Through the thick gravy of sleep, I can hear the chattering. “Blah blah blah” says one. “Blah blah blah laugh” says the other. In my mind I hear Sonny and Cher singing “I got you babe” and have to remind myself that while I am stuck in Groundhog day, I am better looking than Bill Murray. I reach over with frozen fingers and hit the snooze button. “Goodbye squawkers…hear you in nine more minutes”. In the haze and softness I assess the day ahead. The pain in my fingers and feet tell me that the next hour will only survived through gritted teeth. I swing my feet out of the covers, gingerly sidling towards the toilet. The doorknob is hard, and the bathroom floor is cold and hateful. I see myself in the mirror. Some days I’m surprised that I look better than I feel…this morning…not so much…the Blair Witch is staring back. After minutes of dozing on the loo, the Worlds Oldest Cat, and her friend, Second Worlds Oldest Cat, push the door open. They see me, and start whinging. To myself I think “Great, now I have a soundtrack to go with the pain”

  Walking on skeleton feet I hobble out to the children.  I attempt a sunny “Good Morning.”  Thankfully the children are not morning people (not at least for another hour anyway) and they virtually ignore me.  In silence I potter around.  School lunches and breakfast.  Fasten top buttons and scrounge through the washing for matching socks…grimaces hidden behind a mask of smiling, and high pitched reasurances.  The news comes on the tv.  I grab my keys and scan the children for food faces and scarecrow hair.  Like an army sargent I march them out to the car, all the while ignoring the pain that sizzles away. Through bickering voices my anger bubbles. ”Yes they are arguing but don’t over react” – just a simple warning will do.  I look at the garage roller door, imaging a way to open it that will not result in more pain.  It weighs more than a blue whale.  I stare at it.  I hate it. 

Second by second the day unfolds.  The ground is hard, hard, hard, but as we walk into school more seconds pass. I am surviving this step, then the next.  I squat to hug my boys, to wish them a great day, to tell them I love them.  And in our embrace, I think “I can’t enjoy this.”  All I want is for it to be over, to take the pressure of the joint, but I stay.  I wonder if they look into my eyes and see what I feel.  I wonder if they think it is about them? 

 As I do a skip shuffle out to the car,  I take a breath, a giant ballon breath. ” Thank you”, I say to myself.  “Thank you for keeping it in”.  “Thank you for not lashing out.”

For now, I retreat.  Six hours and I will do it all over again.  Pretend , pretend, pretend. 

This life, my life is lived moment to moment.

 A string of moments, each seperate from the next. 

 No future,

No past,

Only now.

  

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