At the hour of our death

I’ve been alive for just over twenty-seven years. “You’re still so young,” I’m told again and again. I think it’s implied that I still have a long way to go — many more people to meet, places to go, things to accomplish. But all the recent deaths young and old, within my immediate and not-so-immediate circles, have impressed upon me a reality universally acknowledged yet almost universally neglected: that death comes unannounced.

“Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen.” It rolls of the tongue so effortlessly, often thoughtlessly. But seven Sundays ago I uttered those exact words while standing next to my dying aunt, and I thought about what that meant. Death was so close, so imminent, so real. My aunt was in the final leg of her earthly sojourn. This could certainly be the hour of her death.

She was still conscious, but too weak to open her eyes or to speak. In the last week of her life, though surrounded by loved ones, there were no more two-way conversations nor instructions that could be communicated. Did she fear crossing over to the other side? Did she have any parting words left unsaid? Whatever was going on in her mind and heart, none of us was privy to it. It was solely between her and God.

This was to me a stark picture of the hour of one’s death — to have to reckon with the fact that we will depart from this life on our own. Even the best and most steadfast of friends and family won’t be accompanying us. They can go no further than being present at our deathbeds, if the opportunity presented itself at all. And yes, they will pray for us, but ultimately that step into the next life is one we will take on our own. And then we will meet God face to face, with no intermediary in the form of community, clergy, words, images, statues, songs, or the liturgy. How do we feel about that prospect?

Does it sound like homecoming? A reunion with our first love? The fulfilment of all we’ve been yearning and preparing for in this life?

I will meet the God I’ve professed to love. The God whom I’ve read about, talked about, written about. To whom I’ve addressed countless petitions during the darkest episodes of my life. But at the hour of my death, will I rejoice at the thought of meeting Him face to face? Or will I be filled with the dreadful realisation that I don’t know the One whom I am about to face?

My aunt didn’t go that very weekend, and I had to fly back to Singapore. It was Holy Week. On Holy Tuesday, I wept as I prayed for her at Mass. Not because I was worried about the state of her soul, since knew she’d always been steadfastly close to Our Lord, but because of the realisation of the seeming loneliness of the hour of her death. But somehow, something or someone wordlessly impressed deep in my soul that she would go on Good Friday, the day of Jesus’ death. I kept this in my heart and continued on with the subsequent days.

When I woke up on the morning of Good Friday, I read a text from my dad which said my aunt had passed on earlier that morning. It sounds inappropriate to rejoice at any death, but the instinctive reaction was happiness. I’m not the type to neurotically keep my eyes peeled for ‘signs’, but the news presented itself as an affirmation that she’s in good hands. She had suffered with Christ throughout Holy Week (and much of her life), and has died with Him, and will rise with Him. Surely that last leg of her journey couldn’t be adequately characterised as ‘lonely’. Surely it was a special privilege of uniting herself with Christ. In a hidden, intimate way. Yes, none of us were privy to it. It was between her and her God.

All of a sudden her departure made sense. And given what I know of her and the faith so dear to her, I couldn’t but believe she would have wanted this.

At the hour of my death, I may not be a saint. There will surely be some degree of fear.

But however death comes for me – be it expected or unexpected, sudden or gradual, excruciating or pain-free – I would like death to come not as an interruption, but a culmination. I would hope that no one laments the circumstances saying, “Oh, how cruel is death, to have taken her this way/at such a time.” I hope my departure will make sense. I hope I would have, by that time, figured out how to live in a way where you’d be able to say, “Ah, this is the moment she’s been living for.”

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When I told my professors about my depression

Last week was spent bedridden with a fever fluctuating in the 100-103F range. It also happened to be finals week, so I wasted no time in requesting deadline extensions. I was relieved, though not too surprised, that my professors were generous and understanding enough to grant extensions stretching beyond finals week. But it made me wonder why reaching out to my profs with this request was such a no-brainer, when I was so reluctant to do the same last year when I was struggling with depression. If you think about it, what’s a better excuse to ask for help academically? When your body is sick, or when your brain is sick?

It took me a long time to muster the courage to tell any of my professors about my problem with depression. My counselor, knowing how much the condition was taking a toll on my mental capabilities, had advised me to inform them as soon as possible. At first, I didn’t think it would be necessary (it also seemed like TMI — would they even care?). As the depression got worse, I wondered if I was just using depression as an excuse for my stupidity and laziness. After all, I was spending most of my time just lying in bed and/or staring off into space, or playing brainless iPhone games. If I would just open a new Word Doc, I’d be able to work fine, wouldn’t I? (Wrong.) I suppose that was around the time the depression began to convince me that I wasn’t really depressed. Eventually, for the sake of my grades, I did email my professors about this, even though I remained half-convinced that I was a terrible person for exploiting this “little” medical condition.

