life's journey, whatever our religious inclination. ad finito, there're no 2 ways about it. Some will defiantly stare Death in the face & taunt,"where, O death, is your victory? where, O death, is your sting?", some will buckle in fear & trepidation at the prospect of burning in eternal flames & others will accept their destiny with quiet submission.

much like an event as commonplace as meeting the postman, i had 2 encounters with the Wily One just last week - very appropriate for the current ghost month, as the chinese would have you believe. this 4yr-old boy who broke his arm weighed in at a massive 42kg. he should only be about 20kg - or 25kg tops - but thanks to lack of dietary temperance, he is as heavy a 12yr old. some might consider puffy cheeks & a protuberant tummy a picture of prosperity, but any medic will tell you he is a walking (lumbering?) time-bomb. true to form, within 15mins into the operation to fix his arm, he developed breathing difficulty akin to an asthmatic attack. in fact, it got so critical at one stage i thought i was going to lose him.
Death was panting so close to me, i could feel his warm acerbic breaths on my neck. a silent prayer & a calm mind plus timely divine intervention eventually got us out of trouble. i mentioned "us" because had he succumbed to respiratory failure, i would have died a little inside myself. but it was THAT close!

this other young girl from indonesia had a humongous thyroid swelling for 10 years but didn't do anything about it until another swelling grew adjacent to it in the neck that caused some discomfort. initial scans revealed the thyroid swelling to be operable but the other nodule has encircled some vital arteries and nerves & may be unresectable without damaging those structures. my 2 surgical colleagues decided, horror of horrors, to take it upon themselves to attempt the unenviable (& certainly cavalier) task of removing both swellings. surgery had to be elaborately planned to cover all possiblities, so we won't get caught with our pants downs, for want of a better phrase. & because we were armed to the tooth in anticipation of likely complications, we avoided the land mines & surgery proceeded without as much fuss as the boy's. Death had been kept at arm's length, but only just. the thyroid was removed after 4 hrs but the other lump proved seemingly impossible to be prised off its adjacent artery & nerves. after a further 5 hrs of deft manoeuvring & careful disentangling, the task was abandoned - seemingly impossible had become impossible. this unfortunate girl is now back in indonesia awaiting further test results on the 2nd lump.

Just as we have evolved methods of avoiding taxes....er....i mean, paying less taxes & claiming more reliefs, we also have improvised ways of warding off evil spirits, vampires & beings from the nether world, eg. religious chants, brandishing the crucifix, robed with garlic etc. perhaps those who have something or someone to fall back on, like firm cultural grounding, staunch religious beliefs, a divine deity or God, will weather the fear of death rationally & logically:

"Even though i walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
i fear no evil,
for you are with me."

i remember an episode from x-files where a photojournalist had the knack of being right where a murder was to be committed or where an accident was to occur, & the police wondered how he always got the 1st shots at the victims. turned out that he had been accursed with immortality & was fed-up of living for over a century, although he looked barely a day over 50 - goes to show it's not that great to have too much of a good thing! so he'd there everytime Death came to stake his claim & he tried to enforced a face-to-face encounter with the grim reaper - the only way to end the curse & rest in peace forever.

no such problems for me. in my line of work, Death is never more than a breath away. i may sound nonchalant & cavalier when i say i'm used to that, immuned even, but i must thread carefully lest i step on his toes. my name might be on his list next. in the mean time, i wonder how i shall treat myself with the tax refund? maybe all 6 episodes of star wars on dvd.....& a light sabre.

may the force be with you!