Death: What ifs

Recently - and perhaps this comes from reading so much Ken Wilber, or simply from watching my dog Joseph getting old in front of me, I have been struck with the question:"What if" my loved ones suddenly died?

Yesterday morning as I said "一路順風" (Bon voyage) to 李師傅, who was going on a trip to the mainland to see her 師傅, that image flashed through my mind: What if she never came back? 我對得着她嗎? Could I say with a clear conscience that I had made me most of our time together while she was still alive?

It's a morbid question, but at the same time, it's really forcing me to practice tai chi with a different kind of commitment. Who knows when death may come to any of us, earthquakes, car accidents, cancer... and I now want to practice in a way that if and when the time comes, I can look back and say, "I made every single one of our encounters count." I practiced in a way that when I came to the lesson I was learning as much as I could. I keep in mind that it is a gift, not a given, to have a living, breathing 師傅 teach me.

With my family too, I'm practicing interacting in a way that makes the most of our time on this earth together. My father, I'd like to spend more time with. My mother, I need to remember to approach her with more humour; I get so impatient with her sometimes. And Homei - my God, I think out of all the people in the world, I would be most devastated if he was gone. I can't get enough of his company. We'd swapped rooms the other day on the fly: now I have the quieter, smaller room. It was such a construction lugging his bed over that we scratched the sandalwood floor. Yes - hang out with HM even more...