This was Prof S.’s response to my email asking for Pass/Fail (instead of a letter grade). She was the first prof I’d told about how depression was impeding my academic performance. Not only did she grant my request, she graciously offered a Pass without requiring me to turn in a final paper at all:

Dear Karen,

I have struggled with depression on and off all my life; it is genetic in my family. It will pass! I will give you a P for the course. Meanwhile I hope that you are receiving the proper medical help.

No need to hand in a paper. If I can give you a word of advice — please be sure to consult both a counselor and a psychiatrist. Some depressions run their course in 9-10 months even without medication. But often medication is needed, even if for a show period of time. There is nothing  wrong with taking antidepressants. It is tricky sometimes to find the right antidepressant but when they start to work, they are worth their weight in gold.

S.

And this was Prof L’s response. I couldn’t afford to Pass/Fail this class because it was a requirement for my major, so instead I asked for deadline extensions:

Hi Karen,

An extension would be just fine. There is no need for an explanation, but I am glad that you are getting the appropriate medical attention. I know how difficult it can be to respond to treatment and to be open to people around you, so I am happy to see that you are taking the right steps. I’ve seen a lot of students who are too scared to get the help that they need, both medically and academically, when dealing with a mental illness, so know that you are handling this in exactly the right way. Let me know if you need anything, and also let me know if you’ll need some extra time on the final assignment.

R.

The genuine empathy and concern in both professors’ replies astounded me. They assuaged my fears of coming across as lazy or weak. And more importantly, in my confusion about my own mental state, they gently affirmed that depression was a complex illness that crippled people in very real ways. I know some college students who don’t feel like they can or should inform their professors about their depression. I would strongly encourage anyone in that position to do so without fear of judgment. Nobody talks about depression in class, but this doesn’t mean our professors know nothing about it. If they haven’t personally experienced it, given the amount of stress in academic circles, and also the number of years they’ve lived, our professors are a lot more likely than our own peers to have personally known someone who’s battled it. Either way, they will understand.

Note: Taking  a leave of absence from school might be a better option for others, especially if you are having recurring suicidal thoughts. Do discuss your options with your counselor and people who know you well!

More than words

Most of the content on this blog has been rather heavy, but here’s a casual recording Ben and I made last night. Ben is a good old high school friend who’s visiting from Boston U (where he’s majoring in Vocal Performance). He’s as incredibly talented as his soul is incredibly warm and compassionate.

This is one of my favorite songs of all time, and though it was probably written as any other secular love song (but more awesome than most), it reminds me a lot of a Christian’s walk with God. It almost sounds like a dialogue between man and God.

Saying I love you \ Is not the words I want to hear from you \ It’s not that I want to \ Not to say, but if you only knew \ How easy it would be to show me how you feel \ More than words is all you have to do to make it real \ Then you wouldn’t have to say that you love me \ ‘Cause I’d already know

Think how we’re called to be doers, not just hearers, of the Word (James 1:22-25). How Christ calls us to love another if we’re truly his followers (John 13:34-35). In Isaiah 58 God declares separates false, superficial worship from true worship, that is to break the chains of injustice and set the oppressed free.

And the second verse gets me really emotional, as it brings me back to the lowest point of my depression, of hopeless surrender, where I’d given up laying claim to all the things of this world, realizing that all I really needed was to know, for certain, that God really loved me as the Bible says he does.

Now that I’ve tried to talk to you and make you understand \ All you have to do is close your eyes \ And just reach out your hands and touch me \ Hold me close don’t ever let me go \ More than words is all I ever needed you to show \ Then you wouldn’t have to say that you love me \ ‘Cause I’d already know

And he answered my cries spoke into the darkness to give me hope I couldn’t refuse. “In a desert land he found him, in a barren and howling waste. He shielded him and cared for him; he guarded him as the apple of his eye.” (Deuteronomy 32:10)

(Oops, was this a “heavy” post too?)

