{"id":527,"date":"2012-06-24T05:27:58","date_gmt":"2012-06-24T12:27:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/?p=527"},"modified":"2013-10-03T01:35:38","modified_gmt":"2013-10-03T08:35:38","slug":"a-beautiful-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/a-beautiful-life\/","title":{"rendered":"A Beautiful Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I learned a lot these past two weeks about living and life\u2026.through death, ironically.<\/p>\n

I experienced the greatest of the human spirit.\u00a0 I witnessed the compassion and caring for others.\u00a0 I saw family come together and forget about long ago differences.\u00a0 I learned that it\u2019s okay to discuss taboo topics such as death and dying.<\/p>\n

My mother-in-law passed away peacefully this morning.<\/p>\n

Death and dying is part of the lifecycle.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t mean the end if you truly believe in your faith.\u00a0 It only means that you have left the physical life.\u00a0 Your spirit is still present and even stronger with those who are left behind.<\/p>\n

Some lessons that have been absolutely reinforced with me are the following:<\/p>\n

* Be a good person because you only have one chance
\n* Do not let petty arguments and disagreements linger
\n* Make decisions and do not regret those decisions
\n* Make these decisions for the right reasons and be happy with that
\n*Live life to the fullest \u2013 it\u2019s too short
\n* Leave a legacy
\n* Help others
\n* Do for others as you would like them to do for you
\n* Pay it forward<\/p>\n

I cannot express how grateful I am to all the caregivers that have given such great effort these past few weeks.\u00a0 They have done their jobs with the utmost professionalism.\u00a0 From the doctors and specialists, to spiritualists and counselors and even the cafeteria workers, parking attendants and janitors.\u00a0 This really helps renew faith in the human spirit.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had experience with hospital care previously with other relatives so I\u2019m somewhat familiar with what to expect.\u00a0 Doctors are there to try and heal people.\u00a0 The hospital care in this case was simply outstanding and the doctors were terrific about trying to heal with a great deal of attention to detail in \u00a0keeping us informed on status.\u00a0 What, however, I had never experienced was Hospice.<\/p>\n

Hospice taught me that the taboo topic of Death is part of life.\u00a0 It\u2019s okay to talk about this process.\u00a0 Hospice taught me that dying is just as much about the spirit, if not more, than the physical body.\u00a0 This experience was about closure.\u00a0 You probably hear the term \u2018closure\u2019 far too often and it probably gets somewhat diluted being overused as it is, but this is true closure.\u00a0 When you have nothing more to give other than soul; that is closure.\u00a0 When words seem like little consolation to you, yet mean everything to those who will be leaving; that is closure.\u00a0 The pain you might feel losing someone is the dying person\u2019s relief so have comfort.\u00a0 When the dying person is ready, they will go.\u00a0 Be at peace because they are.\u00a0 Dying is just a temporary physical departure from each other.\u00a0 You will have eternity with each other.<\/p>\n

\"bjh\"<\/a><\/p>\n

-RIP BJH<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I learned a lot these past two weeks about living and life\u2026.through death, ironically. I experienced the greatest of the human spirit.\u00a0 I witnessed the compassion and caring for others.\u00a0 I saw family come together and forget about long ago differences.\u00a0 I learned that it\u2019s okay to discuss taboo topics such as death and dying. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life_and_family"],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"post-thumbnail":false,"coral-dark-medium-large-2x":false,"coral-dark-large-2x":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Kevin","author_link":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/author\/kneal\/"},"uagb_comment_info":1,"uagb_excerpt":"I learned a lot these past two weeks about living and life\u2026.through death, ironically. I experienced the greatest of the human spirit.\u00a0 I witnessed the compassion and caring for others.\u00a0 I saw family come together and forget about long ago differences.\u00a0 I learned that it\u2019s okay to discuss taboo topics such as death and dying.…","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=527"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1239,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/527\/revisions\/1239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kevinneal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}