78-06-A4
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Life and Death [7 yr old Eduardo Leukemia][edit]
Transcript[edit]Every now and then, something serves to remind us that how you live is a far greater importance than how long you live. I'll be right back. No matter how many times we say that death is a normal part of living, a part of God's plan for all of us, we still tend to be shocked and grieved when it comes to those near or dear to us. Of course, we feel grief and sorrow when a loved one leaves us, but that sorrow is as much for ourselves because of the loss in our own lives of a beloved companion. We speak of the waste if the deceased is young and has not lived out his or her more than three score and ten and too often we fail to remember that if our Judeo-Christian tradition means anything, the departed has simply moved on to what we've been assured is a better life. A few weeks ago a little boy died in Santa Barbara, California, his life span a mere seven years before leukemia took him. We feel sorrow for the mother and father, whose dreams for him ended so quickly, but surely his brief time here served a purpose every bit as much as if his life had been measured in decades not years. At seven years, he's described as having an unusual understanding of suffering and of god. A volunteer with a group which works with the dying and their families recorded, at Eduardo's request, his thoughts about dying and even his wishes as to his funeral. In answer to a question as to why he wanted to die, you see he'd ask the doctors to disconnect the life support systems, he said, "Because I am so sick. When you're dead and a spirit in heaven, you don't have all the aches and pains and sometimes, if you want to, you can visit this life but you can't come back into your own life. If you don't hang on to your body and let yourself ease away it is not so painful. Death is like a passageway, a walk into another galaxy." These are the words, the wise words, of a seven-year-old boy. He went on to say, "Sometimes doctors want to save people very badly. They try everything to cure them. I don't feel good and I'm too sick to live on." Then his mother tells of the final moment. He said, "Mother, turn off the oxygen. I don't need it anymore. She did as he asked and says, "I turned it off. Then he held my hand and a big smile came to his face and he said, 'It is time, then he left.'" His mother summed it all up when she said, "It was a privilege and an honor to go through this with my son. I hope it helps parents talk things over with their children and doctors. If he's done this in his short life then it would have been worthwhile." Unquote. We can all learn from a very remarkable seven-year-old boy and surely his life had meaning for all of us. This is Ronald Reagan. Thanks for listening. |
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