The word "death" is a word many Chinese friends tell me I should not say aloud. They advise me to avoid the word because only speaking of it may bring ill fortune. I deeply believe, however, that to know how to live, we must also know how to die. The problem is how we talk about death. Like everyone in Taiwan this week, I have had "Tomb Sweeping Day". I am proud to be part of a people whose culture sends millions of families to cemeteries on this special day to share memories and endless love. Today, eight days after the death of Pope John Paul II, millions of people of all backgrounds still grieve  his passing away. He was a deeply human person who knew how to laugh and show emotions, a writer with a gift for words a leader who appealed to us by the sheer light of his love for life. On the same day and only hours before the Holy Father left us, a friend of mine named Veronica McBride died of cancer in a small Wisconsin city. My friend Veronica was 52 years old. She was an attractive, humorous young woman who, as the saying goes, "never married". She published several humor books with her mother, Mary McBride. She enjoyed traveling, and for years sent Christmas card photos of herself standing beside monuments or odd animals. She fought cancer for five years. She joked about her treatment keeping her pretty because it kept her thin, and told me she didn't mind losing her hair because of . "I get to wear nice wigs!" The last time I saw Veronica was when I visited her family on a sunny day in August in 2003. When she burst into the front door later and saw me in the living room, she ignored me completely in her hurry to hug her newest baby nephew, leaving me shaking my head in laughter at her. As we look to the significance of the Holy Father and his life, surely we must also keep our eyes open to see the wonder and goodness in ordinary people who show us how to live and how to die. Why does the writer compare the Holly Father with his friend?
Because they are both the persons he admires. Because they have a lot in common. Because he wants to show that ordinary people can be great as well. Because he wants to memorize them both.