Tag: Meditation

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Dying old, dying young

– death and ageism in the times of Greek myth and coronavirus

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The loss of life from the spread of coronavirus has been on an enormous scale. In the USA more Americans have now died from COVID-19 than in the entire Vietnam war.

Notwithstanding some poignant and passionate speeches by particular individuals (notably New York Governor Andrew Cuomo), much of the discourse has focused on the economic, political and policy division, rather than grief for the victims.

This broadly sanguine response might be due to perceptions that it is mostly older people dying from coronavirus, although experts warn younger people can die too. Witness the relief at new reports that children under 10 have not accounted for a single transmission of the virus. The deaths of older people have been comparatively discounted, not the least because many were socially isolated even before the pandemic.

The Greeks of antiquity reflected on the death of the young and the old in some very creative mythical narratives. Greek myth reflects on and reminds us of some of the less attractive characteristics of human life and society, such as sickness, old age, death and war. In the ancient Greek world this made it harder to put old age and death into a corner and forget about it, which we tend to do.

Choosing when

Achilles, the hero of Homer’s Iliad, actually has a choice in the timing of his life and death.

He can have a long life without heroic glory, back on the farm, or he can have a short life with undying fame and renown from his fighting at Troy. The fact that he chooses the latter makes him different from ordinary people like us.

Achilles’ heroism is fundamentally linked to his own personal choice of an early death. But it also means his desperate mother, the goddess Thetis, will have to mourn him eternally after seeing him for such a short time in life. Such is the pain for the loss of a child in war.

A play by the master Athenian dramatist Euripides is even more focused on young and old death. The play Alcestis was produced in Athens in 438 BC, making it the earliest surviving Euripidean play (about ten years before the plague at Athens).

In the play, the king of Thessaly – an appallingly self-interested person called Admetus – has previously done the god Apollo a favour, and so Apollo does Admetus a favour in return. He arranges for him to extend his life and avoid death in the short term, if he can find someone to take his place and die in his stead.

Admetus immediately asks his father or mother to die for him, based on the assumption that they are old and will presumably die soon anyway. But the father, Pheres, and his wife turn down Admetus, and so he has to prevail on his own wife, Alcestis, to die for him, which she agrees to do.

The story of the play is based around the day of her death and descent to the Underworld, with some rather comic twists and turns along the way. Death (Greek Thanatos) is a character in the play, and he is delighted to have a young victim, in Alcestis, rather than an old one. “They who die young yield me a greater prize,” he says.

The light of day

There is a particularly spiteful encounter between Admetus and his father on the subject of young and old death:

Admetus:

Yet it would have been a beautiful deed for you to die for your son, and short indeed was the time left for you to live. My wife and I would have lived out our lives, and I should not now be here alone lamenting my misery.

Father:

I indeed begot you, and bred you up to be lord of this land, but I am not bound to die for you. It is not a law of our ancestors or of Hellas that fathers should die for their children! … You love to look upon the light of day – do you think your father hates it? I tell myself that we are a long time underground and that life is short, but sweet.

The Alcestis of Euripides, and other Greek myths, remind us, should we ever forget, that love of looking upon the light of day is a characteristic of human existence, both for the young and the very old.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Some Ways That I’m O.K. Dying

By Mike Birbiglia

This is the first time I have spent long stretches imagining my own death. Usually, the death pass is a perfect thirty-yard spiral. This death daydream takes place in a blinding blizzard in a game that I lose. In this one, I imagine being sick for a while and then developing a hacking cough and then getting pneumonia and then dying. This is an awful death simulation.

I feel like I am O.K. with some versions of my own death. Like, maybe I go for a nice long walk, then I have dinner with my wife and daughter, maybe a phone call with an old college friend, and then a meteor hits the earth. Sign me up for that death. Or maybe this: I take a guitar lesson with Paul Simon. He teaches me “The Boxer” and then, for no justifiable reason, I play the song perfectly—like, better than Simon & Garfunkel in Central Park in ’81—and after I play the final note Paul looks over at me and says, “That was really good, Mike.” And then the building explodes. So obviously, in that scenario, we both die instantly and the headline reads, “Paul Simon and Unknown Comedian Die After Perfect Jam Session.”

