I lost my little sister, Regina Kizza. The immediate family fought against the nest of diseases from her, but failed. She died on July 27, 2017 and was buried on July 29, 2017. She was in the hospital for five months. The hospital became her residence along with many other patients with different illnesses who were also staunch threats to Regina’s immune system. Medicine was Regina’s food and she often interrupted her actual feeding time.
Additionally, the two main caregivers were struggling to deal with the hospital flu and the harsh weather conditions that have been constant for much of this year. The deadly flu infection greatly interfered with the course of care and signs were now visible that the main patient, Regina, would soon give up the race for life.
In fact, not even the oxygen machine that was brought in to support respiration brought her back to life again. The simple life came to an end for her and the news of her death was too bitter to accept. The five months in the hospital that were spent restoring Regina’s life were fruitless. Death was the only answer we would get. It happened and it couldn’t be ignored. Denial, anger, and regrets could not change the natural fact that she had rested from the endless misery of endless combinations of afflictions.
The trust placed in doctors could not help and blaming the health system was useless. The best we could do was give Regina a decent sendoff with all the love. Despite the loss of her, life had to go on. The best the family could do was to band together strongly against life’s challenges, prosper, and share happiness with others.
I am still recovering from his loss just two months later. Death was like a joke to me until we lost Regina, a huge part of my life and a powerful reason why I worked so hard to accommodate her in a more prosperous and homey environment. Her death threw me miles back from my previous stage of life. She showed me how life means nothing after the loss of a loved one, when there is nothing to glorify, be proud of, or fight hard for. There was a time when mental disability would occur permanently if grieving time was not handled well.
I have lost relatives before, I have heard and ‘understood’ the essence of death since childhood. I have also read about events leading to deaths and have had visual experiences. In all, death has never been true and justifiable to me like the death of my sister, Regina. Even the comfort of friends and assurances were never convincing. A Rastafarian friend, Bongobingiman Gumarutahigwa Ruhinda, sent me an encouraging message: “Our birth is not the beginning and death is not the end. Life goes on.”
Regina’s death was the biggest challenge of my life and one to deal with. Despite having always discussed life after death, the death of my sister strongly justified why I needed to better understand death and life after, to see the situation of my sister, whose life I fought hard to save (5 months) and I failed. It was such a long time of pain for her, that her caregivers felt it too.
From the city to the countryside where the family lived, I always knew who to find first and with whom to build peace and happiness. That was no longer possible. I chose to make her bed my own to experience her spiritual presence. At some point I felt the very climate of the hostel and I thought if it was responsible for the chronic respiratory condition that I suffered from to die. I kept asking myself similar questions and blaming myself for not getting home early enough to protect her.
Actually the prolonged pain of his death was very painful and degrading for the life of the living. She innocently lived in emotional, psychological, physical, and sociocultural pain since her childhood. His greatest disappointment was that he had never lived a normal and full life; move, go play, make friends, work and support others. She was disabled for reasons other than her own and she innocently experienced lifelong pain and death. A Buddhist priest and friend of mine took a moment to reflect on life and said, “Yes, sometimes I shudder at the thought of so much suffering. Monks in India are very vulnerable. We have no help at hand. We are left alone.” . mercy.”
Life seemed so pointless then; As if there was nothing to fight for, nothing to feel pleasure for, and nothing to live for apart from pain and death! So much so that either I live life happily, or I meet miserably with illness and death. In fact, the truth about the world I lived in was hard to accept, even when it seemed clearer to me. But Kitasaala Sarah, a mother I knew as a teenager in Uganda’s Jinja district, repeated it to me. She said: “We are mortal. So vulnerable to death, but what matters a lot is the kind of life you have lived. We all need to enjoy our stay on earth.”
Every time my thoughts return to the misery in the last days of Regina’s life, I experience the pain. At times I felt that she should have done more to reduce her suffering so that she could live longer. She lived miles away, stuck in routines to survive in the city. And when I showed up, it was too late to stop the misery and painful death. It was beyond my control.
Doctors in the environment full of deficiencies in health care, also failed. Care and attention in public establishments were very limited. Collaboration between referral hospitals on modes of treatment was non-existent and the location of medical facilities highly questionable. One facility, Kiruddu, was near Lake Victoria with numerous mosquito-filled swamps surrounding it, and faced frequent water shortages. The neighborhood had a negative view of the facility as a death trap. But for me, death became a huge problem to solve.
Death was so daring for those too determined and strong to stop it. He just walked in and took the life of the loved one we love so much and went out of his way to protect day and night. The rest of the family and I were left powerless, only to give up with no choice.
It is at this time that I reflected more on life and death. At the same time, I conceded the fact that we live now only to die another day; life was such a brittle and fragile state that it easily vanished despite strenuous efforts to protect it; life was a transit phase of our existences from birth; it was a natural design to die and by nature we will all die.
Death was the ultimate end of life that awaits everyone. We can’t do anything about it. Nothing better or less that we can do to defeat death. It is a pending event for everyone, regardless of the pain we keep for the loss of a loved one. Death is a universal phenomenon, as noted by Ratana Nanda Bhante, a Burmese Buddhist scholar in Sri Lanka:
“…and in fact it also makes me more reflective about life [you] are having now. But its universal phenomena, they are all supposed to decay, they are supposed to end with death. this is the call[ed] Dhamma niyama – means rules of nature. I believe, that you could also feel. So I have no words to give you, to feel comfort[able].”
‘Dhamma niyama’ is worth keeping in mind as I look back on the painful loss of my sister and rebuild my life anew.
Because whatever we do, we do it for life, since it ends soon. And it is better to be good because goodness nourishes life more than bad actions that frustrate it. In a way, the death of a loved one is a learning opportunity: through death we realize the powerful divine truth of life and grow in it. The Buddhist text brings it to light in Dhammapada 129-130, which stipulates that “all beings fear death, all love life, so who can you hurt, what harm can you do?”
For both Christians and positive psychologists, whatever bad events happen, there are special revelations and good reasons why they happen. In fact, times were becoming so difficult and hostile to the survival of the rest of the family that Regina trusted completely. Our mother, the primary caregiver, fell ill around the same time Regina’s condition worsened and we had run out of funds. More about a remote relative could not help. A Christian friend, Golyan Emma, gave me spiritual energy when she said, “Well, you have to be strong because sometimes we are tested and God has a reason why certain things happen.”
Now I understand what it means to lose a loved one. As I await my last moment and the end of my life, I say to you, my sister, Regina, “You innocently lived in pain and died for reasons that were not yours. Your vulnerability deserved better and sustainable support from family and community.” . Unfortunately, the world had become a sophisticated place for all of us, so much so that you couldn’t get by as much as your family. You will always have the deepest love from us and a great presence in our lives. This will guide us to strive for improvement. lives, in a World so full of adversaries. Rest in peace.”
The humble family of the late Regina Kizza hopes to host memorial conferences and community events to draw lessons from her life, strengthen the family’s capacity to live and overcome socioeconomic challenges that failed to sustain support for Regina, and start a foundation to help poor families to effectively care for disabled members, a life Regina lived for 31 years. We hope that friends and supporters will join us in this hard work and show compassion, kindness and goodwill to the family and other vulnerable people who are fighting for their lives – the best legacy that we only have behind us when life ends.
