"I pretended everything would be okay because it seemed impossible to always be saying goodbye. To blueberries. To the ocean. To ravens. To pelicans and plovers. To the cormorants. To the sunlight on the living room wall at four o’clock. To the sound of you in the next room." — Anne de Marcken, "It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over"
No, not the one you schedule but something much more mesmeric; namely, the one that reminds you that you’re mortal.
But (of course) it shouldn’t come to that, should it?
We shouldn’t have to wait for the tap on the death-dealing shoulder to know life is precious, life is a gift and will end.
Like so many things, though, “death” has become a commodity – i.e. something to sell – and yet I don’t see any evidence of people living as if they were dying. Instead, we’ve a bushel of hope and ‘dying, not dying’ that proliferates alongside the big one: death phobia.
I get it. I truly do; it’s too morose, too much of a dampener on life – our best life.
The trouble is when we do get the news of our death (some don’t), it really is news.
Why?
Why is it news?
In my case, I had my brush with my death daemon in 2010 but I have to keep bringing myself into the reckoning of my death, which I live with each and every day. (I have said it many times but it’s worth repeating, when I go to bed each night, I have no expectation that I’ll be around the next day.)
What about you?
How do you feel about death?
Do you see it (as Stephen Jenkinson has said) as an angel or your executioner?
Take care dear readers and thank you for your continued support on Substack.
Love,
Julian
Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash
Something I relate to.
2017 for me.