There is one last death scenario I’d be O.K. with. To recap, so far it’s:

1. Dinner with my family and then a meteor.

2. Simon & Birbiglia followed by explosion.

The third and final death scenario I’m O.K. with is my wife and daughter and I go to the beach and have a bonfire, which is prepared by bonfire professionals who make sure it’s not too hot but perfect for s’mores. And we make s’mores—no, wait, that’s after we make a bonfire pizza, with dough flown in from Frank Pepe’s, in New Haven. So we do pizza then s’mores and then my wife leans over to me—privately, because our daughter is only five—and she says, “If anything ever happened to you, I want you to know that we would be O.K. and that you’ve given us more than we could hope for in three lifetimes. So, God forbid anything happens—we will be fine.”

And then I say, “I love you both.”

And I walk into the water and am eaten by a shark. Quickly. The key there is “quickly.” And the headline reads, “Unknown Comedian Killed by Shark After He Kills with Thousands of Audience Members.”

Those are the ways I’m O.K. dying. But, these days, it’s much grimmer than that. It’s hacking coughs and scorching fevers and ventilators and intubations and people sharing their final words with their families through a bad connection on a cell phone.

So my only remaining hope in this terrible simulation is that, if I find myself in a hospital, hooked up to a ventilator that is about to be taken from me—that I will be aided by an adequate amount of medical delirium to actually believe that the last thing I see is Paul Simon, leaning over to say, “Mike, you played that final note perfectly.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Embracing Life in a Time of Death

By Molly Jong-Fast

Some people have recently described the air in New York City as heavy. I don’t think that’s exactly right. The air has a weird crackliness to it. There’s something about living in a place that has experienced so much death in such a short period of time that changes the physics of a place. There is an electricity to the air, a nervousness that seems to permeate everything, As well it should.

As I write this essay 12,199 people have died of coronavirus in my city. The actual numbers are probably higher. Who knows what the real toll is, what with nursing homes refusing to disclose numbers and many people dying without ever getting a test or getting to a hospital? And people are dying here in surreal ways, the way they die in movies. The husband of a friend is found dead in his car. My friend’s father in law is found dead watching television in his house; he had been like that for three days. I know a handful of people who have died., Mostly parents of friends. They are not young, but in a normal world they would have another decade or two. Instead, they have been taken by coronavirus in what seems like a blink of an eye.

As coronavirus rages, New York City is quickly eclipsing Wuhan (3,869, based on official numbers, at least) and Lombardy region of Italy, which includes Milan (11,851) and any other city on earth in terms of recorded deaths. We are the epicenter of the epicenter. We are the ground zero of death.

And yet, outside my window are flowers, spring in empty Manhattan continues unabated. The flowers don’t care that no one is there to witness them bloom. The streets continue to be empty except for the occasional ambulance. In my neighborhood, the ambulances do this little beeping thing now, not a full siren anymore, and perhaps they don’t need a full siren since there is no traffic. The stores are all closed except a small gourmet food store and a pharmacy which is selling both pandemic supplies (masks, and pulse oximeters) and fancy Manhattanite supplies (expensive candles and skin creams). Life here is both terrifying and oddly mundane. Most of my day is spent inside; occasionally I’ll go for a walk. I see my one friend from six feet away. I watch a lot of television. I write my pieces. My mother and stepfather continue in their apartment alone, 20 blocks away, but I haven’t seen them in five weeks. My in-laws occasionally call in a panic, desperate for us to leave to the city.

But what they don’t understand, what they can never understand is that New York is not a habit; it’s an addiction. To New Yorkers, New York isn’t something you casually use and then abandon when you realize it could be fatal. I always knew New York was fatal it’s just fatal in a slightly different way now. When I grew up here in the 1980’s, I was only mugged once. Most of my friends were mugged multiple times–it was kind of what happened here. Right now, it’s not the crime that kills you. In fact crime in New York is down 22 percent. Right now it’s this mysterious, dangerous virus that kills. But the idea that New York can be dangerous, and bad for your health, that’s always been part of its sometimes explicable charm.

And life here can still feel oddly normal. Sometimes, if I close my eyes, everything can seem for a minute or two, like it was before March. But then there’s the silence — the lack of traffic, the lack of construction, the lack of life– and I remember it’s mid-April and we have been in lockdown for more than a month now.

The feeling here is that things are getting better, that our curve is flattening, I talked to a doctor friend who confirmed this and said cheerfully that they were “no longer going on bed checks and finding dead bodies.” There’s a cautious optimism in New York City; it’s quiet but you can feel it percolating, just under the surface. Yes, things are getting a bit better here, people are no longer dying in their cars as much. Hospitals no longer have lines around the block outside of them.

