Two waterbugs. They were the best of friends. Every day they would watch the other waterbugs leave the pond and never come back. So, they promised each other that if one of them should leave the pond he would have to come back and tell the other of the world he had seen.

One day, it was time for one waterbug to leave. As soon as he left the water,a miracle occured. He grew into a slender, beautiful body with glassy wings at his sides. He was a dragonfly!
He tried to go back in the water but in vain. At last he said: "It's okay, when the time is right, he will leave the pond and know the answers himself."
This was a story that had once made me cry. Thinking about it now, just makes me wonder: Will my aunt leave like the waterbug in the story? So soon?

My aunt--my father's sister, had a tumor in her throat long time ago. It slowly grew and she was diagnosed with lung cancer. Currently, the cancer has spread to every cell in her body, making it impossible for her to move without feeling unbearable agony. Yet it could not stop her from doing what she wanted.

I hate visiting her home. I hate how every ticking of the clock is a reminder of the looming unknown, the arrival of the inevitable. I remember once hearing her painful scream, muffled by the closed door and followed by sobbing and moaning. I don't think I have ever encountered anything more frightening than her bloodcurdling scream.
And I hate leaving her home. Some where inside me, there is a fear of never seeing her again.
My aunt has two children-- a 16 year old son and a 9 year old daughter. She also has a loving husband, who is both responsible and has a talent for humor. My grandmother is busy nursing her 24 hours a day. And my aunt is busy in her duties to the Almighty. Yes, she is very religious even in this condition.

I think my aunt can see things we can't see. I bet she knows the answers to questions we dont ask. They say that those who walk the border line sees the real perspective of life. May be they are right. Why else would she be so dutiful to the Lord? To live? I don't think so. She knows she will leave soon and she is confirmed about it. She keeps telling me that she is probably the luckiest woman on earth, for although God did not give her the life she wanted, He gave her the time to repent for her mistakes. She is clearing her way to Heaven. She never stops reading the Holy Book, she never misses her prayers and last year one of her dreams came true: She went on a pilgrimage to Mecca!! Unbelievable and impossible for some one so weak like her! Yet she did it! And she came back, radiant with her purified soul and the satisfication of a mission accomplished.

She is still undergoing her treatments with little or no improvements--today she is good, tomorrow she is bad, day after tomorrow she will be worse....It goes on and on. I don't know how my cousins survive in the midst of such mess, but their family taught me one thing: Life goes on. Time will never stop. And neither will life.

Another thing she taught me is the beauty of miracles. I had long made a wishlist where wish no# 1 was to witness a miracle. I never realized till now that I had been witnessing my miracle all along and that every where I look I get the oppurtuniy to witness a new one.

And my waterbug waits, surrounded by love, till the day comes when she will become a dragonfly.