Live as if we and our loved ones are going to die

Admittedly this isn't the cheeriest subject for New Year's Eve, the last day of 2021 -- how we should live as if we and our loved ones are going to die.

But I got to thinking about this after watching an episode in Season 1 of Dickinson, an Apple TV+ series about Emily Dickinson, the 19th century poet.

Dickinson feigns illness in order to have more time alone in order to write her poetry. Her family has a doctor examine Dickinson. Given the sad state of pre-Civil War medicine, he misdiagnoses her as having a fatal disease.

What I found fascinating was how her mother, father, and brother reacted to the prospect of Dickinson's impending demise. 

One by one, they entered her room where she supposedly was dying and proceeded to be wonderfully honest.

Rather than their usual repressed selves, playing their rigid traditional roles, they spoke freely about their life, their regrets, their secrets. They could do this because their vision of Dickinson's soon-to-be death allowed them to be who they actually were, not who they pretended to be.

Sure, there are pros and cons of such honesty. Sometimes it makes sense to wear a mask that disguises our true self.

On the whole, though, I believe we'd be better off with that sort of transparency. Life is short. We don't have much time to come closer to our loved ones, friends, acquaintances -- the people who often fail to really know us because we don't allow them to see who we really are.

Being 73, I'm well aware that death can appear in a life at any time.

My mother, father, and sister all died at about my age. So in a sense I feel that I'm living on borrowed time. Several close friends from high school died many years ago. After watching that episode of Dickinson, I'm feeling like I need to live each day with a greatfer appreciation that I'm going to die.

Not immediately, almost certainly. But it could be sooner than I've envisioned -- which tends to be about ten years older than my current age, a bet that becomes less winnable with every passing year.

It's always bothered me that a Celebration of Life for someone only happens after they've died. That's when people speak about how much the person meant to them. Nothing wrong with that, but it sure would be a heck of a lot better if that honest talk happened while the person could hear those words.

Like most of my New Year's Resolutions, I'm not sure whether I'll be able to keep up this resolve. The Dickinson episode just made me realize how much I regret not being more open with my mother, father, and sister before they died.

Unlike Dickinson's family, there was no doctor saying "Your loved one is going to die." So there wasn't a sense of urgency that might have caused me to take a chance on being more honest about my feelings toward them.

Now it's too late, obviously. I think back to the one hour I had face-to-face with my father, a tale I've told in a blog post. 

When I saw him for the first and only time in a Boston hotel room, he'd told me that he was being treated for emphysema at a Boston hospital. But there was no mention of a fatal illness. So he and I wasted that one hour, as I described in the post.

My half-brother, Mike, opened the door. Apparently my father needed some support during this visit. John walked up to me and shook my hand. We didn’t hug or anything. No tears of joy. Nothing that you see in the movies. Real life isn’t like the movies.

What is real life like? Real life is having one hour in your life face-to-face with your father, and spending that time looking at General Electric manuals that he had arranged on the bed prior to my arrival, efficiently opened up to pages that he wanted to impress me with.

I sat down on the edge of the bed. I dutifully thumbed my way through manual after manual, listening to my father’s stories about how he went into GE plants that were having problems and got them back up to speed. “What the hell?” I kept thinking to myself. “If this is how my father wants to spend his time with his long-ignored son, so be it.”

We got through all of the manuals. I shook his hand again. When the door shut behind me and I started walking down the corridor to my rented car, I was so happy. Not happy that I had finally gotten to meet my father—happy that I would never have to see my father again.

Which I never did.

There's no way to revisit the past. I deeply wish I could. I'd somehow summon the courage to say, "Dad, we have so little time together. Let's be real. I don't want to look at those manuals. I want to get a glimpse of who you really are, and show you some of who I really am."

Hopefully I'll do better in the future. There's always so little time, and so much we should honestly share with those we're close to.

Comments

[Ron E.]

I like this poem of Dickinson's also :-

That it will never come again

Is what makes life so sweet.

Believing what we don’t believe

Does not exhilarate.

That if it be, it be at best

An ablative estate —

This instigates an appetite

Precisely opposite.

[Tendzin]

‘Wow, What A Terrible Year!’ Say People Living At The Absolute Peak Of Human Civilization

U.S.—According to sources, thousands of Americans living in the most prosperous, luxurious, plentiful period in the history of the human race think this was a really terrible year.

