At 47, I’ve been contemplating mortality more frequently. The reality that it truly occurs. To all of us. It’s such a fascinating subject that we seldom address straightforwardly (even on this platform, where everything is open for discussion, it’s been two years since the last time, and five years before that). And what transpires after death? Of course, no one is certain, but do you have notions/guesses/beliefs?
As I lie down to sleep at night, I sometimes ponder, in a deep sense, the permanence of death — it takes a moment to sink in and then BANG! — and I suddenly become anxious and shift the topic to fruit salad. Or intensely focus on necklaces to determine my preferred styles. Or wonder whether yogurt or applesauce serves as a better substitute when short on eggs while baking.
Insert any number of everyday diversions to avoid realizing that death, as my cherished dad says, “happens to the best of us.”
Do you do likewise? Some years back, when I inquired about ppl’s hobbies, a reader amusingly replied, “existential dread.” It made me chuckle back then, yet now I resonate deeply.
***
After my friend passed this summer, he physically departed, yet in my mind, and of course in his children’s minds, he remains so present that he sometimes seems to be in the room, sporting his beanie and suggesting we head to the diner. Intellectually, I recognize his absence, yet he’s vividly alive in our thoughts — how do you reconcile that? This sensation harkens back to the late poet Andrea Gilbert’s love letter to their spouse: “My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. Upon leaving my body, I didn’t depart. That light-filled portal wasn’t a means to elsewhere, but to here. I am more here than ever before. I am closer to you than I ever imagined. So close you overlook me while wondering where I am. It’s okay. I know that being human involves being farsighted. But feel me now, moving through your heart, touching the tender walls of your living. Why did no one reveal that to die is to reincarnate in the hearts of those we love while they still breathe? Ask me the height of heaven, and I will answer, ‘How tall are you?’”
Is poetry the means we use to cope with grief, with loss, with the fear of death? Is loving our children and friends a form of resolution? Or should my thoughts turn solely to the yogurt versus applesauce debate?
***
If poetry is the answer, I present Gone From My Sight by Henry van Dyke:
I am standing upon the seashore. A ship, at my side,
spreads her white sails to the moving breeze and sets off
for the blue ocean. She is a vision of beauty and strength.
I stand and watch her until, eventually, she appears as a speck
of white cloud just where the sea and sky converge.
Then, someone beside me remarks, “There, she is gone.”
Gone where?
Gone from my sight. That’s all. She remains just as large in mast,
hull and spar as she was when she left my view.
And, she is just as capable of bearing her load of living cargo to her intended port.
Her diminished size is within me — not in her.
And, at the precise moment someone declares, “There, she is gone,”
other eyes behold her arrival, and other voices
ready to take up the jubilant cry, “Here she comes!”
And that is dying…
Isn’t that calming and beautiful? It brings memories of my grandmother to mind.
Finally, Freddie once tearfully shared that, should he pass first, to remember this line from Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself:
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I adore,
If you seek me again search for me beneath your boot-soles.
You will scarcely recognize who I am or what I signify,
But I shall be good health to you nonetheless,
And filter and fiber your blood.
Failing to find me at first stay encouraged,
Missing me at one spot search another,
I pause somewhere waiting for you.
My heart beats.
Now, please share, what are your thoughts on death? What do you believe occurs afterward, if anything? How do you distract yourself from this essential truth, or, conversely, confront it? I sincerely wish to know.
P.S. More thoughts on loss, including the Dead Dad Club and approaches to discussing death with children. And all you do is commendable.
