I was asked to do a guest post a couple months ago about “End Of Life Preparednessâ€. Specifically, to address the need for a thing like a Living Will. While I want to do the post, I’ve been putting it off while I work through a balancing act in my head.
I’m not an attorney, I’m just a guy who’s lost a mom, a dad, and a stepmom. I’ve seen other friends and relatives at the doorstep of death as well, and watched as they eased across that threshold into whatever might (or might not) lay on the other side.
What I’ve seen has colored my view of our responsibilities to one another at that important point at the end of this life. It’s colored the way I talk to my kids about how I want to live and how I want to die.
It’s not an easy thing in our culture. We’ve created a culture that absolutely petrified of death and dying. The subject is taboo, and we’re generally at a great loss for words when those around us feel the loss of a loved one. I blogged about loss in this post not long ago, and about our reactions to loss in this post.
It’s a great shame really, that we’re so afraid of death. Death is just one more of many transitions in life. If fact, from the time we’re born, we begin a long series of transitions that are all leading inexorably to death. Looked at that way, death is just the final of these transitions.
Depending on the spiritual paths you happen to be walking at this point in your life, you may view death as a beginning as much as an end. In my book, Peace at the Edge of Uncertainty, I share in very personal detail the spiritual context that I’ve developed as a result of mystical gifts that I’ve been privileged to be part of. If you believe in notions of reincarnation, you probably see death in this life as just another in a series of windows we pass through in the lives we’re part of.
But what about this path we walk today in this life? This path that leads without question to death. Continue reading “Relationship Business at the Final Threshold of Life”