...our loves ones truly are ever-present. We may bury their bodies or scatter their ashes, but their spirits are boundless and do not accompany them to the grave. The terms 'letting go' and 'closure' are just empty words. They mean nothing to someone who has suffered through the death of a loved one. Instead of insisting on figuratively burying our dead, why not keep them close to us? Love doesn't die when we do.
I think about dying, but i don't want to die. Not even close. In fact, my problem is the complete opposite. I want to live, I want to escape. I feel trapped and bored and claustrophobic. There's so much to see and so much to do but I somehow still find myself doing nothing at all. I'm still here, in this metaphorical bubble of existence and I can't quite figure out what the hell I'm doing or how to get out of it.
If you were dying...If you were sixteen and dying...If your blood was spilling out of you, calling to them, the creatures of the night, and you knew you were dying...If you saw their pale faces and the gleam of sharp teeth in the moonlight, and you felt your blood spilling warmly over your hands, and you knew beyond any doubt that you were dying...Wouldn’t you say yes?Yes, turn me.Yes, I want to live.Yes... make me one of you.
I glimpsed the man's face with the shine of death on it. They laid him down there in the open. They had brought him there to be close to his death, I understood this also at the same moment. For who would wish to see a companion gasp his last on a jolting cart? We desire to keep the dying and the newly dead close before our eyes so as to give them full meed of pity. Our Lord was brought down to be pitied, on the Cross He was too far away.
.....listening means learning to hear someone's inner world and deepest feelings with far greater attention in order that we don't let our own assumptions get in the way. The dying may speak in images far more akin to dreamland than the world of everyday reality. In order to understand them we have to make adjustments to comprehend a poetic form of expression that is sometimes elusive but actually far more expressive than the world of facts.
Sometimes, I think, that in the mornings when you first wake up, every thing that happened in the previous day rushes through our mind so fast, we, A: Don't realize it. B: Become more tired, die a little inside, and become groggy. Since everyday, we die a little inside we age closer and closer to death. We constantly grow older, and we're constantly dying. Therefore, don't wake me up early, or I'll take it that you wanted to kill me.
To be able to die consciously, we need to prepare for death while we are still living.Only if we live consciously, we can die consciously.Only a meditator is able to die consciously as life is an opportunity to prepare for death. Meditation is a death, a death of the ego. Death is not in opposition of life, death is the finale, the crescendo of life. How we die shows us how we have been living. Death is not an end, death is a new beginning, a new life.
Dying was nothing and he had no picture of it nor fear of it in his mind. But living was a field of grain blowing in the wind on the side of a hill. Living was a hawk in the sky. Living was an earthen jar of water in the dust of the threshing with the grain flailed out and the chaff blowing. Living was a horse between your legs and a carbine under one leg and a hill and a valley and a stream with trees along it and the far side of the valley and the hills beyond.
A study led by the Harvard researcher Nicholas Christakis asked the doctors of almost five hundred terminally ill patients to estimate how long they thought their patient would survive, and then followed the patients. Sixty-three per cent of doctors overestimated survival time. Just seventeen per cent underestimated it. The average estimate was five hundred and thirty per cent too high. And, the better the doctors knew their patients, the more likely they were to err.
There's actually a sort of comfort in the belief that things can only get worse. It gives one an appreciation for the here-and-now, knowing that each and every moment may be as good as its ever going to get. Anyways, I can't imagine living too happy a life - so much to lose. It only figures that the more miserable your life is, the easier it is to lose it. And, when you can lose it at any moment, any time un-enjoyed must be time well spent. (attrib: F.L. Vanderson)
Writing about the indignities of old age: the daunting stairway to the restaurant restroom, the benefits of a wheelchair in airports and its disadvantages at cocktail parties, giving the user what he described as a child's-eye view of the party and a crotch-level view of the guests.Dying is a matter of slapstick and pratfalls. The aging process is not gradual or gentle. It rushes up, pushes you over and runs off laughing. No one should grow old who isn't ready to appear ridiculous.
Part of this experience involves your being able to say to a person who is dying, "You are loved. You are beautiful. You are like a newborn babe, going into another realm. Release now anyone, and everything, that is a burden to you. Release everything and know that you have lived your life to the fullest. There is no judgment on you. Go in peace, put a smile on your face, and release any judgments you hold. Relax, and allow your life to have meaning as you embark on the next phase of your identity.
You’ve thrown down the gauntlet. You’ve brought my wrath down upon your house. Now, to prove that I exist I must kill you. As the child outlives the father, so must the character bury the author. If you are, in fact, my continuing author, then killing you will end my existence as well. Small loss. Such a life, as your puppet, is not worth living.But… If I destroy you and your dreck script, and I still exist… then my existence will be glorious, for I will become my own master.
I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school. They don't teach you how to love somebody. They don't teach you how to be famous. They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor. They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer. They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind. They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying. They don't teach you anything worth knowing.
Her body accepted my brutal seed and took it to swell within, just as the patient earth accepts a falling fruit into its tender soil to cradle and nourish it to grow. Came a time, just springtime last, our infant child pushed through the fragile barrier of her womb. Her legs branched out, just as the wood branches out from these eternal trees around us; but she was not hardy as they. My wife groaned with blood and ceased to breathe. Aye!, a scornful eve that bred the kind of pain only a god can withstand.