On Saturday, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that 540 people had died the day before due to coronavirus, less than the 630 the day before. A newscaster on NY1 just said, moments ago, that we are “trending in the right direction.” Yes, this is better than previous days but it doesn’t feel better. We’re supposed to be celebrating the fact that fewer people are dying here every day, but a lot of people are still dying every day.

New York is used to tragedy. We New Yorkers have survived AIDS, 9/11 and catastrophic hurricanes. And, yes, we will survive coronavirus. But not without some very profound scars.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Dreams and other signs bring comfort to grieving people

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We’ve all had dreams. Some people dream vividly and often, some not as often. And there is the problem of forgetting the dream when you wake up, or shortly thereafter. I usually try to make a note to myself right away or when the dream wakes me up. I keep a bedside notebook for ideas, etc. Otherwise they are just forgotten.

And there are many types of dreams — happy and pleasant, wishful thinking, nightmares, anxiety dreams such as being lost, and, most difficult of all, distorted or mixed up dreams with the characters and events all combined and scrambled. There are many types of dream analysis, as well: ways to try to interpret the meaning of dreams. And we also have our own ideas about what a dream means.

But there is a special type of dream in grief, in which your loved one appears as if in life.

This can be very comforting. You are lucky to get one of these once in a while. I’ve had a few over the years and cherish them. They create a happy sensation, even after I wake. One vivid one I had a year or so ago was just a normal scene with my beloved Baheej’s arms around me. That was nice. A blessing. He appears in dreams occasionally but not very often.

There are lots of anxiety dreams in grief. Usually along the lines of being left alone, abandoned or other stressful scenes. Or danger where you can’t save the other. Or you can’t find him or her.

So dreams are a mixed bag. And they are different from “signs,” which are almost always pleasant and encouraging in my experience — and among people who’ve talked to me about signs. They are happenings/messages that serve as communication from lost loved ones, easily recognized by the bereaved, and very comforting.

The problem with signs is most people, unless it’s happened to them, think it’s just a person’s imagination, wishful thinking, or some fantasy because of grief. Or they think the sign is just a coincidence. But I continue to believe signs are a method of communication from the lost loved one. It’s a reassurance that they are still around and watching out for you.

Some people even experience a visual visit from a spirit, but this has never happened to me. It did happen to my sister and a couple of friends. I always hope my dear Baheej may appear someday, but not so far.

A while back, I got an email from a reader who described a sign he and his wife got from the adult son they lost. It was graphic and quite clear to them. How nice.

Last night I was talking with a close friend who had a huge sign from her father-in-law who died a few days ago. She went into the city alone to see a big art exhibit, and felt she was doing it not only because of her personal interest, but also in memory of her father-in-law, who loved art and would have enjoyed this exhibit.

Well, as she was walking around the gallery, there was a couple near her. From the back, the man looked like her father-in-law and seemed to be dressed like him. He turned around and looked just like him, but 10 years younger. He had on the same clothing, shirt and vest, of the same brand and style her father-in-law always wore.

My friend was surprised so she approached the couple and told them. They said to her, “Of course, he’s probably here with you now.” Wow. So I immediately said, “That’s a sign.”

This is how it happens, totally unexpected but clear as a bell.

My friend told me, “I think you have to be very open to recognize these signs when they happen.” I agree with her.

I’ve written about signs with lots of examples in earlier columns, so won’t repeat those. But here are a couple more examples:

Once I was at a swap shop in New Hampshire and I picked up (free) two darling flower watercolor drawings. Each is about 8 inches square, with matching frames. They now hanging in my dining room. One is the July water lily. It’s my husband Baheej’s favorite flower and his birthday month. The other is the December rose, my father’s birthday month. The two most important men in my life. My brother Nic had died shortly before. I expect to find the Nic’s April flower one of these days — my brother’s birthday month, and it’s also my mother’s.

Another sign is a feather. It’s widely thought to be a sign from a lost child or infant and, I think, could also be from someone young in spirit. Baheej was one of the latter; he had a really young joy of life. Well, in the first month or two after his death, I found many feathers around the yard, on the patio, even one in the house. My cats never go outside, so it wasn’t them. And I don’t have any pet birds.

I’ve only found one feather ever since. However, a friend who lost an infant found many, many feathers. Signs as far as I’m concerned.

So the point is: There are some extrasensory phenomena that happen in grief, chief among them dreams and signs. I think everyone agrees we all have dreams. So if you are lucky enough to have pleasant dreams of your lost loved one, whether spouse, partner, friend, child, parent or other, you are very fortunate.

