Words about dying and not dying

I went to bed last night thinking about my granddaughter who is at an age when a kid likes things to be cut and dried. At least that was what I have observed from the many four-year old’s I’ve known.

Right now, she seems interested in death. She asked me if I would die. She knows her other Grandmother died. The cat Penny died. She even made-up song about “Dieing Dead”. So I told her everyone dies but usually not until they are old.

She asked me, “Why are you old Nana?”

“I’m old because I’ve lived a long time.”

“Because you haven’t died?”

This is why I love four-year-olds. They will address the elephant in the room. They will even play with that elephant.

In the spirit of playing with the dead elephant in the room, I came up with the following list of reasons people die, maybe not for a four-year-old but to just put things in perspective for myself.

Reasons people die:

• Sometimes because they’re old and their body is just worn out,
• Sometimes because they’ve been really, really sick and their body can’t work any more.
• Sometimes, even though their bodies might keep going a long time, they need more and more medicine and care and even if they have those things most days it still just hurts too much, in their body and in their emotions and they want to die.
• Sometimes because they think they’ve done everything that they could in their life and there isn’t much more and no one they love to do it with, and that is harder for them than not dying. This happens too often even though sometimes they’re still young and don’t know that things are always changing. And if they can just hold, on for bit more things can change for them too.
• Sometimes it’s an accident that is nobody’s fault.
• Sometimes there’s a war or a disaster and they can’t get to someplace safe. (Sometimes the war and the disaster happen in their own house.)
• Sometimes it’s because they are reckless and do dangerous things, or angry things, or stupid things.
• Everyone dies. But it is important to remember, if you are reading this list, you are alive and you have breath in your body. Even if it catches as you inhale. Feel it.  Even if you say to yourself, “this is a sad breath” or “this is a difficult breath”. You can Be Present. It is a wonderful thing peculiar to being alive.

I think about people I have loved who have died. I can remember the sound of their voice and how it felt when they walked beside me, so clearly, I can talk to them and feel comforted.

The hardest part of loving some one who has died is missing them. So, thinking about how some might suffer when I die makes me sad. But when I think about those I’ve loved and when I remember them and experience that feeling of closeness, I can hope the same for any who might miss me.

I try to share laughter as much and as often as I can with everyone so they will remember that sound more than anything else. As for the rest, not my problem.

This is how I think of my death on a good day:

I enjoy naps. I really feel good just lying down and falling asleep in the middle of the day. And I’m never scared about bad dreams because everyday my nap comes with a soft sort of dream that is in all my favourite colours. During these naps I don’t know what is going on in the world around me at all, and when I wake up, I feel happy.

I have no reason to think that my death will be any different though I don’t really think I will wake up in a different place. But maybe… And perhaps I’ll wake up to the news of my death (?!) and then chose to ignore it and go back to sleep.

I hope my last thought won’t be that others will grieve greatly. Maybe if they read this they will realize they shouldn’t.

My death won’t be for a while. Yay! So there’s time to work on not suffering in life, even if it sometimes hurts, which sounds crazy, but there you have it. Work on it. Right now. As they say in Zen “don’t waste time”.