I try to be all “holistic” and comfortable with death.  I have witnessed death first hand.  I have sat at bedsides, have waited in the next room, and have foretold to love ones of deaths imminent arrival.  I have waited beside the dead, brushed their hair, chatted and reassured.  I have “passed” on the sad news, spoken at funerals, hugged the grieving and been the “strong” one.  I have intellectualized death, seen the point, and understood God’s choices. Anne Rice said in The Witching Hour that death is the only real supernatural event most people ever experience.  And despite all the events I have bore witness to, I have never felt a “soul” leave a body, or felt the air around me change. The person is gone.  The force that ticked away inside has stopped.  Just like that. And yet, my heart knows they have returned home.  I feel a sense of completion, like the puzzle has been completed.  We pack it up, put it back in the box and return it to the cupboard.  It’s time to begin another puzzle now, for another life to begin. Another divine spark has moved on.

Someone asked me, after a loved one had passed away, if being in the room with them after, was creepy?  I said “not.”   People don’t always come to the “right” conclusion at the end of their lives (even if they know they are dying).  There’s not always a blinding insight, or deathbed confession.  Some people no matter how ill, can never break their lifelong habits no matter how close by death maybe.  And so in passing, the walls finally come down.  I have felt exceptionally privileged to have been chosen to experience anothers’ passing.  I’ve always said that anyone can be in a birthing suite these days, but most people will avoid a deathbed at any cost!  We think it will be painful and confronting (it is).  They imagine that what they will see will be far worse than they can imagine, so they stay away. Those last words really are that, and it’s not until someone has passed in your presence that you can really grasp this reality. Witnessing a loved one’s passing changes how you live your life.  You will truly understand regret, and live life accordingly.  This doesn’t mean you become a saint, but you see your loved one’s as they truly are, fragile beings with a life force as vulnerable as a newborn.   I’m a believer after all, a broad believer!  There’s nothing I haven’t consider as being possible after life.

It’s my own final breath that doesn’t bear thinking about.  Will I be afraid?  I don’t want to be, and the fear of the fear is the fear. I know I will go onto a better place, but on this plane I will be no more.  How can that be, that I will someday cease to exist?  That everyone I’ve known before me will cease to exist?  I once knew a lady who lived to be one hundred and seven years old.  Her reward for such long life? She watched all her loved ones and friends die!  She didn’t seem to be too thrilled with this and (after introducing me to her eighty three year old baby) told me she prayed daily for her own death.

So, we struggle daily to live, and then we pray for death?  We “rage against the dying of the light!”  And then pray for the Lord to take us swiftly and peacefully.  I find this hard to reconcile.  I don’t believe in euthanasia, and I have seen much suffering.  I think that life is an investment that we strive to nurture everyday, and not to be thrown away.  I try not to judge, but for future reference, no matter how senile I become (or already am!)  I’m not interested in a lethal injection.

I don’t know if God wants whiners in heaven, but I don’t want to go!

“Never knock on Death’s door: ring the bell and run away! Death really hates that!” - Matt Frewer