The occupational hazards of supporting a depressed friend/loved one

“I have been with the same man for over 27 years. He has always been supportive of my depressive episodes. I only found out recently, that he was keeping a bunch of stuff inside. He was frustrated with me, and didn’t understand. Even though he reads my blog, I have given him articles to read, and I have described the illness to him until I feel I can’t talk about it anymore. He still doesn’t understand … That doesn’t mean he isn’t loving, supportive, helpful, and patient. He is all of these things and more — he will just never understand that depression doesn’t go away simply by taking a walk, being with other people, healthy eating, exercising, or thinking it away.”

The above reads like words snatched right out of my own mouth (minus the part about being married for 27 years). I don’t know if it’s becoming some sort of an obsession/hobby, but lately I’ve been spending a fair bit of time talking to people who are suffering or have suffered from depression and other mental illnesses (thank you, internet!). You get an instant window into the life of a complete stranger, even if it’s a 55-year-old in a different continent. It’s instant solidarity. When I describe my last tussle with depression as “being trapped in a vortex of mind games, self-loathing, and lies that form your new reality,” they get it.  But the common understanding extends beyond the complexity of one’s suffering; you also understand how depression (or other forms of mental illness) complicates your relationships with the people who love you, in a way no other circumstance does.

It’s been almost 3 months since I’ve been freed from my last (and worst) cycle of depression. During this time I’ve begun to cherish life more than ever before, and to be more convinced of God’s love for me, as an individual, more than ever before — two things that have led me to become passionately pro-life (more on this another time). As I recount my incredible journey, I tend to focus mostly on the ways I’ve been unshackled. As I praise God, I tend to focus mostly on the miraculous way he sustained and delivered me. But I have forgotten the unsung heroes: my family and my closest friends.

You tend not to see them as “heroes” because they didn’t technically do anything to rescue you from depression. But though they couldn’t and didn’t calm the storm, they waited it out with you. And this wait was in no way passive. They continued to be your friend when you couldn’t be a friend, to love you when you loved neither yourself nor them. The storm was you.

It takes a huge toll. Time, emotional energy, spiritual vigor. All your conversations are peppered with “You don’t understand.” They try to understand but they can’t, and they beat themselves up for it. They push and talk you into going for counselling and taking your meds when you’ve given up. They lose much of the time they had to themselves, because to leave you to your self-torment would be cruel. Their schedules and lives in general begin to revolve around you. And not the you who were a ball of sunshine, but an unfeeling black hole that vacuums up all their attempts to cheer you up and restore your hope in life.

And no matter how much they love you, they’re still human beings with physical and emotional limits, so at some point you do become a burden to them. Except they can’t ever admit it or show it in your presence. Over time, in their exhausted state, your negative thoughts and outlook on life become harder and harder to combat, and seep into their consciousness.

And who’s to know how long the storm was going to last? Not even a counsellor or a psychiatrist can. Are we talking a month? A year? Years..?

That’s but a glimpse of what my loved ones did and endured for me. I did get better, and am now happy to be back in the game, renewed and with a sharper vision for this lifetime. These people may not have healed me, but if not for their fierce loyalty I might not have hung on long enough to be healed. More than I thank them for their joyful service and companionship, I thank them for continuing to support and serve me when it involved much sacrifice and self denial.

 

And that makes me praise the God who taught and modelled this very kind of sacrificial love.

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus, who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death — even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:5-8)

This post is dedicated to Grace, Dora, Felicia, Joe, Eamon, Pastor Joshua, Papa & Mama, and everyone who supported me through prayer.

Happiness, hope, reason, and other things we take for granted

Predictably, as with my last cycle of depression, the first thing I lost this time was my capacity to experience joy. And then I quickly lost my capacity to feel any positive emotion at all. To a point where I started to count self-pity positive, because at least I still considered myself worth feeling sorry for. At the same time, part of me thought, been there, done that. I knew, from the previous time round, how depression rolls. Just give it a couple of months, and I’ll soon be spending more time out of bed than in bed.

But before that could happen, I managed to convince myself that I was going insane. One night, I found myself staring at the same PDF document of class readings for 6 hours and not comprehending a thing. I could read the words on the page but couldn’t piece them together. I could sometimes figure out the logic within a paragraph, but quickly forget what I’d come up with as I wrestled with the next. I began googling brain disorders, because surely depression doesn’t do this to you! I told my roommate how incredulous I was that I couldn’t understand my reading (it wasn’t even Marx or Kant or anything like that), and how I feared I was gradually losing my sanity. I didn’t bother remembering what she said in response. Kind words don’t change anything.

