1 of my distant err.. relative had passed away due to cancer. I have another distant aunt with cancer, fighting for survival.
Even in death, there are so many ‘rules’. If a person is young, the burial must be done faster than an older person. Usually for old people’s funeral, it would take 3 days. Some rich/influential people wait till a week!
Supposedly my father originally planned to go to visit his cousin yesterday, Saturday. However, he thought maybe this cousin wouldn’t be at home – without calling to ask his cousin. Asume, asume. So he decided to go on Sunday instead. I think someone informed my father late Friday that he was in the hospital.
Somehow, his cousin didn’t want my family to know because of my grandmother’s delicate condition in health and emotions. According to the relatives we saw today, it was already extremely serious where the doctor told him that he could last maybe 1-2 days only. We only found out about this today.
When we visited our ancestors for Cheng Beng, someone informed my mother that this uncle had cancer and that my mother should keep it a secret because they didn’t want anyone to know.
It’s their right to privacy, yes. If my mother blabbed it out, the relative who revealed the secret couldn’t trust my mother again. However, if you were closed with that person, wouldn’t you feel betrayed or sad that he/she thought it was best to keep this from you? Besides, it’s also a prevention to inform people close to you – in case they may have the same disease but no symptom. You could’ve saved another person by just telling about your condition and spread more info about it.
Next time, if anyone important to you is in the hospital, don’t procastinate in visiting him/her.
What’s saddening is this aunt has 2 young children. Her husband smokes – right in the same room as her and the children. What a jerk! Who is going to take care of the children in case…?
Later they are going to discuss about getting grave people (not sure what’s the position) about fengshui of our ancestors – some of them suspected that our family had much bad luck and health were because of the way our ancestors were buried, etc. Maybe it’s in our karma..
The strange thing is that some people in similar situations want to keep their condition hush-hush because they want to protect the loved ones. I would prefer to know personally, so that I can be prepared for it. It’s worse to be given a bad shock.
But some people, as I understand, don’t want to spread the news around because they simply don’t want to pity and to be treated as an invalid. That, I do understand. They just want to be able to live the rest of their time out as normally as possible.
Are there any reasons? I kind of like figured out only these 2.
The weird thing is that just about an hour ago, the thought suddenly occurred to me that the death from cancer rate seems incredibly high. I wonder what it’s like in other countries. Is it because of the lifestyle that we lead – the overdevelopment that give rise to extreme levels of pollution, the “jerebu” we get every year, the high number of smokers we have in this country, genetics ….
It was certainly a shock to my father & grandmother because during CNY, this uncle was moving about and applied to go overseas to work again.
The relatives didn’t inform us earlier that he was hospitalized because then, he asked to see my father & grandmother – he had seen everyone else. So they thought if they delayed informing us, his life would be longer…
I think cancer’s 1 of the major causes of death in US too. A lot of people still don’t change to take care of the environment and health. If the government offer incentives for environment friendly products from organic food to solar cars/home, more people would use them and in turn, the prices of the products would even be lower and higher percentage of sales coming in.