[Jackie07]

Somebody ought to write a book on this topic as a sequel to "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus."

In the 'very' ancient Chinese history, the Emperor's wife and concubines were supposed to 'go to his grave' (literally, as the emperor's grave was huge) to accompany him when the Emperor was burried. Later, it evolved into a ritual of putting life-sized fugres into the grave. (Like the famous 'Tara Cotta' Soldiers unearthed in China.) Currently it's still a common practice in Southeast Asia for people to burn paper house, paper car, paper (underworld) money for their loved one to 'use' in 'the other world down below'.

Confucius had lamented even at the practice of using the tara cotta 'substitutes': "The ones that had started the practice of making those 'figures', are they not going to have children and grand children?" Some suspect if the so-called 'figures' were actually living persons being 'made' into statues ... Many have debated if Confucius was merely 'lamenting' or was saying "May they have no descendents..." (Ancient text can be interpreted in several different ways as usually it uses very few 'words' for expression.)

Seems the play 'Romeo and Juliet' exposes this kind of 'passion' between lovers. It was a 'tragedy' of tragedies in the name of love... Though it seemed to be a very beautiful concept... I do remember the feelings I have toward the story (there's a popular Chinese movie that was dubbed the 'Chinese Romeo and Juliet' when I was a young child...) Later I reflected on my feelings when I studied 'Romeo and Juliet' in college. I was confronted with it again when I was 30, 41, 43, 47... Each time I would make a little bit revision. But I have always encouraged my husband to go date other women... [during my semi-comatose, I had urged him to "date that nurse..." and had written in the notebook "donononon't be sad." I was so worried about him... (We had found out about my life-long brain tumor on the exact day of our 2nd Anniversay.)

'Children' are the main concern here. The best thing we can do is to prepare them as much as we can beforehand. And then trust them, trust our loved ones, and trust God.

[Disclaimer - As my Mother always says: "Before you have your own kids, you won't understand..." - exactly the same as the 'walking in the shoe...' expression.]