Life is so complicated. And so is death. We just need to be as open as possible. Comfort comes in many forms.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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He Was Already Sick.

Was His Life Worth Less Than Yours?

With the coronavirus upon us, Americans now must confront death up close.

By Elizabeth Bruenig

Before this novel coronavirus ever reached American shores, I heard dark tones of reassurance. Don’t worry, people said. It kills only the old and the sick. The thought, a temporary (and misleading) escape from rising panic, crossed my mind, and surfaced in conversation. When I spoke last week to Jessica Smietana, a 30-year-old doctoral student in French literature at New York University, she admitted the thought had occurred to her, too. “I remember saying, ‘Well, you know, when it’s reaching people that aren’t in vulnerable populations, that’s when I’ll worry about it.’”

And then, like many of our unsavory national tendencies, the sentiment took an exaggerated, grotesque form in the statements of President Trump. “We cannot let the cure be worse than the problem itself,” he tweeted in all-capital letters, signaling that he might urge states to lift protective restrictions on gatherings and businesses rather than continue to incur economic costs. In that calculus, the lives of the sick and dying became a mere data point in an actuarial account of the coronavirus pandemic’s economic impact. Mr. Trump has since changed his view, saying, “the economy is number two on my list. First, I want to save a lot of lives.”

Rightfully so. Such an easy dismissal of the sick and elderly is a ghastly indictment of one of our most cowardly cultural reflexes: an abandonment of the dying as a means of wishing away death.

It’s a weakness only the lucky can long afford, and in the midst of this pandemic, their numbers are swiftly shrinking. As coronavirus cases in the United States multiplied, Ms. Smietana, like many of us, found reason to reconsider her initial response. Her 63-year-old father, Bruce Smietana, began chemotherapy treatment for early-stage pancreatic cancer last month. “I realized what a terrible attitude this is,” she told me. “We shouldn’t think of that as an acceptable outcome — ‘Well, all these people were going to die soon enough.’”

In America, Ann Neumann writes in “The Good Death,” “death has been put off and professionalized to the point where we no longer have to dirty our hands with it.” But with the coronavirus, death has drawn too near to ignore. And this is a good thing. The dying, their value and their particular wisdom should never have been banished from our common life in the first place.

The physicians who accompany people as they face death have a unique perspective on mortality, perhaps thanks to the example of their remarkable patients. I spoke to Christopher D. Landry, a postgraduate trainee in the Columbia University psychiatry department, last month, during his emergency medicine rotation. “A lot of young people feel that life in the shadow of death is no life at all,” Dr. Landry said. “But everybody approaches that shadow eventually. And then, even people who were previously young and healthy learn to appreciate the many good things in life that they’re still able to have.”

The prospect of death also prompts a philosophical evaluation of life. These reckonings can bring the blur of ordinary life into sharp and brilliant focus.

At 19, Ms. Smietana lost her mother, and later, her older sister. From that point on, her family consisted of herself and her father, a stoic and steadfast garbage man who worked for the city of Chicago for some 30 years. Ms. Smietana told me that she had always been close with her father, but that their relationship became even more vital after the loss of her sister and mother. “That’s made this whole situation a little more intense,” she said.

The threat of the coronavirus kept Ms. Smietana from being with her ailing father.

Her father’s battle with a miserable disease has led her to contemplate justice, or the lack of it. He had already lost so much. Because the chemotherapy weakened his immune system, she wasn’t permitted to visit him during his treatment. He would be alone. As we spoke, her voice thinned with tears. “It feels tremendously unjust,” she said.

What Ms. Smietana saw was that the presumption of fulfillment — that the elderly have lived life, and can ask little more from it — is mistaken. As much as any young person can hope to feel more love, happiness, curiosity, satisfaction in the balance of life, so can the aged and the ill. In fact, they may experience those good things in life even more acutely for recognizing their scarcity.

In that respect, the dying may be more alive than any of us — more awake to the truths that emerge at the end of all things, and more aware of the elements of life that lend existence its meaning.

When I spoke to Mr. Smietana on the telephone, he was recovering from chemotherapy in the midst of a pandemic. But he didn’t ruminate on pain; instead, he talked about gratitude. He told me about Jessica, how she would be the first doctor in the family. He looked forward to her graduation, and to all of the other things he had no doubt she would accomplish; “she’s an amazing daughter,” he said.

