In some ways, Obi-Wan Kenobi has a point (which is ridiculous because he's a fictional character). This is something that Palpatine also echoes to Anakin in order to pull him over to the Dark Side.
Think about it this way: if you think that what you should be doing is correct, why should you do it any different? Why should it be any different? People with a different point of view wouldn't see it from the way you do, and they will think that what you're doing is wrong.
My dad passed away last year from stroke, you know. For quite some time, my mother kept suspecting that the doctors and nurses tending to him deliberately pulled the plug on him. Perhaps she was right, but even if she is, there's nothing for me to be angry about. I'm more convinced that my dad decided that his time here was over and gave up the ghost after four days in hospital.
I felt so alienated from everyone else around me during the time my dad was hospitalised and during the three-day wake that came after that. Now that you've brought this up, I think I'm beginning to understand why.
Everyone around me was rooting for my dad to pull through. I was the only one who wasn't doing that. Within the first hour that we learnt of his hospitalisation, I already accepted the circumstances he was in and, somehow, I just knew he wasn't going to make it. There and then, I accepted that I was going to have to live the rest of my life without him.
It's not that I wanted him to die; I'm not so detached from humanity that I could ever seriously think of wanting that. It's just that I realised that there really was no further reason for him to be here. He spent 56 years getting our family out from the poverty cycle and watch my elder sister and I grow into half-adults, while all the time teaching us in his own way. It wasn't the best way of teaching us, but it worked nonetheless.
In the last year of his life, he got every thing that I knew he wanted: to drive a car, to be promoted, to downgrade to a smaller and more manageable house so that he no longer had to shoulder the burden of a home loan from the government. He even bought a new LCD television and had a taste of Blu-Ray technology, all in the comfort of a four-room flat located in a rather peaceful area in Singapore.
He had seen my sister and I grow. He saw my sister enter university. He saw me graduate from secondary school clinching the award for being the top scorer in English. He spent so many decades married to our mum and grew to understand her just as well as she understood him.
He had achieved everything, so there was no longer a reason for him to be here. That's why he left. That, at least, is my perspective of the whole affair - a perspective that I uphold even now, almost a full year later.
I saw no reason to grieve for him. I mean, why should I? He spent so much time trying to get everything he wanted here. He got everything, and enjoyed everything. There is no reason to grieve for him. There is no reason to miss him either: he lives through me through what he taught me.
That's why I saw little reason for me to be present at the wake and the funeral: the coffin before me contained a husk: a mere shell of the person I knew. He is in a place I have no hope of reaching, but that's okay, because I know that he's at peace.
Only my sister had an inkling of my thoughts at that time, and she disapproved of it. In the same way that I fail to see the reason of my presence at the wake and funeral, she has failed completely in acknowledging my perspective of the matter. That is not her fault. However, if we want to get on with life, we need to know that death is a part of life, should be treated as just another part of life, and ergo should not be worth the fuss that it is given now. That, at least, is my take on it. You may see it as wrong, but from how I see it, my perspective of it will make my time here a little more worthwhile.
Why mourn the dead? I mean, we don't live forever. Every moment lost is a moment that can never be recovered, so make good use of as much time as possible.
I wish you and your daughter well, ShadowWolf, and I hope that she will eventually be able to live the life that she seeks.
