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These words may be found with my will:
Do not mourn my decease. Rather rejoice!
We should not grieve the end of a game, or a day, or trading an old car for a new one, because we recognise that until the one has passed the next cannot begin.
Just fancy, if people stopped dying. My passing means many things, amongst these are that this corpse is no longer requiring sustenance & shelter from you the community, and that space has been made for the mental and physical growth of fresher minds and stronger bodies, for without this turnover we would stagnate in our own inadequate contentment.
So take my encouragement and turn to enjoy the wealth of experiences and challenge of the continuing future. If you find yourselves wishing back old times, yield to my suggestion that never was any time so opportune as the present; for no amount of wishing can make old times return, and the consequences of any course of events you might wish, in lieu of the present, are imponderable and in any case not necessarily ultimately preferable.
To dwell on a memory of me is to stagnate, to sorrow over the passage of time is to waste what little you have left.
To turn to the future with determination and hope is life's calling – live on.
Peter
For the survivors the death of a loved one is a painful experience. We must make a large adjustment in our image or model of the world and where we fit in it. We suffer a void – a discontinuity – with sharp and uncomfortable edges and which draws itself to our attention.
The absence becomes intrusive in a way that the person previously by their mere presence did not. Thus although a divorcee may feel no longer close to a former spouse, the death of that spouse will be likely, for many, to be almost as painful as if they were still married.
What is difficult is the adjustment which must be made – an unwelcome change to be accommodated. The nature of life is constant change, and if we will live then change we must.
I believe that there is little we can do to prepare ourselves for this. Death comes unexpectedly. Thinking about the possibilities may enable us to address the issues when they arise without too much denial, but I believe it will never be possible to significantly anticipate these changes, nor to foresee how large or difficult they may be either for others or for ourselves.
The best we can hope for, is all we can offer – our tangibly expressed love and care.
We will die ourselves too, and it is of some concern that so many people seem unwilling or unable to contemplate this. It is a much easier task than dealing with the death of a lover or a child.
There are too many stories of people who grasp frantically to life for no better reason than that they are afraid of what may happen if they do not. Medical technology may be able to defer the clinical indicators of death, but is that life? Certainly not always. It is inappropriate here to generalise about the unreasonable expectations which we have of the medical profession (expectations which regrettably health professionals seem often to have of themselves too) but suffice it to say that there are many issues which should come into more frequent consideration than simply whether the technology is available.
Questions of the quality of life, the desire to live (as distinct from the fear of death) and the cost, are issues which are more often denied than acknowledged. Our preparedness to die may determine our ability to address these issues should they arise for us. Our failure to address them may condemn us to a long period of reluctant existence from which we may find no relief except ultimately the course earlier denied. Refusal of treatment, leading quickly to death, must be seen as a very legitimate choice for a person who is ready for it.
For myself, I cannot know how I will perform if these issues arise to confront me – I have not been there nor done that – but I am very confident that I improve my chances by thinking about it and being mentally prepared as much as I can.
My time to live is now. In time too it will be my time to die. It is important that when that time arrives I do not feel that I had failed to take any part of the opportunity to live when I had it.
Regardless of what we believe about an afterlife, we live now – in the present. What we do today should not be chosen thinking tomorrow cannot be denied us. Tomorrow is not a certainty.
If there is something which we must have done before we die, then today is not too soon to be doing it. Many people confronted by their impending demise seek to heal old family scars, to settle long running disputes, to heal their emotional sores.
How sad to have lived a single extra day without the benefit of that healing. The benefit of living at peace with our fellow humans is so much better than the bitterness of a festering grudge preserved that it is difficult for me to understand that anyone would choose to bear the grudge.
But then not everybody will choose to live in the light.
Original: November ‘99
This page is part of “Living in the Light”
found at: http://www.tassie.net.au/~phoban/
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