THE INEVITABLE END

A PROPER DEATH

Do not fear death so much but rather the inadequate life.
Bertolt Brecht
Death is as much a part of life as getting up in the morning or going to sleep. It is the end of an amazing cycle we began at birth. If we deny our death, we are running away from life itself. The exciting thing about understanding that death is our inevitable future is that we can then prepare for it and greet it with open arms when our time has come.

We all are on a journey to become ourselves. That is what life is about. Doesn’t it make sense then to fill the moments we have with challenges that excite us? Every morning, we wake up to a new day and another chance to move closer to achieving our dreams. The older we are, the more control we have over how we live our lives. When I was a child, I woke up knowing I had to go to school and let someone else orchestrate the ways I would spend my time. The only hours I owned were during my nap or at night when I could confide secrets to my Teddy Bear.

In my twenties, I awoke thinking, “How will I ever finish all the tasks my boss, my husband and the world have given me?” I spent my days figuring out the proper dress to wear, the right car to drive and the best place to buy groceries. In those years, I was trying to build the kind of person the rules defined for me. That is how we live in our twenties and thirties. We are told the “right“ thing to do and what we should become. We are still in the college of life.

BUT in that wonderful third part of our lives, we have graduated. We alone can decide how to use our time to the best advantage so that we leave no loose ends or unrealized hopes when we leave the earth.

Think of it!!! You walk into an ice cream parlor and your first thought is, “I better not have that ice cream sundae because it will make me fat.”

And then you realize that you are what you are. Fat or thin has nothing to do with this lovely opportunity you have NOW to indulge your sweet tooth and savor hot fudge, cool, milky vanilla ice cream and the tang of salty peanuts. You have given yourself the moment you want. And why not? Had you said to yourself, “I will not eat anything the rest of the day and return tomorrow for that sundae, you would have been burdened with an incomplete action that could very well never happen. All we know we have is now. If you are going to be ready to exit your life, doesn’t it make sense to make that now a gorgeous, interesting and memorable experience?

IF we are preparing for death every day, then it is our job to leave no unfinished business at nightfall. Suppose you and your partner have just had a fight. He didn’t do the dishes and you had a busy day going to meetings and shopping for his office supplies. He was grappling with his arthritis all day and could not bear standing at the sink scrubbing pots. He didn’t want to disturb you by complaining so he did the best he could and hoped you wouldn’t notice.

But you did.

If we are going to be ready for our ending, we need to talk out those differences before we go to bed. We need to have the courage to voice our anger and the wisdom to listen to the other person’s reaction. We need to keep the lines of communication open so that at the end of our day, we have cleared the decks for the next day’s events.

So much of our actions are governed by fear and that very fear will leave us with an unfinished life. If we are wise, we will face our doubts and look at them under the cold clear light of logic. We can say to ourselves, this is MY life and it is important to me. If I want to climb a mountain or learn to ski before I die, now is the time to get it done.

My friend Andrea was hit by a car the day she graduated from college. Her leg had to be amputated and she thought her dreams of becoming a lawyer were over. She resisted her therapies and never left her hospital bed. She was twenty one years old and waiting to die. She refused to eat and she slept most of the day. One day, her nurse asked her what kind of food she missed most. “I’m not hungry anymore,” she said.

“But if you could choose anything in the world to eat, what would it be?” asked the nurse.

Andrea’s eyes filled with tears. ”I miss my mama’s fried chicken,” she said and turned her face into the pillow so the nurse would leave her alone.

The next evening, the nurse brought her a plate of fried chicken with creamy mashed potatoes coved with white gravy and hot, buttered corn on the cob. Andrea sat up in bed and her face glowed. ”That smells so good!” she said and for the first time in weeks she ate everything on that plate…even the apple pie a la mode that nurse had brought her for dessert.

Andrea smiled at the nurse. “Thank you,” she said. “That was so delicious; I forgot I’m a cripple.”

The nurse took her hand and said, “Andrea, being a cripple did not keep you from enjoying that meal, did it? Of course not. And it need not prevent you from enjoying your life. All of us have challenges, some bigger than others. But it is overcoming those challenges that make a life. Not having a leg has nothing to do with whether you can become a lawyer. If you have the brains and the fortitude you can do it. That missing leg isn’t going prevent you from passing the bar. You are the one who will do that. You are the only person who can live your life and you aren’t doing that now. You are just waiting for it to end.”

It was that meal turned the tide for Andrea. It took years of effort, but she learned to walk on a new prosthetic leg, she earned a scholarship to law school, graduated with honors and now she is a lawyer for the inmates on death row. She is showing them that every day they are alive, they are preparing for a satisfying death by giving their every effort to making the life they have a good one. She brings them art supplies and encourages t hem to paint, write and get in touch with who they are. By giving these doomed men and women tools to make their life better, she has readied them for their ending.

What is so frightening about dying, after all? The only thing we know for certain is that the pain we feel will be gone. No one has ever been able to tell us what will happen after we die. Every one has seen people who fight death and leave the world to take care of their unfinished business, the angers they never resolved, the lessons they never bothered to learn. That is not a healthy way to die. The trick is to live each moment, each hour, each day. Fill it with love, excitement and adventure. Listen to the dream you have now and make it happen. You may never get there, but the journey will be well worth your effort. And when your time comes to extinguish the light, you can close your eyes peacefully knowing you lived completely.

I shall not die of a cold. I shall die of having lived.
Willa Cather