Saying good-bye properly to our loved ones

When I was asked back in high school how I wanted to depart from this life, I answered "happy and grinning from ear to ear with the woman I love next to me".

This thought suddenly flashed through my mind after landing in Tokyo recently and learning that a man seated in the row behind me would not be getting off the plane alive. A simple nod from the purser who checked his pulse confirmed that the guy had passed away. Just like that with no visible pain. In fact, there was a hint of a smile on his face. He was dead on arrival.

The absence of pain or any kind of struggle during the flight might have made his companions think that he was simply napping. Early flights usually disturb our sleep pattern, so we tend to compensate by trying to catch up on those lost sleep hours as soon as we sit down in our seats and buckle up.

The fact that he was a bit older, maybe in his late 50s, might have also been an excuse not to disturb him and just let him enjoy his extended nap. After all, most people on that flight would be transiting at Narita Airport, so an extra nap might have been all he could afford until he arrived at his next destination. But he slept on.

The fact is, it could have happened to anyone. I am not that much younger than he is. I could have been the one sitting there being checked by the flight attendants.

The demise of the gentleman also brought on all sorts of other thoughts. What was the purpose of his trip? Was he on business? Was he on his way to visit his children or a newly born grandchild? Was he making an unannounced trip to surprise his wife, children or friends? Did someone see him off at the airport? Or was it too early for him to wake up his family members so he went to the airport by himself? Was someone waiting for him at Narita? Was someone waiting for him at his next destination?

Not only did I not have any answers, but there was another question gnawing at me: What if it had been me?

From time to time you meet nosy travel companions. He or she will joyously butt into your day with questions and pry out personal details you sometimes did not want to share or did not even remember you had. They will volunteer their life stories, and make you wonder whether your parents do the same during their encounters with total strangers on shuttle buses to and from airports.

I honestly don't like this kind of travel companion. I will usually try and lose them the first chance I get.

On hindsight, a person asking you incessant questions like that might simply want to leave a bread crumb trail about his or her trip so that someone else remembers it and it becomes more than a seat assignment or a flight number, but a person with a personal life to tell. She or he could be on a routine trip or on the way to something really extraordinary.

Thinking back to the gentleman who passed away quietly in that window seat, I promised myself that if on the next trip I bumped into an inquisitive seat mate, I would answer those prying questions gladly. Just so there would be at least one person outside my immediate family who knew what I was doing on this trip.

When we travel extensively, we take flying for granted. It becomes almost like hopping into a taxi that whizzes you across town for one meeting or another. Flying is no longer special. It is a mere business convenience, or inconvenience, whichever way you look at it.

If the trip is for a vacation or special occasion, we still make time to see the traveler off. But not for business trips or routine travel. You don't see your loved ones off as they get on a bus or take a taxi when they go in to work. So why would you do any differently when they go to an airport and get on a flight?

When one prepares for their pilgrimage to Mecca, there is a tradition of a communal farewell gathering. The person, especially a father figure, will usually ask neighbors or relatives to take care of their family while they are away. People pay off their debts or make arrangements for future payments. People also prepare a last will and testament, just in case the worst happens. But that is for a haj pilgrimage -- a once-in-a-lifetime obligatory trip for Muslims. Routine trips usually do not require such elaborate preparations, even though each trip has the potential to be the last one; the one trip that you may never return from.

"Work like you'll live for a thousand years, but pray as if this is your last day." Many of us apply this adage to our personal lives. We subscribe to religion. We meditate. We pray. We prepare ourselves for the next stage in life, if we believe in that stage.

But that is our personal preparation. How many of us extend those preparations to include our loved ones? How many of us even think that any meeting or simple good-bye at home, on the train station platform, at the airport, in person or on the phone could be our last? How many of us clean our desk so that somebody else can use it while we are away? How many of us do not take leaving home for work either in town or out of town for granted?

The day I left home for the trip, both my wife and son were home. We could've hugged and kissed and said the proper I-love- yous before I went. But that would be unusual. "Talk to you later. Take care." We simply took it for granted that there would be a next meeting.

I am not in control of how long I am going to live or how and when I will die. But I am in control of how I am going to do my good-byes. Whether it is for a simple walk around the housing complex we live in, or across the oceans to a faraway land, I'll remember to say good-bye properly from now on.

I'd like to die smiling with the woman I love next to me. I'd like to leave this world not as a stranger sitting in a window seat of a plane landing at a foreign airport. And I'd like to leave my loved ones with a proper good-bye each time.

-- Titayanto Pieter