<\/p>\n
You can\u2019t really be sure <\/em><\/p>\n that someone had a good life <\/em><\/p>\n until she is dead<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n I knew well before my mother, Gladys, died that her life was good.\u00a0 Now that her life is over, I can confidently conclude that it was indeed so.<\/p>\n All of us are magically transformed into wonderful beings the moment we die.\u00a0 Society ensures that individuals who regularly criticized or blamed us when we were alive change tune the moment they hear we are dead.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s life was, I feel, good in ways different from this post-mortem guilt-tinged clich\u00e9 cleansing.<\/p>\n A good life is a happy life.\u00a0 Gladys had lessons to teach on how to lead a happy life irrespective of circumstances.\u00a0 It should be fairly easy to be happy when life is comfortable in every way.\u00a0 (Yet many people who have an exceedingly comfortable life do manage to make a spectacularly unhappy mess of it.)\u00a0 Looking back on the life that she lived, I wonder whether having to deal with varied and serious troubles made her life good.\u00a0 She was never despondent for long, whatever undeserved hurt came her way.\u00a0 I don\u2019t recall her harbouring animosity to those that I felt had gravely wronged her.\u00a0 Nobody could, even through seemingly vicious conduct, spoil her generous estimation of them.<\/p>\n She faced deprivation during a good part of her life, which she dealt with by working out stimulating ways to earn and by denying herself.\u00a0 This she did with no bitterness or a feeling that she was being noble or self-sacrificing.\u00a0 It was just the natural thing to do.\u00a0 I cannot think of anything of even moderate value that she ever bought herself \u2013 a sari, a handbag or the simplest item of jewellery.\u00a0 She managed all her life with whatever she got as gifts (other than for one article she bought for a close family wedding).\u00a0 Despite the relative neglect of herself, or perhaps because of it, she was indisputably happy nearly all the time.<\/p>\n The lesson to learn from her is how to be happy at the core.\u00a0 The secret may be to be born with the right disposition.\u00a0 But that conclusion offers little hope for the rest of us, just as does the recognition that her creativity served as a superb antidote to gloom.\u00a0 Among qualities that should be feasible to foster was her spirit of magnanimity and forgiveness.\u00a0 I doubt though that I could become anywhere near like my mother on this attribute.<\/p>\n So is there nothing to learn from her astonishing ability to be happy, despite having to deal with much adversity?\u00a0 A characteristic that we too may find useful to cultivate or work on was her attention to, and resulting fascination with, what was immediately presented to her senses \u2013 an unusual colour combination, the texture of a cloth, raindrops falling on vegetation, the taste of a fine chocolate, a novel melody or the croaking of frogs.\u00a0 Above all was her total involvement with people.\u00a0 Everybody was important.\u00a0 She lived the lesson that being connected with and caring for others secures happiness.\u00a0 I think this disposition accounted also for her resiliency.<\/p>\n She had quite a few visitors in hospital one afternoon, close to the end. Around her bed were a niece and grand nephews, other family and friends – some of whom were quite tearful.\u00a0 One visitor, an impoverished \u2018odd job man\u2019 who often helped in her household, and whose name I will change to \u2018Nimal\u2019 to preserve anonymity, stood diffidently in the background.\u00a0 All attention was on my mother who was propped up and coughing agonizingly from time to time in a futile effort to make breathing easier, speaking hoarsely with great effort and able to concentrate only for short spells.\u00a0 I leaned over to listen to something she was trying to say.\u00a0 \u2018Talk to Nimal,\u2019 she struggled to say, barely able to gesture at him with her eyes, \u2018he is alone\u2019.\u00a0 Her drifting attention had chosen somehow to focus on this diffident man\u2019s condition, even as her exhausted body struggled to keep her alive a little longer.\u00a0 I want to remember these as her last lucid words to me.\u00a0 They almost were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" You can\u2019t really be sure that someone had a good life until she is dead I knew well before my mother, Gladys, died that her life was good.\u00a0 Now that her life is over, I can confidently conclude that it was indeed so. All of us are magically transformed into wonderful beings the moment we die.\u00a0 Society ensures that individuals who regularly criticized or blamed us when we were alive change tune the moment they hear we are dead.\u00a0 My mother\u2019s life was, I feel, good in ways different from this post-mortem guilt-tinged clich\u00e9 cleansing. A good life is a happy life.\u00a0 Gladys had lessons to teach on how to lead a happy life irrespective of circumstances.\u00a0 It should be fairly easy to be happy when life is comfortable in every way.\u00a0 (Yet many people who have an exceedingly comfortable life do manage to make a spectacularly unhappy mess of it.)\u00a0 Looking back on the life that she lived, I wonder whether having to deal with varied and serious troubles made her life good.\u00a0 She was never despondent for long, whatever undeserved hurt came her way.\u00a0 I don\u2019t recall her harbouring animosity to those that I felt had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":729,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.being.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.being.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.being.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.being.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.being.lk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=728"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.being.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":730,"href":"https:\/\/www.being.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/728\/revisions\/730"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.being.lk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/729"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.being.lk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.being.lk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.being.lk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}