Liking to keep things heavy, I texted back: "I'm 70 and I have no idea if my last day will be serene and loving and accepting or depressed, desperate and disappointed. What I do know is that I won't be trying to push my thinking and feeling in one direction or another. It will be what it is."
Later in the evening, I realized that in my response I was thinking of my status on my deathbed, not my full last day: waking up in the morning, knowing I'd pass away at some point in the night, and picturing what I might do to make the day nine-months'-pregnant with meaning.
That day would be problematic: I'd have a few people to apologize to (again); a family member or a few to quietly condemn, with melancholy; some roses and fulsome things to smell and a black starry sky to look at; no blog post (silence would be the real me at that point); and no one to kiss, unless my wife outlives me, which I profoundly hope.
More interesting to me, in a very dreadful way, would be the deathbed hour. Because I honestly don't know in which direction my spirit would go. Picturing my life's failures, including birth and childhood. Or feeling love and a life lived pretty well. Or some unknowable mystery of feeling. I suspect I will think as little of thinking, or "thoughting,"* as I do now. I believe our thoughts are always a poor representation or a conceitful hiding from our true oceanic mess of a Self. Yes, we want to paint this ocean, and on that painted surface we want to paint names of our lives. But I am certain that's never true.
We are as uncomprehending at death as we are at birth.
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Death, the total loss of self, is the reverse process of being borned (eventually becoming an 'I'), and just as (at times) - terrifying as becoming an 'I' was.. There is a massive worldwide dissociation from both these periods, yet they are the well-spring of all our machinations - "forgive them, Lord, for they know not what they do, indeed! Like you, I'm far too near the front of the queue for my liking !! ;)
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