Friends,
These testaments on dying are SO moving and open such vistas…that I had to stop reading them.
Tentatively writing at this moment, I feel (like some of you) that I do not wish to die in a hospital bed with family and friends around me. At home would be far preferable, in a clean and quiet room, with beautiful art works on the walls, and my wife with me, and anyone else who felt moved to share the moment. I would choose some very “essential” music, like EJ’s Epitaph piano music, which has associations for me of doing morning movements in a very ethereal space at the Institute. I also have rediscovered a great favorite of mine, “Tehillim” by Steve Reich, which always takes me (at least a little…) out of myself when I hear it, with its setting of magical passages from the Hebrew psalms.
On the other hand, I would be just as happy to die while cutting firewood or walking in the foothills, lying in the grass in spring or sitting by a creek in autumn. I would feel peaceful if I felt that my “bucket list” was not endless–I wish to finish the set of stories I’m working on, to get Parker Dickson’s book published, to donate my entire book collection if possible to an archive, and so on. It is also likely that wherever I stand on these endless tasks and projects–I can let them go and just hopefully leave the least possible amount of “debris” for others to clean up after me.
Unlike Dylan Thomas, I would like to “go gently into that good night,” to feel relaxed and empty of day to day emotions and concerns, to feel cheerful (even if in pain) about greeting death as an old friend and lover. I am recalling an Easter Sunday some years ago when we worked at “karma yoga” all day before a big Easter dinner, and I chose to work in the garden at the Land. It was such an eternal day for me, seemingly endless, timeless, bright and sunny, working alongside others and having my hands in the dirt, whether weeding or digging or planting, gave me a feeling of oneness with all of the material world and a great sense of release from thought and care. I would like to cultivate this oneness and feel myself fade as an individual person or spread into all that is, and then be satisfied to merge with what is larger and encompasses that. The face of the Beloved perhaps will overcome any need I feel to re-enter, repeat, recover, or to “do the right thing” another time around….