LAST Friday on the telephone, Keala Yuen of East Oahu was choking back tears. She and her husband, psychiatrist Dr. Greg Yuen, had just heard that saintly Mother Teresa had died, and the news overwhelmed them. Words of wisdom
from Mother TeresaKeala had met the Catholic nun/Nobel Peace Prize winner in Chicago a few years ago. Before that, in 1993, the Yuens had become the legal guardians of a malnourished, sickly Tibetan refugee child living in a remote village in Dharmsala, India.
They named him Tenzin. This school year, the handsome, strapping 17 year old will graduate from Punahou.
Keala had experienced a foreboding feeling last Thursday night, a few days after the death of Princess Diana. She reminded her husband that bad news always comes in threes. Someone else of worldly significance and impact would soon lose a life, she believed.
When it was Mother Teresa, the Yuens were crushed. To share their admiration of the frail nun, Keala sent over the book, "The Words of Peace: Selections from the Speeches of the Winners of the Nobel Peace Prize," edited by Irwin Abrams (Newmarket Press, 1990).
Marked on page 59 was a 1979 recollection by Mother Teresa. It read:
"The poor are very wonderful people. One evening we went out and we picked up four people from the street. And one of them was in a most terrible condition -- and I told the sisters: You take care of the other three, I (will) take care of this one who looked worse.
"So I did for her all that my love can do. I put her in bed, and there was such a beautiful smile on her face. She took hold of my hand as she said just the words 'Thank you,' and she died.
"I could not help but examine my conscience before her, and I asked what would I say if I was in her place. And my answer was very simple. I would have tried to draw a little attention to myself, I would have said I am hungry, that I am dying, I am cold, I am in pain, or something, but she gave me much more -- she gave me her grateful love. And she died with a smile on her face.
"As did that man whom we picked up from the drain, half eaten with worms, and we brought him to the home. 'I have lived like an animal in the street, but I am going to die like an angel, loved and cared for,' (he said).
"And it was so wonderful to see the greatness of that man who could speak like that, who could die like that without blaming anybody, without cursing anybody, without comparing anything ...
"I believe that we are not real social workers. We may be doing social work in the eyes of the people, but we are really contemplatives in the heart of the world.
"And I think that in our family we don't need bombs and guns, to destroy, to bring peace -- just get together, love one another, bring that peace, that joy, that strength of presence of each other in the home. And we will be able to overcome all the evil that is in the world."
THIS past weekend, when Pope John Paul II celebrated Mass for Mother Teresa and said he was confident that her selfless work would continue, he didn't mean only in the poorest countries on Earth.
Keala and Greg Yuen of Honolulu made the decision long ago to raise Tenzin and their other son, Jonathan, in accordance with the humanitarian philosophies of an irreplaceable spiritual leader and "CEO to God," as one pundit called her.
In them, Mother Teresa lives.