As good a day as any other

The most blunt recent reminder came, as is their habit, on my commute to work.

I was preparing to pass a semi truck when the left rear tire blew, sending the road alligator over my windshield, clearing it by about six inches.  Not the kind of experience one tells their mother about.

We are all just a few seconds, or less, from death.  The contemporary experience, and expectation, is of a slow unwinding at some point in our distant aged future.  We'll think about it when we are old; and we rarely think of ourselves as old.

If those are your expectations, I hope your expectations bear themselves out.  If so, you may have the opportunity to work with a death doula to help you manage the public and private processes at play.  Forty-four years old the woman profiled in the linked article hits upon an important insight: neither the Second World War, nor any other event before her birth, did her any direct harm and held no horror for her.  Fear of death had no hold on her before she was born, it will have no hold once she is dead.  Dreading death is more a function ego than rationality.

Sorry Joe Diffie, you can not go on being you, even when you're dead and gone because, well you're gone.  The lyrics of a pop song from the 1990's comes to mind (ironically it is a song about the birth of a child),

You don't have to go home but you can't stay here

Not all of us will be needing the services of a death doula, nursing home, or hospice.  Our own closing time can come suddenly.  We will stroke out without warning, die in a fiery car crash or we may face one of those rare deaths, going down in an aircraft, getting in the way of a bullet, or being torn apart by wild dogs.  If it is our aim to live a virtuous life through even the worse circumstances fate may deliver, without whining, crying, regrets, or pounding of the table, it is best to remember that one day you will die.  Today could be that day.  We should each be prepared to do it well.

Dying may not be our preference.  Avoiding death is a human desire and plays a foundational role in the monotheistic religions and it is the focus of some of our great art.  Death is inevitable, however, and iff dying in this moment is unavoidable, a temper tantrum will not make it any less so.  If I do go out in a car crash, I hope my last words are fitting and not vulgar.  If it comes down to betraying who I am, that scheme of life that I have adopted for myself in exchange for a couple of more years, I hope I stand firm to the rules I have laid out for myself.  If any of us are to avoid those temptations, we must own them, accept that we will meet that moment when we fade to black.

Today is a good day to die, or at least it is as good as any other.  Acceptance of the fact becomes a source of strength, anxiety arises from an attempt to deny it.  Dying becomes another thing to do, like raising children or cleaning the bathroom before the mother in law visits: if it must be done, or it appears as if it must be done, let it be done well.  Circumstances may provide a stay of execution, but there is no reprieve.