Before I knew it, my world had descended into an unrecognizable level. My roommate was sitting on her swivel chair next to my bed one night. She had a colored pen and paper in hand and was drawing out a visual chart of my last 2.5 years at UChicago, accounting for the ups and downs, making sure to record the significant events that had once made me happy, and accomplishments I had once been proud of. While I appreciated the effort, I could not believe. I believed that I did write the script for a successful play, but that was sheer luck and even the lamest of Singaporean humor would have been a novelty to an American audience. I believed that I was once so proud of a paper I wrote on Mormonism, I shamelessly emailed it to a bunch of people. But of course I was just delusional. What was I thinking? I couldn’t bring myself to imagine what people must have thought of me when they read it. I had come to believe that I was hopelessly stupid. Not just average or slightly below average. I was flat out stupid and had always been.

On the first day of class of spring quarter, I left The Sociology of Reproductive Rights nearly in tears. I had felt so naked in class. Surely they could see through my eyes and see my fear? Surely they could tell I was only pretending like there was anything interesting to introduce about myself? Surely they agreed that I didn’t belong in this school? Or any school at all, for that matter. I walked aimlessly around campus, my mind swimming in a new idea: I would flourish in a primitive, hunter-gatherer society, where one’s sole aim was to survive. My roommate called me, as part of her new daily routine, to make sure I wasn’t alone. She was alarmed when all I could say was, “I’m just wandering around. I’m not sure where I’m going.” And this was after the previous night’s “I wish I was a human vegetable.”

I couldn’t overhear any conversation without thinking, “I could never talk like that.” And while I used to look at families with little kids and swoon, I now couldn’t help but think, “Someone like me should never be allowed to get married. Or have kids.”

The last 21 years were wastefully and delusionally spent. I resented the people around me for colluding to trick me into thinking I would ever be a functional, let alone valuable member of society. I didn’t even know how to be a friend. The people who are my friends are my friends because they’re too nice to not be anyone’s friend. I, on the other hand, was sick, twisted, cold, uncaring, unfeeling. I’d always been and had simply gotten tired of putting on an act.

I stopped dressing well, why fool others and yourself with a polished exterior, only to hide how filthy you really are? I stopped eating well, why treat your body nicely if you feel you’re better off dead? Looking into the mirror was a painful experience. It would show me how ugly I was, inside and out.

One day, during the summer, while a couple of friends played beach volleyball on the sand, I sat at a nearby bench with my journal. I started off praying to a God who seemed to love everyone but me, but it quickly turned into pure self-berating. I wrote: My heart is a filthy piece of trash. If only I could dig into my ribcage, yank it out, and fling it out of sight.

Then  I reveled in a new idea: if I’m wishing this hard that I would cease to exist, there’s no way it wouldn’t come true. It thought it was genius. It would save me.

Did I know I should never take happiness for granted? Sure, anybody who’s ever been unhappy knows that. I didn’t know I couldn’t take hope for granted. I always thought of hope was a choice: you can choose to have hope, or you can choose to wallow in hopelessness. Until I came to a point where I could not accept any source of hope, be it from family, friends, myself, or the Bible, because I was so convinced there was no way out of the pit I had unwittingly dug for myself. And then there are those things you thought you could never lose. Your intellect, your capacity to reason, your sense of humor, your wit, your interests. When such things are lost and later restored, you learn that nothing apart from your decisions is yours. You’re not entitled to anything. You didn’t earn anything. You don’t say you found your sanity. You say your sanity was given to you.

How I got out of that dark pit of endless mind games is a whole other story. And a mysteriously wonderful one. But for now, I want to end with a few precious thoughts: I was thoughtfully and lovingly created by a Heavenly Father. When I find hope I cannot refuse, it is a gift from him. When I have compassion on others, it is from him. When curiosity propels me to seek truth, it is him. All that I am and all that I will be are from him, and so I’ll strive to spend the rest of my life stewarding these things for his kingdom, his people, Him.

I echo the words of King Nebuchadnezzar uttered some 2,500 years ago:  “At the same time my reason returned to me, and for the glory of my kingdom, my majesty and splendor returned to me. My counselors and my lords sought me, and I was established in my kingdom, and still more greatness was added to me. Now I, Nebuchadnezzar, praise and extol and honor the King of heaven, for all his works are right and his ways are just; and those who walk in pride he is able to humble.” (Daniel 4:36-37) Praise and glory to the Lord who gives and takes away according to his perfect will.

