Leaving us

This is a very short post I make today. I just want to get it off my chest. I still can't get over the matter that in the course of the last two or three months, several persons whom I know have been affected by deaths in their families. Of course, my own father-in-law had himself passed away on the 13th of July but about a month earlier, the mother of one of my Quah Kongsi committee members had died from old age. My wife told me that the father of one of the committee members at the Nandaka Vihara had similarly died and it had happened about four months after the death of this same committee member's mother. Then I had a neighbour staying four houses away from me who passed away. In Kuala Lumpur, a friend's mother passed away. Recently, two chess friends told me that their respective grandmother and father had died. And only last week, I had the wife of my former dentist informing me that her husband had passed away. So all in, I can count easily eight deaths in the last three months connected to people I know. I have also observed that this period can also be a crucial time when older people tend to fall seriously ill. There are at least two cases among people I know. So while calamities like these do happen at rather short intervals, I wonder whether there is any co-relation with the run-up to the Chinese seventh lunar month or the month itself which began on 29 July this year? The logical mind in me says no but who knows better? There are so many things that still cannot be explained logically. (Note: To the uninitiated, the Chinese seventh lunar month is also known as the Hungry Ghosts month or festival when the gates of the underworld are open for the hungry spirits to wander in this plane of existence. People usually don't like to go out till late at night during the 29 or 30 days of this month, and there's still a week to go before the gates are shut again. Superstitions and stories abound that contribute to Chinese folklore about this festival.)