On A Similar Note….

Last night I watched the first new episodes of Scrubs on ABC. (I’m sooooo glad that show got picked up by another network.) In one show they talked about the physical process of death and how this one particular patient would experience it and I remembered something from years ago. Years and years and years and years…….you know, a really long time ago.

When I was 17 I got very sick. I almost died. The details aren’t important so I won’t go into them. The very end, when I was being admitted to the hospital and was very near death, is what is germane to this thought.

I was not injured so I was not in physical pain. I had been running a ferocious fever for days and I was severely dehydrated. I wasn’t nauseated and the headache that had started it all had disappeared. I was peaceful. Well, maybe peaceful isn’t really the word for it?? I didn’t care about anything. I just wanted to be left alone – in peace – but I wasn’t really all that fussed about not being left alone. I didn’t really know or care what was going on around me or who was fussing with me.

Even though this was waaaaay back in the last century, that Scrubs episode triggered these memories. Isn’t it amazing how the brain keeps all that ancient information stored and then pops it back out for you to consider all over again, maybe when you need it the most, maybe at totally irrelevant times? I’m not sure if these memories are relevant or not. Let’s hope not. Because if they are relevant to my current circumstances, after that outburst yesterday they could be telling me that suicide is painless. LOL!!!

But I did start thinking about our attitude toward death. What are we really afraid of? I know many devoutly religious people who believe completely that they are going to a blissful afterlife and yet they are still terrified of death. They fight tooth and nail to stay alive in times of severe illness. They pray fervently for friends and family who are near death, some of them suffering horribly, to stay alive. At the funerals of people who have lived 50 years and longer, they grieve and cry and say, “He/She was just too young to die.”

Rarely do I hear anyone celebrating a full and happy life and rejoicing that someone has gone on to a wonderful afterlife. Oh sure, the preachers always say something like that. And I do hear people give that thought lip service. But I never hear anyone say anything like that with gusto, with true joy or celebration.

True, we are selfish beings and we want to keep our loved ones with us, here on earth. But at what cost? When your husband’s liver has been destroyed by cancer, why do you beg God to keep him alive and suffering for just a little while longer? When your child has been crushed in a car accident and suffered irreparable brain damage, why do you insist on keeping him on machines that force him to live and deny him the peace and freedom from suffering that death would bring? What are we afraid of besides being without our loved ones?

Me, I’m afraid of pain. Fortunately, my memories are telling me that death can be mercifully painless and peaceful. Although I realize there are no guarantees, this should help. Why doesn't it?

I’m afraid of finding out that I have to come back and do this all over again. I’m afraid there really is an eternity and I won’t be able to just pass on to oblivion. And that’s so silly. Because I know there is an eternity even though I don’t believe in a God or heaven or anything to do with sky fairies. I know that our energy will live on no matter what happens to our bodies. And maybe that’s what scares me – the thought that it doesn’t end with death. It just goes on and on and on and on and on.

Maybe that's what scares us all.