Thoughts on transcending compassion

As a little girl with plenty of time to spare, I spent a fair bit of it with eyes glued to the ground, watching  trails of ants avoid me like a river round a rock. Each time, my instinct would be to stomp on them, at first because I thought they might bite, and later on in life, just because I could. Occasionally, though, I’d feel unusually merciful and so choose to simply watch. It’s a kind of detached mercy, barely bordering on compassion. The same inconsistent and dispassionate kind that sometimes made me spend extra time in the shower simply letting the water run, so the rats and cockroaches in the sewers could have clean water to drink for a change.

This pastor at a church I was visiting in Jakarta was talking about how we do not like to receive pity favors. Unless utterly and desolately desperate, which in some cases still doesn’t deter, we do not want to receive help when we know the other party is offering it out of pity. We want things to be done for us out of respect, out of love. And for another person to help us out of pity us implies a difference in level.  He goes on to talk about how Jesus did so much more than save us out of pity. In becoming a man, he descended to our level, an act that also displays just how much he values and loves his creation.

For sure, God looks upon us with compassion, and that compassion plays a part in his plan of salvation (the word “compassion” is applied on God many times in the Bible), but this got me thinking about transcending compassion. Remember when Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40)? In the few verses preceding that, he identifies himself with those needing clothes and food, the sick, the imprisoned. No, he essentially subsumes his identity with theirs. I always thought, how compassionate of Jesus to identify with those of the lower rungs (“the least of these”), but am now realizing that perhaps he’s saying that there are no rungs. Jesus is saying he’s one of them, and so they’re one of us and we’re one of them. When we help the needy, we’re not doing charity work, it’s solidarity.

Too often, when I think about not withholding God’s love from others, I think about it in terms of not withholding the Good News of salvation, to proclaim it loud and proud, what Jesus did on the cross and what his death and resurrection accomplished. But Jesus’ ministry cannot be reduced to his final act. Nor just his final act + calls to repentance + teachings + healings. He, fully God, first also became fully man.

I first began to glimpse the gravity of this back in October while preparing Luke 4 (Jesus being tempted in the wilderness pre-ministry) for small group prep. I’d previously thought that of the 3 temptations, the first one seemed most trivial: “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread” (Luke 4:3). But upon deeper reflection, it hit me that it’s a taunt that carried so much more weight. You could imagine the devil saying, “Oh Jesus, Jesus…You had all the riches and glories of heaven, you had angels serving you, you had no need or want. Are you sure you want to be reduced to a mere man at the mercy of petty needs? Whoa, let alone face death? Do you know what you’re getting yourself into? Have you really done your calculations?”

Jesus didn’t look upon us and confer mercy simply on a whim, out of pity, or even as a favor. Let us not forget that he forsook his heavenly throne and became an ant, was an ant, died like an ant thoughtlessly squashed under under our sneakers.

And so what? For us who call ourselves Christians, do we stop at singing of this radical love? Christ explicitly said, “As I have loved you, so you must love one another” (John 13:34). As he has loved us. And the precedent set for us beckons, compels us to transcend compassion. I want to strive towards that. What would it look like if we saw a homeless person, or to not romanticize things, just a struggling friend, and saw them as ourselves? We are each surrounded by some imaginary hamster ball, and we occasionally let people in, be it people of our choosing, those we “love”, or circumstantially depending on how charitable we feel. But maybe to love doesn’t mean that these hamster balls have semi-permeable membranes. Maybe it means not having hamster balls at all. I honestly believe this mindset is a social construct (sorry, Sociology major here) we are too quick and too happy to adopt because they’re convenient and comfortable.

And it occurs to me, am I being a starry-eyed idealist? No, I think I just think I’m being idealistic because I’ve been brainwashed by societal standards that fall short of God’s standards.

This is my 3rd attempt at a blog

Hello! 🙂

This is what’s going on: I wanted a fresh space to go with a fresh start to the rest of my life journey. This time, I’m not starting a new blog (just) because I am mortified at the realization that each of my pasts posts bleeds immaturity. Not that I claim to have attained Maturity with a capital M, though, because there’s still so, so much that I’m going to be wrong about, and potentially ashamed of all over again.

But I’ve been broken down to bones, completely dismantled, burned to ashes, and reached that point where I felt like the only way out was inexistence. And then something (actually, Someone) tells me, in a way I cannot doubt, that this is the beginning of a brand new chapter. A chapter that will conclude in a way I would have never imagined. And I need to document it all. Kind of what “Under Reconstruction” is referencing, but more details in future posts!

You’re welcome to journey with me. 🙂