Our society is too divorced from birth & death, and so we fear what we do not know. As you die, your brain shuts down, reducing awareness, so it is peaceful. Not like the opera, where I love the impossibility of a singer, dying of a lung condition, singing at full volume very articulately, then dying immediately.
There is a Scots saying "enjoy your life, because you are a long time dead".
I want to be buried in a little graveyard near my house with a lovely view of the mountain. It has lots of little solar lights so it looks sweet and friendly. Put me in a burlap bag so the critters can make use of me....
Twice in my life so far (I’m far from young) I’ve expected to die imminently. Once was many years ago, mountain climbing, when I was trapped overnight by a snowstorm without decent shelter. Each winter my feet remind me of the frostbite. The second time was in 2003, when I thought I was having a fatal stroke. I was alone in the house, and my only regret was that my husband would come home and find me already gone.
Both times I experienced a kind of peaceful acceptance. “It’s time,” I remember thinking. “All right.”
I hope that when it really is “time,” I’ll feel as peacefully accepting as I did for those two false cues.
Love the Queen Elizabeth solution, Georgia. I also love calling it that.
In Haiti, people have their coffins hanging from the ceiling, and bring them down from time to. time to decorate them. I think this is very healthy, because again it accepts that death is integral to life and you have some agency in what it will look like for you.
I think the woman you describe, Joyce, had about the best death I could imagine. I love the idea that one can have volition in the timing of one's exit. Having said that, my best friend wants to be eaten by a mountain lion! We would like to die at the same time, being close friends neither wants to outlive the other, but a) I don't want to be eaten by a mountain lion and b) a mountain lion couldn't eat us both at the same time. I always use the phrase "if I get hit by a bus," so we have a good time imagining the scenario in which I get hit by a bus and she gets eaten by a mountain lion simultaneously.
Hey Joyce, I have a suggestion. This worked for me and it might work for you. I followed the Queen Elizabeth model. She put all affairs in order, to the tiny detail, in writing. End of life, the funeral, communications with world authorities, and all decisions within her power.
Then she went back to work--her mission, her life. She got on with living every day fully.
It took me more than a day but not more than three months to put affairs in order, sell or give away anything I would never need or use in my final years or days.
You can leave a legacy or you can leave a mess.
Right now is the best time to decide--legacy or mess, and then write it in a single note book you show the people you've named in your will. Paper and pen. Don't even think anyone is going to know your passwords or catalogue of your digital world. Write it all down.
If I must die, I'd like for it to be in the far future. If it needs to be sooner than that, I also would love to get some affairs in order. I guess that's sort of what I'm working on now- getting those affairs in order. I hope I have many decades for this; I can do a really great job if I have even longer.
Thank you for this Joyce. So much resonates with me. I've always loved the idea that the universe (and all things) are a form of consciousness, and the idea that the "process of evolution is entwined with the process of love" makes sense to me. I've also felt, as you write here that "after this conversation ends, there will be a different conversation in a different place with different beings." I had that conversation with a friend who was dying recently, and she believed that also, that after the death transformation takes place our embodied consciousness begins a new adventure. Part of the enlightenment process, perhaps, which is another way of saying the evolutionary process. I love the idea about the cliffs having this eons-length timespan, while the lifespan little insect that buzz around is so short, and yet who's to say that for the cliffs their lifespans seem short while for the tiny insect, theirs seem long. Time too, I believe (as many scientist do as well) is subjective and a kind of illusion. Yes this universe is a wondrous thing and has much to teach us. We are, perhaps, as infinite as it is. After all, we are the creatures who consciously conceive it.
Gosh, Joyce, you make me think.
Our society is too divorced from birth & death, and so we fear what we do not know. As you die, your brain shuts down, reducing awareness, so it is peaceful. Not like the opera, where I love the impossibility of a singer, dying of a lung condition, singing at full volume very articulately, then dying immediately.
There is a Scots saying "enjoy your life, because you are a long time dead".
It's a tricky one to pull that off.
I want to be buried in a little graveyard near my house with a lovely view of the mountain. It has lots of little solar lights so it looks sweet and friendly. Put me in a burlap bag so the critters can make use of me....
Twice in my life so far (I’m far from young) I’ve expected to die imminently. Once was many years ago, mountain climbing, when I was trapped overnight by a snowstorm without decent shelter. Each winter my feet remind me of the frostbite. The second time was in 2003, when I thought I was having a fatal stroke. I was alone in the house, and my only regret was that my husband would come home and find me already gone.
Both times I experienced a kind of peaceful acceptance. “It’s time,” I remember thinking. “All right.”
I hope that when it really is “time,” I’ll feel as peacefully accepting as I did for those two false cues.
Love the Queen Elizabeth solution, Georgia. I also love calling it that.
In Haiti, people have their coffins hanging from the ceiling, and bring them down from time to. time to decorate them. I think this is very healthy, because again it accepts that death is integral to life and you have some agency in what it will look like for you.
I think the woman you describe, Joyce, had about the best death I could imagine. I love the idea that one can have volition in the timing of one's exit. Having said that, my best friend wants to be eaten by a mountain lion! We would like to die at the same time, being close friends neither wants to outlive the other, but a) I don't want to be eaten by a mountain lion and b) a mountain lion couldn't eat us both at the same time. I always use the phrase "if I get hit by a bus," so we have a good time imagining the scenario in which I get hit by a bus and she gets eaten by a mountain lion simultaneously.
Hey Joyce, I have a suggestion. This worked for me and it might work for you. I followed the Queen Elizabeth model. She put all affairs in order, to the tiny detail, in writing. End of life, the funeral, communications with world authorities, and all decisions within her power.
Then she went back to work--her mission, her life. She got on with living every day fully.
It took me more than a day but not more than three months to put affairs in order, sell or give away anything I would never need or use in my final years or days.
You can leave a legacy or you can leave a mess.
Right now is the best time to decide--legacy or mess, and then write it in a single note book you show the people you've named in your will. Paper and pen. Don't even think anyone is going to know your passwords or catalogue of your digital world. Write it all down.
Like many I would like to die in my sleep, as like many I feel it would be the less stressful way to pass away, at home in my own bed like my dad did.
If I must die, I'd like for it to be in the far future. If it needs to be sooner than that, I also would love to get some affairs in order. I guess that's sort of what I'm working on now- getting those affairs in order. I hope I have many decades for this; I can do a really great job if I have even longer.
Thank you for this Joyce. So much resonates with me. I've always loved the idea that the universe (and all things) are a form of consciousness, and the idea that the "process of evolution is entwined with the process of love" makes sense to me. I've also felt, as you write here that "after this conversation ends, there will be a different conversation in a different place with different beings." I had that conversation with a friend who was dying recently, and she believed that also, that after the death transformation takes place our embodied consciousness begins a new adventure. Part of the enlightenment process, perhaps, which is another way of saying the evolutionary process. I love the idea about the cliffs having this eons-length timespan, while the lifespan little insect that buzz around is so short, and yet who's to say that for the cliffs their lifespans seem short while for the tiny insect, theirs seem long. Time too, I believe (as many scientist do as well) is subjective and a kind of illusion. Yes this universe is a wondrous thing and has much to teach us. We are, perhaps, as infinite as it is. After all, we are the creatures who consciously conceive it.