Are those spiritual emails you’re reading really real?

Monday, Feb. 20
February 20, 2012
Who’s Your Buddy?
February 22, 2012
Monday, Feb. 20
February 20, 2012
Who’s Your Buddy?
February 22, 2012

I receive many e-mail messages from friends and relatives containing beautiful scenery and spiritual messages, PowerPoint presentations that lift our spirits. I review them and if I think they could benefit someone else, I pass them on.


Two friends recently sent me a beautiful PowerPoint presentation depicting scenes of Paris, with background music of “Time to Say Goodbye.” The title of the presentation was “A Genius says goodbye.” The genius is Gabriel García Márquez, a Colombian novelist and screenwriter. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1982.

The message on the video says that he is writing to his friends to say “goodbye” because of his failing health. He was treated for lymphatic cancer thereby spurring rumors that he was dying. On May 29, 2000, these rumors were confirmed when a poem signed with his name appeared in the Peruvian daily “La Republica.” The poem was titled “The Puppet.”


Today, Gabriel García Márquez is very much alive and has written other works. The poem turned out to be the work of an obscure Mexican ventriloquist named Johnny Welch. Welch had written the poem for his puppet sidekick but somehow Márquez’s name appeared as the author. However, Welch’s poem is still worth reading.


“If for an instant God were to forget that I am rag doll and gifted me with a piece of life, possibly I would not say all that I think, but I would think of all that I say. I would value things, not for their worth but for what they mean.

“I would sleep little, dream more, understanding that for each minute we close our eyes we lose sixty seconds of light. I would walk when others hold back. I would wake when others sleep. I would listen when others talk, and how I would enjoy a good chocolate ice cream!

“If God were to give me a piece of life, I would dress simply, throw myself face first into the sun, baring not only my body but also my soul. My God, if I had a heart, I would write my hate on ice, and wait for the sun to show. Over the stars I would paint with a Van Gogh dream, a Benedetti poem, and a Serrat song would be the serenade I’d offer to the moon. With my tears I would water roses, to feel the pain of their thorns, and the red kiss of their petals.

“My God, if I had a piece of life, I wouldn’t let a single day pass without telling the people I love that I love them. I would convince each woman and each man that they are my favorites, and I would live in love with love. I would show men how very wrong they are to think that they cease to be in love when they grow old, not knowing that they grow old when they cease to love!

“To a child I will give wings, but I will let him learn to fly on his own. I would teach the old that death does not come with old age, but with forgetting. So much have I learned from you. I have learned that everyone wants to live on the top of the mountain, without knowing that real happiness is in how it is scaled. I have learned that when a newborn child squeezes for the first time with his tiny fist his father’s finger, he has him trapped forever.

“I have learned that a man has the right to look down on another only when he has to help the other get to his feet. From you I have learned so many things, but in truth they won’t be of much use, for when I keep them within this suitcase, unhappily shall I be dying.”