A VIP Patient and an Old Decent Female Patient
A Japanese medical doctor specialized in terminal care who has seen death of a thousand people wrote a book on impressive cases of death in the hospital he has been working in.
One of the cases is about a person of weight in local business and politics. Until his death, the VIP patient behaved in a reasonable manner as an influence. Even when he had to see a famous politician coming from Tokyo to the city, he asked the doctor to give him steroid to suppress his difficulty in breathing so that he could go out of the hospital and properly respond to a political boss from Tokyo without showing his weakness. The doctor judged that steroid was safe if given in a short time. So, the VIP patient could perform his duty without seriousness of his disease being noticed by others.
Many executives and presidents of various local organizations and companies came to the hospital to see the VIP patient, but sometime the VIP patient gave reprimand to them in loud voices for some reasons, which could be heard by nurses outside the hospital room, so that nurses were impressed that the VIP man was still full of spirit although he was close to the end of life. This attitude of the VIP patient never changed. He did not even show his fear of death to the medical doctor. And, in the middle of a kind of power struggle where the VIP patient won, he passed away surrounded by his entourages enjoying the victory but being embarrassed by the death of their boss. The medical doctor thought that the VIP patient finally died without showing his personal weakness to anybody.
In another case, a 80-year old woman who was still infused with grace died in the hospital like a tree died with leaves falling. She always expressed her appreciation to nurses, hospital visitors, etc. The medical doctor thought that this old woman must have looked extremely beautiful when she was young, although she was not married but her younger sister and her younger sister's husband took care of her. The old woman was liked by all in the hospital because of her amiablity, and said to the medical doctor one day that a tree finally lost all leaves and died with only its bare trunk left. Indeed, several months later, she died rather peacefully.
After her death, the doctor talked with her sister's husband as she created a very positive image as a patient at the terminal stage. To the doctor praising her attitude always expressing her appreciation to people around her, the sister's husband said that his sister-in-law was stern with him. She never had an overly sweet manner in facing relatives. Yet, the medical doctor thought that the old woman died like a glorious tree.
A man can be a social personality he has made up for himself even at the end of his life so as to protect himself. But a woman may have enemies in her private world more often than a man. In this context, a hidden female enemy might be more dangerous than explicit enemies in society.
Even Christ Jesus had an enemy or a betrayer among His followers. It must be a good luck that He was not betrayed by a female follower.
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John 10 King James Version
10 The thief cometh not, but for to steal, and to kill, and to destroy: I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly.
11 I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.
12 But he that is an hireling, and not the shepherd, whose own the sheep are not, seeth the wolf coming, and leaveth the sheep, and fleeth: and the wolf catcheth them, and scattereth the sheep.
13 The hireling fleeth, because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep.
14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.