"2021 was just the worst," said Marley Buchanan while sipping on organic chai tea and munching on fish tacos he had summoned to his house in only 15 minutes using a pocket-sized supercomputer. "It was just a horrible, horrible year. My anxiety disorder and depression have never been worse. I have to see my therapist 3 times a week now."

Studies have found that lifespans are longer, quality of life is better, infant mortality is lower, air travel is safer, war and violence is lower, and food is more delicious than at any time in mankind's history. In spite of these and many other amazing facts, humans seem to be getting more miserable.

Experts suggest that a major war in 2022 might help turn things around and make people a little happier.

[Spence Tepper]

Emily Dickinson, Mystic

"There is another sky
Ever serene and fair,
And there is another sunshine,
Though it be darkness there;
Never mind forests, Austin,
Never mind silent fields -
Here is a little forest,
Whose least is every green;

" Here is a brighter garden,
Where not a frost has been;
In its untainted flowers
I hear the bright bee hum:
Prithee my brother,
Into my garden come!"
Emily Dickinson

[Spence Tepper]

Oops typo, "whose leaf is ever green"

[Spence Tepper]

Hi Brian Ji
Your relationship with your father is your concern.
But as far as showing you his work, that is sacred.
People give their lives to their work. It may be the only thing they are proud of, the only thing they are capable of.

Katheryn Hepburn once remarked that the greatest thing in her relationship with Spencer Tracy was not what they did in the dark but what they created on screen.

That may not be your value system. But it is for many. And sharing that work is their highest expression of intimacy. They are their work. It is all they have, and all they are.

[umami]

Tendzin,

Good point. Twenty years ago a friend of mine suggested that people need a certain degree of pain to feel normal. It explains why the wealthy and powerful submit themselves to B&D and how children raised in the lap of luxury wind up drug addicts.

Consider FOX NEWS in that context as a manufacturer of pain for pain hungry Americans.

[Manoj]

Live as if we and our loved ones are going to die

"Should be the number one priority in our lives"

We spend most of our precious lives lost in the sea of confusion trying to find enlightenment from the very place where it can be never found.

Endlessly trying our hands at religions like Radha Soami and its oppressive Charlie baba, Gurinder Singh Dhillion

Which takes us far away from our very own loved ones and teach us never to love them and start to neglect them and give all that love to the Selfish Gurinder Singh Dhillion. In his many ways of seva, satsangs, meditation of kaal and endless days of paintdrying Darshan which cuts at the root of our lifes purpose but fulfills Gurinders disaster of a dream.

Which clown in they're right mind would teach such teachings?
Yep the one an only Guilty Gurinder Singh Dhillion

Who himself has given all the love and riches to his own loved ones which he's bent over backwards to rip and steal millions from others to provide for his self centred family who even today think no body knows where it all came from.
Yup everyone does here comes a bubble bursting moment for all
How did Gurinder Singh Dhillions rags to riches story from a waiter in Spain to a multi millionaire overnight happen is still a mystery to some and it wasn't the tips either.

Take the time for what is priceless today which will never be found tomorrow when the show of life finally ends....and Have a Happy New Year's to come!

[Tendzin]

"Consider FOX NEWS in that context as a manufacturer of pain for pain hungry Americans."

No doubt people from one side of the political aisle feel that way about that particular media outlet, but then again, those on the other side binge on paranoia and resentment porn from the NYT and it's equivalent. But I agree, people love controversy, the love fixing wrongs, they love to be right. I know I do, and it's a flaw I hope to mend a bit in the coming year.

The lust for controversy often masks itself in the pursuit of justice, I've found.

Side note: Shout out to Brian for mentioning Succession recently. I was unaware of that series and am no addicted to watching it!

[um]

@ Manoj

People go to movies and lose themselves in it, knowing it is not real.
People also read books and lose themselves in it, knowing it is fiction.

There are so many things people do lose themselves in or worst are prepared to kill and be killed, democracy, father or mother land, national identity, honor, freedom you name it.

One day when i debunked some of these fantasies in a famaly setting, the lady after first shedding some tears, started to laugh and said "I will find something else"

Humans do not only watch movies, read books etc but they alse create their own scripts, for life and write for themselves all sorts of imaginary roles to play ... they call it culture.

