this was going to be a bleary post about cash flow and grading papers
Wednesday 2 April 2008 | 6 cookies in the jar
…but then I looked at all of these and now it’s not.
6 cookies in the jar
post your glowing encomium (or bitter philippic) »
Follow this heated, lively discussion through its very own feed; also, you can pingback or trackback from your own doubtlessly much more interesting site.
Saw them and thought of you, and thought “Well she reads Dooce also, so I don’t need to send on the link.” But you didn’t warn your readers with delicate sensibilities! Or is your readership more, um, elite than hers? Those are amazing photos and stories.
Death and dying overlays and is conatined in birth and living, we’ve only relegated the process and event to the shadows because our culture is obsessed with control, with achievement and with the strange idea that we only die because we have done something wrong or are being rejected by life and the living. The desire to continue “participating in life” as one woman says, is a beautiful desire; it’s only telling that we don’t burn with an awareness of that desire every single moment, that it perhaps only kicks in for many people when participating will soon no longer be an option.
If we get the opportunity to live close to death and close to a holistic consciousness of what a blink-of-an-eye all of “this” is, then maybe we get the rare chance to feel welcomed to the death bed or the moment itself, as we have made a home and natural nest for it on the entire journey. Not that we can say “okay, I’m ready to die, bring it on” but that we might have a chance to say “it’s not what I would prefer, but how surprised can I be, really?”
But this concept is so alien to the general idea of what it means to be “happy” or “functional” or “not morbid” in our culture; shamebound, wrapped in infantile wish fantasies. The distraction and static we have available is endless.
uh…conatined is a great word, but what I meant was contained.
Conatined = when someone throws a rabbit at you? Or an ice cream?
Actually, miss bovary posted the text that hit me hardest–the bit to which I think you’re responding as well:
Abruptly her old fears returned: the familiar sense of worthlessness and sadness. At the end of her life, Barbara told me that she was overwhelmed by these feelings. “All my efforts were in vain,” she said. “It is as though I am being rejected by life itself.”
More than anything I dread some similar reaction on my part–taking death personally, or as some kind of confirmation of my inadequacy/neurosis. I’m grateful that in addition to being convinced that it’s all about meMeME all the time, I somehow also have a sense of fullness and luxuriance (is that a word), an awareness of the world having spilled out everything she had before me, whether I could take it all in or not.
I think this is why I want to die outside, looking (I hope) at the sky instead of at some dumb acoustic-tiled hospital ceiling. To be welcomed.
Taking death personally, yes. Grieving the loss of your Self. Few of the dying interviewed seemed prepared for the loss of Self, the only thing that truly endures throughout one’s life. This woman’s exit interview resonated the deepest because she seemed to zero right in on that (although taking it personally was perhaps not the most enlightened response). I don’t know how I want to die. Suddenly, maybe.
I want dying to take about 90 years, all told.