In the Doorway to Paradise

Picture taken from Transition Culture

Last week, My Mom’s friend was found dead in her hotel room in Tibet. When Mom immediately relayed the news to me, I asked, “You’re kidding, right?”

“Why would I joke about that?!” Mom shrieked.

“Well since Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson, a lot of death hoaxes are going around.”

Mom’s friend finally made it to Tibet after months of planning. She’s texted Mom regularly since her arrival and has complained of breathlessness, mouth sores, and dizziness. She was also a chain smoker, which probably didn’t help her up in the high altitudes. As the story goes, she was preparing for a tour one day and rang up the front desk at 5am to remind them to set her breakfast early. The hours ticked by, the tour guide arrived, and she didn’t go downstairs. They rang her room and no one picked up. The front desk got concerned and went up to her room. After a few knocks, no one answered, so they broke the door open. They found Mom’s friend dead on her bed.

“Rockstar.” I remarked.

Mom’s friend didn’t lead a happy life. She was lonely most of the time, for as long as I could remembered she was depressed and not very easy to get along with. As another friend mused, “This might be a blessing.”

The family traveled to Tibet to claim the body. They wanted an autopsy but was put off by the amount of required paperwork. They decided to cremate the body and scatter her ashes there. They bought a turquoise urn to keep the ashes in. For lack of Christian or Catholic priests in the area, they decided to have her final rites in a Tibetan tradition. They would head out to a lake two hours from Lhasa, where some of her ashes would rest. The rest of her, they’d take back home, where friends and family could properly see her off.

May she finally find peace in the heavens above.