D is for Death

Death.

Oh yeah, I'm going there.

 Something about participating in a brand new life (my little Xander, born Christmas Eve) causes me to confront my own mortality.  I've thought more about dying in response to giving birth than I ever did when a loved one died.  Somehow, I'm able to focus only on my grief when I lose someone I love.  It doesn't really impact me with images of the end of my life in the mirror.  But giving birth, spending time with my kids...I find that thoughts of my own approaching death are ever more present.  

Not that I'm terribly morbid.  I'm not currently dying from a deathly illness.  I'm not paranoid that death is around the corner waiting for me.  Rather, I know that it is the one true inevitability of life.  Also, the older I get, the faster time seems to move.  I'm almost 40.  My mother died when she was 56.  I remember, clearly being 14 (the age of my oldest son), and it doesn't feel like that was 24 years ago.  How much faster will the rest of the years pass?

I'm  not necessarily afraid of death.  It's more like the feeling as the roller coaster climbs that first giant hill.  At that point it's too late to change anything but one's perception.  It's impossible to get off the ride.  The choice is to be afraid, or to be excited.  If the ride has been ridden before, the fear is easier to quell.  If it's a brand new ride, the unknown is imminent.  Standing on the ground and watching the ride from a distance is completely different from experiencing it.  Ya know?  

Continuing with the amusement park metaphor; I feel the same way about leaving the amusement park as I feel about leaving this life.  I don't expect anything terrible will happen when I leave.  By the end of the day, I'm hot, exhausted, and overstimulated.  I really am ready to go home, take a shower, drink a nice cold glass of water and climb into a clean bed for sweet dreams.  BUT, I'm having so much fun that I just don't want it to end.  Similarly I want to stay on planet earth as long as possible.  I want to see how my kids turn out, enjoy grandchildren, and see how THEY turn out.  I want the time to carry my being as far along its evolutionary path as I can.  But, death is the next great adventure, and when it's time to go it's my turn to enter another amusement park.  

The real sadness stays on earth with the people I leave behind.  That is the thing most upsetting to me about my own death.  I don't want to leave here until my children have had what they need of me.  I want them both to be grown, to know that they have been well-loved, the most important experience of one woman's lifetime.  My Mother made sure that I knew all of that before she left.  Perhaps that's one more excellent reason to leave behind a blog.  

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

-Robert Frost "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening"