My boss, Mr Chen, is in his fifties. He is energetic, generous, and above all very respectable person. He is very demanding and sometimes very tough, but he is always gentle and talking to me with respect because he regarded me as a person with knowledge while he himself had fought all his way up from very low class of society. He is a man of humor, many times we burst into thunderous laughter by his witty jokes. So we made a rule that he should not talk when we are having dinner because dishes on the table very often were spoiled by our uncontrollable bursting of food, but dishes continue to be spoiled happily in this way.

But I can’t bear his low mood these days, he lost many of his close relatives and friends. Within one year, he held two funerals for two of his brother in laws, attended two funerals for his old classmate, all of them died of cancer at about his own age. Only a few days ago, he lost his dear mother, although his mother was ninety years old, but his uncontrollable sobs touched me deeply, my eyes were full of tears but didn’t know what to say. He flew back to China immediately leaving me in charge of all of the project in this country far far away from home.

Death, sounds so far away from our people in thirties, yet it happens every minute and every day in the world. Peasants are lucky in this respect because of his ignorance, never or very seldom give serious thought about death, they died with the least thought of it and died in natural way. It is those people who accompanied with fear of death for most of their days that suffered the most, and death would be closer than necessary.

“Let him hide beneath iron or brass in his fear,

Death will pull his head out of his armour.”

I could sense the fear of death from the talking of my boss which made him melancholy and low. I do wish I could do something to pull him out of this fear. I wanted to say to him that death is natural and governed by the heaven, what we could do is to treat nicely to those that still alive and lead a quality life without fear of death etc and etc. but all of these seemed pale and not convincing, what could I do? I am at my wit’s end and I must think.