Reflections
Here’s to life!!
Teresita Bacani-Oropilla, MD
W
ith great pomp, fanfare, and festivity, the faculty and honored
guests, capped and gowned in
multicolored togas, led a parade of graduates
and headed for the stage. Most impressive was
the fact that the honorees included a queen,
Aretha Franklin, Queen of Soul, and a United
States president, 41st President George H.W.
Bush, being pushed in a wheelchair. The latter
eventually and gamely took some ribbing because he was from Yale,
evidently referring to the rivalry between the host university and
his. He gallantly endured and enjoyed, along with the enthusiastic
attendees, the rather lengthy, tradition filled, erudite and witty
commencement exercises of Harvard, Class of 2014.
One might speculate then, about the lionizing last hurrahs and
celebrations honoring these admired and deserving living statesmen, heroes and heroines, pioneers and outstanding examples in
their fields, at the same time as the fledgling graduates were about
to enter theirs. Was it to show these neophytes the heights to which
they could aspire to? Could it be to reassure the honorees that their
labors were appreciated, that they were loved and that their efforts
would not be taken in vain?
But, to prove that he still belongs to the land of the living, and it
was too premature to relegate him to history, the very gentleman
in the wheelchair, within the month, strapped himself to a younger
member of a parachute team and made his eighth sky dive on his
90th birthday! Some may have thought it was a crazy idea, he did
not. How refreshing that age and physical limitations were not
impediments to his dreams and desires.
Likewise in our ordinary and daily lives, we witness similar examples. Robley Rex, the 107-year-old World War I veteran for whom
our local Veterans’ hospital is named after, despite being hard of
hearing, smiled his way while delivering records as a volunteer at the
advanced age of 105! Then there was John, in his eighties, between
hospitalizations for various ailments continued escorting pati [