A new attitude about dying.

A New Attitude about Death?

I’m afraid of heights. I also don’t like flying. I don’t
like big crowds and speaking in front of a group of people terrifies me. Funny how things that are
simple and basic to some people make other
peoples knees turn to jelly.

I don’t know where a lot of these fears came from.
Some of them have just developed over the years.
Some fears we have always harbored. I have always been afraid of death. I never even wanted to think about it until the last few years. It’s a subject that most of us definitely want to avoid. I think sometimes we feel like if we talk about it, it might jinx us and we will end up on the “mortar board” at some funeral home before the days out. Also, it’s a pretty depressing subject to broach. Nobody wants to be depressed, so nobody talks about it. I can’t remember the first time I thought about it, and was scared. I think it was when I was about four years old. Really, it’s true. As a little kid when I should have been thinking about playing cowboys and Indians, I was mulling over the great unknown. It’s been a bummer over the years.

Lately, I have come to the conclusion that by
talking about death maybe we can make it less
scary. I am not as afraid of it as I used to be. It’s not the little kid fear of going to hell and burning up in a blazing fire type fear anymore. It’s more of just an apprehension of something unknown.

It’s a disappointment that I might not be around to see my loved ones complete most of their journey that they have started. It’s the conversations and contact with my family that I don’t want to give up.

The touches and looks of people you love, and who love you. Most of all, it turns out that it’s a selfish thing. Imagine that. I have so many selfish reasons for living that I don’t want to die and give them all up.

I don’t want to give up the beautiful sunny days like the one we had today. The walk I had out back with Ellie…watering dead flowers, drawing chalk on the patio, and her “helping me” fill the bird feeders. I want to Eli play ball again, and Rue turn cartwheels across her yard, and have Evie teach me “Minecraft”.

I want to see Jessy, Auttie, Livy and Chelsea move forward in life too with their families…Livy with school.

I don’t want to give up reading good books. I really don’t. I don’t want to give up watching movies with Paula, and laughing with her….

But, it’s not what we want that we get is it?
There are so many theories and theological thesis
about what happens to us after we die. It’s hard to
pin one down and stick with it. One thing that I can assure you though is that it will be different from any of those ideas we have. I don’t think that man has been given the knowledge, through any type of religion or science of what really happens. What really happened. I have some really different spiritual beliefs and I know most people are not the same as me. I’m really ok with what anyone believes….as long..as we don’t hurt each other with those beliefs!

It may be that we just have peace.

Peace would be nice;

I’ve seen a lot of people going through
unbelievable suffering, or who no longer know who or what they are who would take peace too. There was once a little old lady who was “rooming” next to my Mother a nursing home who was there one day and gone the next. She was in bad shape. She was ready for a rest, and she got it. I think if you could have broken through the wall of her senility she would have told you she was. A lot of times people outlive the desire to live, and when they do that, they are ready for peace. I am sure she wasn’t scared of it. Maybe welcomed it.

As long as we have the desire, then we should
“keep on truckin'” as we used to say back in the
70’s. It’s when we lose the desire, due to things
that are happening to us physically, that it becomes a hardship to keep on keeping on.

So, I guess as my perspective has changed from
that little shivering four year old kid, who shouldn’t have even known what death was, to the more knowledgeable but equally unknowing 75 year old that I am now am. I still have my desire to live and hope that I keep it for a long, long time to come. I hope all of you do also. But, when we are ready for peace, I hope we find it and that it turns out to be better than we ever imagined.