And then he drew a labored breath, still exhausted from his treatment. “I’ve had a relatively great life,” he reflected. “I lost my wife, and I lost one of my daughters. But besides that, I’ve been pretty damn lucky.”

Mr. Smietana died a week later, on a cold Sunday morning in Chicago. He awoke that day with breathing trouble, and passed shortly thereafter. When I spoke with Ms. Smietana, she was still thinking about justice, or the lack of it. “Coronavirus is the reason I didn’t get to see my dad during what turned out to be the last week of his life,” she said. “It was the right thing to do. But I will regret it forever.”

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Getting Familiar with Life’s Certainty: The D-Word

“I’m gonna die, you’re gonna die. So is everyone we’ve ever loved and hated. And that’s OK.”

By Molly Marco

When I thought about what to write for my End Well blog post, I struggled to think of something different than what I submitted last year. The story I share in last year’s piece is one I’ve now told a million times. I know it well — where to put the emphasis (“Ever onward!”) and what will get the audience’s applause. Conversely, I know what parts of my story people may want to deny or avoid: Death. Dying. Fears and deficits that come with a brain cancer diagnosis.

In July 2016, my brain tumor was discovered after I fainted off a bar stool at a downtown Detroit coffee shop. Turns out, it wasn’t just a simple faint: I had a grade 3 anaplastic astrocytoma. A grade 3 astrocytoma is a junior glioblastoma (or, more accurately, a glioblastoma is a grade 4 astrocytoma). It is incurable and considered a terminal diagnosis, though many patients prefer to call it a chronic illness. That doesn’t mean I’m dying tomorrow — unless, as my neuro-oncologist once told me, I get hit by a car or something like that — it just means we don’t have a fix.

We expect my tumor to, maybe, charge up and for those rogue astrocytes to return — either as anaplastic astrocytoma again, or GBM. One or the other, no lesser. I won’t get better, we just hope that we can hold it off as long as possible before its encore performance. Worse than reoccurrence or GBM? There’s not really anything worse. It’s a turd sandwich.

Though come to think of it, there is worse. Worse is denying that reoccurrence is possible. Worse is convincing myself that I am cured and “cancer-free” (no brain cancer patient should ever be told that falsity) only to crumble and fall to pieces when new growth appears on a future MRI.

After Molly finished her chemotherapy, she got this tattoo. | Memento Mori: Remember you must die. Amor Fati: Love your fate

Worse is not mentally planning for future treatment, including palliative and end-of-life care. When to demand my off-switch to be clicked, so my family isn’t left making the difficult choice for me.

There may come a time when I can’t write and I can’t speak, so I plan to make these decisions while I’m still in control of my think-box.

Losing my mom last year and my aunt recently brings certain things to the forefront of my now with urgency: Death is guaranteed. Death will happen. I want to be ready. Not because I’m morbid or depressed, but the opposite of that. The thought of leaving this world — everyone and everything I love — scares me. The thought of the act of dying scares me more than death itself, to be honest. I need to be on better terms with death and dying.

If death is anything like falling off a barstool and passing out, I can handle that. The thought of an eternal afterlife I can’t even comprehend, but that sounds cool, too. But dying in pain and afraid? That is what I fear. I don’t want that. However, I choose to talk about it so I am as familiar with death and dying as I am with my own name. It’s not because I crave death, it’s because I love being alive with every fiber of my being. I love life so much.

And if we’re honest with ourselves, we can admit that in loving life — truly loving life — we can accept death as a thing we all do. There should be no stigma attached to something absolutely guaranteed from the moment we come into existence: I’m gonna die, you’re gonna die. So is everyone we’ve ever loved and hated. WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE. That’s that. And that’s OK.

Last year, I suggested we live our best lives and live them right now. This year? Live our best lives, live them right now, because one day — you are going to die. Learn to let it be OK. And be ready.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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I’m Going to Die.

I May as Well Be Cheerful About It.

By Mary Pipher

While death is inevitable, our attitude about it is not.

Generally, I don’t think about death during the day. My schedule is full, and I focus on what is right before my eyes. It’s usually only when I go to funerals that I reflect upon deaths past, present and future; most of the time I think about life. Still, about once a month I wake in the night and know with absolute clarity that I will soon be gone.

I have always felt my own finitude. My father had his first stroke at 45 and died at 54. My mother died of diabetes at 74. I am 72. I would like to attend my last grandchild’s high school graduation and meet at least one great-grandchild. However, with my family history, that is unlikely. Now, with the news filled with stories of the coronavirus, I am reminded of the many random diseases that can strike suddenly and lethally.

