Having just returned from the wake of a friend whose sister was killed in an apparent murder-suicide, I found myself wondering about the fragility of life and how close we all are to the portal of death. This too was the second time in a month that I was in the same funeral parlor room, the first time to pay my respects to a beautiful young woman of forty-four years who succumbed to Lou Gherig’s disease, whose middle son was good friends with my younger son; and now to pay my respects to the two brothers of this thirty-two year old beautiful woman who was murdered by her husband. What made these two wakes particularly tragic was that each woman left behind young children, each was both beautiful and young, and each had great families and very successful lives from a financial perspective.
Coming home emotionally drained from this wake, I realized that life is too tenuous for us to become bogged down in the trifling cares that trouble us daily. The experience of the wake—my having sat through a constant outpouring of grief and wailing—made me realize that I too should trust more in God to assuage my hurts and frustrations and not to trust too much in the whimsical nature of this thing we call life. This whole experience reminded me too of what a bible-teacher friend of mine once said after I was relating to him some of the trauma I was going through after having lost my job for the fourth or fifth time. He said Joe, “We’re all only five minutes away from calamity.” I’ve come to realize that too often we may look at others and wish that we had their lives, sometimes because the pain of our own lives is too unbearable, yet we do such wishing without realizing that nobody escapes the pains and trials of this world.
Thus I come away sad from this wake and I now know that I must continue to trust in God for my hope in this world and the one to come. With the realization that as humans we may only be five minutes away from calamity, we should try to be more helpful and loving to each other; for as we adopt this attitude, the world truly does change for the better, and that thing we call calamity might be avoidable after all.
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Joe is a prolific writer of self-help and educational material and an award-winning former teacher of both college and high school mathematics. Under the penname, JC Page, Joe authored Arithmetic Magic, the little classic on the ABC’s of arithmetic. Joe is also author of the charming self-help ebook, Making a Good Impression Every Time: The Secret to Instant Popularity; the original collection of poetry, Poems for the Mathematically Insecure, and the short but highly effective fraction troubleshooter Fractions for the Faint of Heart. The diverse genre of his writings (novel, short story, essay, script, and poetry)—particularly in regard to its educational flavor— continues to captivate readers and to earn him recognition.
Joe propagates his teaching philosophy through his articles and books and is dedicated to helping educate children living in impoverished countries. Toward this end, he donates a portion of the proceeds from the sale of every ebook. For more information go to http://www.mathbyjoe.com/
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