Ever since the day I tenderly opened my brand new copy of
The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, my perspective on death has changed dramatically. I don't think of it as something that will "hurt" me anymore.
When the moment of death comes, you are dead, and that is that. People call it "dying" when you have a disease, or when you are in the ICU, struggling for those few last breaths.
I don't consider that dying. The book explained it as the "final stage, enlightenment", and I like the sound of that more.
Sometimes I have morbid thoughts of what people are thinking when those breaths become harder and harder to form.
I watched my friend Andrew's stepfather's chest rise like a swelling wave and deflate like an old balloon when he was hooked up on drugs and IV's in Tallahassee Memorial. I wondered to myself, "Are you scared, Richard?", and decided that I would not be scared when it was my body's time.
We sang Beatles songs, and I watched Andrew with quiet eyes, my mouth shut, my hands finding places to perch in the dark hospital room. There was a window that overlooked a gray parking lot. I was grateful that Richard had a window, that natural light of the rainy day could reach him.
Care packages lined the cold tile shelves, filled with trail mix and DIY paper airplanes that we built and flew around the room. I thought back to when the "tribe" would gather at Andrew's house, smoke pot, and laugh ourselves silly, while Carol and Richard watched movies in their bedroom.
I thought back to when Richard gave me a stack of papers on environmental law and said, "I want that back, now", and then he died. It had been carefully placed on the seat of my car for six months, and I had glanced over it once, always forgetting to give it back to him. And now I can't.
I was never sad for Richard. I was sad for Andrew and Carol, and their grief.
In my view, death does not have emotions. It IS the final stage of our lives, our own enlightenment.
I started thinking about this because of an article I read... And now I don't even want to post the article anymore.