Like almost all my peers, I want to die young as late as possible. I don’t want to live beyond my energy level. I don’t want to suffer dementia or lie helpless in a hospital. I want to die while I still believe that others love me and that I am useful.

I have done what I can to prepare for my death. I have a will, a health care proxy and medical directives. I’ve had many conversations with my family and my doctor about end-of-life decisions. My mnemonic device for all of them is, “If in doubt, snuff me out.”

While death is inevitable, our attitudes about it are not. We can be sanguine or gloomy, solicitous of others or self-absorbed. We can approach our deaths with fear and resistance or with curiosity and a sense of mission.

Facing death offers us an opportunity to work with everything we have within us and everything we know about the world. If we have been resilient most of our lives, most likely we will cope well with our own dying. It is frightening, of course, but it is our last chance to be a role model, even a hero.

I’d like to face death with the courage of my grandmother. The last time I visited her, she was recently widowed and dying from leukemia. She lay in bed in her small home in eastern Colorado. I could see she was in pain and could barely move, but when I asked about her health, she replied: “Let’s talk about you. How is college going this year?”

When I complimented her on her courage, she said simply, “I am going to be in pain and die soon no matter how I behave, so I might as well be cheerful.”

By the time we are in our 70s, we are likely to have witnessed many people dying. I’ve seen my parents and my husband’s parents die “bad deaths” with months of suffering and too much medical intervention, and I’ve witnessed peaceful deaths in rooms filled with love. Most of us boomers know how to behave at a bedside and have a sense of how we want to act when it’s our turn to be the one in bed.

We also have had decades of observing the rituals of death — hospitals and hospice, funerals, burials and the communal meals afterward. From these experiences, we have learned what we do and don’t want when it’s our turn. We may continue some of these traditions, but we will also design our own. Some of my friends with terminal illnesses have hosted goodbye parties in parks or at our local blues bar. Wakes with dancing, music and storytelling are back in style. Many of us want pine box coffins, green burials or cremations with our ashes tossed in beautiful places.

What happens after death is a popular topic among people I know. Opinions range from, “We turn into dirt,” to “I will see the face of God.” My writer friends want heaven to have a good library. One friend believes we will return to the place we were before we were born.

Jean Nordhaus wrote, “The dead are all around us / feathering the air with their wings.” A therapist who lost her young, cello-playing husband told me she feels his presence and knows they are still deeply connected in spirit. She finds that many people are afraid to die because they have no language for the numinous; however, she is certain that neither life nor relationships end with death.

I feel death may not be as big a change as we suppose. Rather, it might be like crossing a river.

I like to think that my relatives and friends will be waiting for me on the other side. I like to imagine grassy banks and flower-filled pastures shining in the sun. I like to think a lot of things, but I don’t know for sure.

I am not a particularly mystical person, but I have had mystifying experiences. When my Aunt Grace died, I drove to the Ozarks for her funeral. Her little house was surrounded by pink surprise lilies — what my cousins called “naked ladies.” The next spring, even though I had not planted them and they had never come up before, surprise lilies popped up in my garden. The year after that they popped up again but in different places. I concluded that Aunt Grace was greeting me. If I wanted to send a message after death, I would do it with flowers, too.

I love the world but I cannot stay. Death is democratic and we will all participate in its enactment. I will miss the beauty all around me. I have taken so much pleasure in the natural world, in people and books, in music and art, in cups of coffee and lolling cats. If I knew that I had a month left to live, I wouldn’t spend my time much differently than I do now.

All of my life I have loved snow.

When I was a girl in the 1950s, snow fell often in the long winters of western Nebraska. I remember one winter when, after the streets were plowed, mountains of snow 10 feet tall stood in the middle of the streets. As a young mother, my favorite days were snow days when our family could stay home and play board games. I would make soup and popcorn. I relished taking my children outside to do the things that I had done in the snow as a girl. I loved falling asleep with my family safe on a blizzardy night when the streets were impassable and a blanket of peace covered our town.

Now, snow has become a profoundly spiritual experience. When it snows, I sit by my window and watch it fall. I go deep into its purity and softness.

Snow falls inside and outside of me. It settles my brain and calms my body.

I hope death feels like watching the snow grow thicker and thicker. Doctors call dying of a morphine overdose being “snowed.” I would not mind that at all. I would like to disappear in a whiteout.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!