Hi Blue
Blue Sue;n847607 said:
... but I am also abruptly confronted by my mortality.
I think this is a natural part of living *but* it is
very badly handled by modern western society. The reasons for why are complex (happy to discuss) but suffice to say that I consider the awareness of death is an essential part of actually living. By
awareness I mean more direct knowledge than the abstract. For instance people know that being in a car accident is traumatic, but after one has been in a car accident one finds ones self saying what one said before but somehow knowing the meaning behind the words. Reading books and talking about it prepares you but only in confronting it do we really know.
One of the other things is what I term
the wake up call. Its that point when after it you look around at everything and everyone around you and realise that its all changed (except them). The following is written in a metaphorical manner with "asleep" being the state one must be in to get a "wake up" ...
Many people want to go back to sleep after this wake up call. Many of us go back to sleep slowly and this is often called "getting on with one's life" by those who remain sleeping.
I experienced these wake up calls on many occasions and have found myself back asleep again. The earliest was before I really even considered that I was asleep. That was in my twentieth year and I had been already living life (I came to understand later) as one who follows the teachings of Bushido. That I'd already had OHS and two other minor procedures (angiograms were quite different in the 70's) probably contributed to that.
My next "wakeup call" was about 2005 when I was primary carer for my mum. I got off the phone after discussing with the Dr about if she should or should not be "resus'd" if she went into cardiac arrest because of the frailty of her rib cage (age and atrophy) may leave her in substantial onging pain and contribute to her more rapid demise (she had ahlzimers). I looked around the room (the phone call was timed during an office "birthday party") and realised that this constructed world I was inhabiting bore no relation to the actual realities of life.
I again drifted off into this "sleep" (though not as deeply, I was more or less just dozing) with career, marriage and general life when I got a similar "wake up call" in 2012 from my Dads Dr asking about what we should do about his "fluid on the lungs" and his ability to survive another drain (he was by then in paliative care for a metastasized cancer starting from the liver).
I won't go on more but its important to recognise that our llives are really about the relationships with people and the things we experience. Knowing that it ends is an important part to determining the "economics" of how you make choices within your life.
I know nothing I've said will make that shock less, I just hope that anything I've said helps to give you a better outcome
Best Wishes
