A good death

 

All of my life I have heard stories of the dead and dying.

My grandfather died April 12, 1950, when I was about four and half months old, but my mother has regaled me with stories of his and his brother's death from before I can remember. She claimed to have seen him just as he died and my father says, she kept pointing to the foot of their bed saying, "You talk to him, he can't hear me." My father, though, saw nothing.

When I was three I remember thinking a lot about who would meet me if I died before my parents. Would I even know my grandfather? I was a little scared to go to heaven alone.

I have taken care of,  and administered the morphine, that helped a friend who was dying. I was with her when she passed. We tried to make her last days peaceful and full of love. I don't think you can do more than that for anyone.

As my own time approaches, although no one knows when that will be and it is probably not imminent, I hope I die with dignity and peace, surrounded by loved ones.

I want to view death as a transition, like birth. Just as I'm sure I had no idea where I was going as I was cut from my mother's womb, I will not know where I am going next, either.

Whether my last breath leads me into the light of heaven, the peace of eternity, the molecules of the the earth and it's atmosphere, a reincarnated new person, or somewhere else, I suspect it will be so different from now that even if I knew, I could not truly imagine it.

I have primal memories from my earliest childhood, but they are only those of a bright warm room, surrounded by windows, high above the ground. And they are mixed with what I am quite sure is fantasy, because a winged white horse figures in quite prominently!

Serenity. It comes from within.

And I am working on it.