Conversations about Dying

A friend has been sending me things to read about death and dying and talking about his own experiences in dealing with the death of loved ones; and it has gotten me doing even more thinking about my own experiences and thoughts about it.

I'm not sure I have ever been afraid of dying, or at least not in conscious memory. If I have been "afraid" or concerned about anything, it is more about running out of time than dying itself. And now that there is some reality to "running out of time," that doesn't seem like so much to me anyway. I did what I did, I've done what I have done, I will continue to do the best I know how. What else is there?

I've dug at this a bit to see where it comes from and I am, at the moment, of two minds about it. One is that since there is no "after" then once it happens it won't mean anything anyway. As in "over, light switch off, room dark." The other is that at some point fairly early in my life I must have been at a point of feeling that I had nothing left to lose, and at that point I let go of any fears about dying.

Lest I leave you with the impression that I am some phlegmatic sort, anyone who knows me at all can disabuse you of that notion. I am anything but phlegmatic. Reactive would be a more apt description.

But I do think it is so that I am not afraid of dying. Now that does not mean that I do not think about it. This blog should be evidence enoguh of that. But what I think about is not the "what" of it, but the "how." I think the most important thing for me is not what or when, but how I am, how I "be" in the process of it. Will I find it come upon me with wit as Mercutio gravely wounded declares a plague on Montague and Capulet? Or how about as Dylan Thomas' "Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light," and go down fighting the good fight? Or with a will like Robert Louis Stevenson? "Under the wide and starry sky, /Dig the grave and let me lie. /Glad did I live and gladly die, /And I laid me down with a will."

It is the ultimate "you can run, but you can't hide," so why fight it?
More to explore.