A good friend died last month.\u00a0 His death was expected, unlike Evie\u2019s in July which was a horrible shock.\u00a0 She was young and healthy, Michael\u2019s health was failing.\u00a0 He was\u00a0waiting to qualify for a liver transplant, but his body was too tired and weak to survive the surgery.\u00a0 I was completely in sympathy, I know that I no longer have what it takes to survive and heal from major surgery, or a heart attack or stroke, or a bad accident.\u00a0 There are days, even now when I\u2019m feeling so much better psychologically, when I feel like the chore of getting through the day is too much for me.<\/p>\n
For the two years after my breakdown in the fall of 2008, I wanted to die on a regular basis.\u00a0 Sometimes, when the thought went through my mind, I could counter it with \u201cYou don\u2019t want to die, you want your life to be easier.\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes I couldn\u2019t even do that.\u00a0 I never considered taking action, I believe in waiting for Spirit to let me know, but if Death appeared in front of me, I\u2019d fall into his arms with relief.\u00a0 Not at THIS moment, when I\u2019m sitting here writing with my dog curled up warm next to me, I have a fire going, I can see the familiar trees and shrubs.\u00a0 If I knew I were going to die tomorrow, would I do anything different?\u00a0 No.\u00a0 Except maybe call all the people who are dear to me to say good bye.<\/p>\n
I used to be afraid of death.\u00a0 Especially when I was badly depressed, I would think \u201cI want to die\u201d and then I\u2019d add \u201cI don\u2019t want to die in this depressed state.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019ve been told a story about an ancestor of mine, Jenny Murdoch, who I like to think of as my mother\u2019s mother\u2019s mother, but it\u2019s too late to find out now.\u00a0 The story is that she was on the boat from Scotland, down in steerage, and there came a big storm.\u00a0 She scrambled up to the deck, crying out \u201cIf I must die, let me not die in darkness.\u201d\u00a0 It was told to me with a Scots accent: \u201cIf a mus\u2019 dee, let me not dee in darkness.\u201d\u00a0 That\u2019s how I remember it.\u00a0 That cry, in some ways, has been my guiding star:\u00a0 I do not want to die in darkness.<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t been afraid of death since god met me at the gate of heaven with a huge welcome.<\/p>\n
Someone who did some work for me, told me the story of his dad, who\u2019d had lung cancer but been in remission.\u00a0 When the cancer recurred, he said he didn\u2019t want any surgery, chemo, etc.\u00a0 In four days he was dead.\u00a0 I think I can also choose to die instead of hanging around for one of those long slowly disintegrating illnesses. I don’t want to do what my parents did, both of them hung on and hung on.\u00a0 They were afraid of death, even though their quality of life had deteriorated.<\/p>\n
I do believe, to some extent, that we can choose our time to die.\u00a0 I think of my grandfather, the summer of my sister\u2019s wedding.\u00a0 He was too frail to come to Maine, but my Aunt Carolyn, on her way home to San Francisco, stopped in Cincinnati to see him.\u00a0 She took him a piece of wedding cake.\u00a0 He asked several times if the wedding had happened, and Aunt Carolyn reassured him.\u00a0 The day after she left, he called to the nurse to bring him his glasses.\u00a0 So she did, and he said \u201cNot those, I want my BEST glasses.\u201d\u00a0 She brought him his best glasses, he put them on, took a deep breath, and died.\u00a0 It seemed to me that he knew at some level that the wedding was happening, and if he died before it happened, that would spoil it, so he was hanging on, until he was sure that his death would not disrupt anything.\u00a0 That was just like Gramps, to leave courteously.\u00a0 And I love that he wanted his best glasses.\u00a0 He knew he was facing an extremely important experience, and he wanted to honor it.<\/p>\n
By the time my father died, he had been unconscious for a number of days.\u00a0 I had been home for the 4th of July (see monologue<\/a>).\u00a0 Before I left, he was taken to the hospital.\u00a0 He was supposed to come home after the new treatment, so I had a plane ticket for July 23.\u00a0 By that time it didn\u2019t look as though he would be getting out of the hospital, but I went home anyway.\u00a0 When I got home, mother told me I was the last to know.\u00a0 He\u2019d died while my plane was in the air.\u00a0 It was pretty clear to me that, though unconscious, he somehow knew that help was on the way to my mom and it was OK for him to let go.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A good friend died last month.\u00a0 His death was expected, unlike Evie\u2019s in July which was a horrible shock.\u00a0 She was young and healthy, Michael\u2019s health was failing.\u00a0 He was\u00a0waiting to qualify for a liver transplant, but his body was … Continue reading