It's Tuesday again and again the only way to express myself is through music. I'm thankful for ThreeTunesTuesday. It has become a little bit of healing for me.
My wife's good friend was a professor of Social work and a beautiful woman in all ways. She mentored a high school senior who was about to take his own life. Since then she has been like a mother to him. Now he is married and is a father.
Recently my wife's friend the professor came in for a check up and found out that she had cancer. She went through the chemotherapy treatment for a few weeks and suffered a lot. Her immune system became week and the hospital said that she had pneumonia. She couldn't breath without the help of a ventilator and her fever was going up.
Another friend stayed as her guardian and prayed with her as the fever went over 40 degrees Celsius. The friend patted the professor with a wet rag and stayed with her until the doctors ordered the friend to go out. It doesn't make sense that this professor's only guardian was told not to have contact with the professor.
Instead the professor was given medicine to make her sleep and then was wheeled to the infectious disease unit. She was not allowed any contact with the guardian and was drugged under the hospital's "protection".
This was all because the professor did not have pneumonia, but she had tested positive for covid. As soon as she was tested positive, the hospital staff was more concerned about keeping her isolated than keeping her alive.
That's what things have come to. The best hospital in Korea has become more concerned about following regulation than saving lives.
I really don't know much about infectious diseases and this is not my area of expertise, but it doesn't make sense to me to leave a cancer patient to die alone. That's the second friend who passed away in the last two days.
Human beings are amazing creatures with deep feelings and insight. This is just part of the Wall, but it's an important part. Rodger Waters gets me with this song again and again. I listened to it seven times just in the last hour.
Nobody knows what happens to the soul after the body becomes unresponsive. Surely there is part of a human being that is eons larger than the body itself. This "eternity" is so large that we are bound to meet again. In fact we probably already have.
Last week I was guided through the "Dialogue in the Dark" by a wonderful guide. She knew the way so well and she even called us by name at the end of the tour without seeing us. It's then I realized my tour guide is not wearing dark vision glasses. She is really blind. Then I realized she is not really blind. I am really blind. All the tastes, smells and sounds I missed in the world because I depend on my eyes, while she experiences them every day. It was like a world of perception opening up to me.
I expected the time I had in "Dialog in the Dark" to teach me how difficult it is to be blind. Instead it taught me that I am blind. I am missing so much in life because I don't listen or trust others.
Bocelli is one who knows how to listen. This is revealed in his music. It is a cover of a Leonard Cohen song. It is simple and yet is is enough to fill the Opera house Teatro Regio with life.
The Italian side of me fell in love again with life.
Bocelli says,
"I couldn't feel so I tried to touch."
It stands as a striking confession of truth.
A little Scottish beat and some licks on the guitar put me in a better mood. So much is unknown. In two days consecutively I lost two people very close to me. They were wonderful people and it doesn't seem to be fair that they go so early when so many trouble makers are still left on the planet. Why did they have to suffer so much in their fifties while others live in luxury for many decades? There really is no answer. It's hard to see any justice in it all.
As I listen to the song and hear the Scottish drums and I watch this Celtic Worship band I can feel the message behind this hymn. Life is bigger than me or my wife's friend or the other friend who passed away the other day. Life is more than weddings and funerals. Life is about living. When I think about these people, they wouldn't want us to mope around being sad because of their loss. They would want us to continue living and do what they would do. They are fighters with spunk. Our best example is the one this song talks about.
All photos here as well as the story belong to me 
The below statue is to commemorate the women who suffered against their own will during World War Two. The statue can be found in Cheonan, South Korea.
“Woe to you... you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous.
And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’
So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets."