You too have written a role for yourself, thinking it to be a reality ... the role of the dragon slayer ... hahahaha .... it is all a mind game. One day you will realise it that you were acting as an don quichotte fighting the wind mills.

Enjoy your fight ... it gives meaning to your life that it would otherwise lack.

[um]

@ Manoy

And ... all [mental, cultural] games people play, are closed systems and if answers to all possible questions and solutions for all problems that threathens its existence.

All religions and all political systems, or whatever organisation of human activities, are related to one form of MIS -use of trust, power etc etc . To bring it to the surface has never been the cause of its downfall.

Read some history books.

After all its crimes against humanity, commited by the clergy of all major religions the are all stiil alive. Why? well not because of its clergy, its organoisation but because of the pious people that goes to the temple, church mosque. They, are the "givers" and so lang as they want to invest their love, their devotion or whatever you want to call it, these institutions will flourish ... and YOU ... you have nothing to replace what the are seeking and finding there as it is in their own hearts.

You have nothing to offer to replace it.

[zenjen]

Keep it simple. Being myself ... observing, watching, feeling, accepting ... remembering to remind myself that each moment is precious and also how to live from moment to moment ... finding positive thoughts and something special within ... something mystical and magical ...

[Spence Tepper]

Happy Holidays Zen Jen!

[umami]

"but then again, those on the other side binge on paranoia and resentment porn from the NYT and it's equivalent."

Well, let's not get carried away, but the right probably does perceive the NYT to manufacture something for its readers. What would that be? I'll guess a sense of superiority, since a favorite charge from conservatives against liberals is elitism.

Just comparing notes. Any other ideas?

[Tendzin]

"Well, let's not get carried away, but the right probably does perceive the NYT to manufacture something for its readers. Any other ideas?"

Only that it's a waste of time to talk about such things in generalities.

[Spence Tepper]

Where religion ends, Atheism begins, and where Atheism ends, Mysticism in the audible Name, love itself, begins....

From Emily Dickinson, mystic...

LOVE'S BAPTISM.

I'm ceded, I've stopped being theirs ;
The name they dropped upon my face
With water, in the country church,
Is finished using now,
And they can put it with my dolls,
My childhood, and the string of spools
I've finished threading too.

Baptized before without the choice,
But this time consciously, of grace
Unto the supremest name,
Called to my full, the crescent dropped,
Existence's whole arc filled up
With one small diadem.

My second rank, too small the first,
Crowned, crowing on my father's breast,
A half unconscious queen;
But this time, adequate, erect,
With will to choose or to reject.
And I choose - just a throne.

[Appreciative Reader]

Touching post.

Rough, the thing about your father.

And the manual thing, during the one-hour session? Very weird. Surreal, even.

------------------------

As for living as if you're going to die?

Great idea, absolutely. Because, hey, we ARE going to die, after all! Thing is, what this does is makes crystal clear what's important and what's not. And the problem with that is this: By far the majority of the lives of by far the majority of people is made up of all of these pointless ultimately useless things. Like your father's manuals and his work. So that when these drop away, one is left with ... their absence. Which can be super unsettling. Not to mention extremely ...unusual.

It's great, this prescription, absolutely. But not everyone's cup of tea. (Or coffee, um!)

[Appreciative Reader]

Hello, Jen. Glad to see you posting here, after quite a while.

[Appreciative Reader]

(...) Consider FOX NEWS in that context as a manufacturer of pain for pain hungry Americans.

Posted by: umami | January 01, 2022 at 11:47 AM

---------

LOL!! I'm so stealing that!

[Appreciative Reader]

... people love controversy ... The lust for controversy often masks itself in the pursuit of justice ...

Posted by: Tendzin | January 01, 2022 at 02:10 PM

-------------------------------------

As far as a strictly descriptive-not-prescriptive mode, I suppose that's sometimes true, perhaps even oftentimes true. But this is by no means universal. By no means inherent to us. In fact, I'd say it's somewhat dysfunctional, somewhat irrational, to prefer controversy over its obverse (let alone actually "love" it), no?

Of course, people often are somewhat dysfunctional, and somewhat irrational, so there's that.

In any case, given the context of this post of yours, surely the ones who "love controversy" are first and foremost the controversy-theory-addled kooks? The Trumps and the Trump-worshiper of the world? I mean, think of the QAnon crazies, and their enablers, right?

[umami]

Thanks, AR!
Life should be taken tragically, not seriously.