Musings on Mortality

On the blessings of ageing.

Living in a human body for over seven decades comes with mixed blessings. I tend to focus on the positive ones, such as the freedom to do what I like, a modicum of wisdom gained, a sense of peace, joy and contentment with my life. However, sometimes I am brought uncomfortably face to face with the less palatable blessings.

As

Beth Kempton

has invited us to write about vulnerability for week four of our Summer of Substack Essay Festival, I’ve decided to write about a recent experience of just that. But please don’t worry, I will not submit you, dear reader, to a long and tedious tale of woe. I am an incorrigible optimist, and cannot help but focus on the lighter side of shade.

A few weeks ago, I went for my first bone density scan. It was an uncomfortable experience, both physically and emotionally. I had to lay still on the scanning table with my left leg swivelled inwards and my left foot clamped to a small wooden pyramid. Position number two was worse, so I will spare you a lurid description.

While I lay there, the tiny compartment somewhere in my brain, which contains all the unpleasant stuff about health, ageing, discomfort and pain burst open. A future of slow, painful decline, frequent hospital procedures and eventual death played itself out in the theatre of my mind.

Now I am no stranger to ill health, I stared death in the face as a child, and feel no fear of whatever transition death is. My attitude has always been to make the best of the body I have, accept its limitations and live life to the full regardless.

The fear that flooded through me on the scanning table was of the bit between, the often long-drawn-out and painful process of dying.

Death comes in many guises, and the older I become the more I value the soft, kindly face of death, that creeps up in sleep, or arrives abruptly and finishes us off with a flourish. Too often I have witnessed friends and loved ones disintegrate slowly and painfully, loosing precious memories, mobility, independence, sleep and dignity. And I find that scary when I imagine it happening to me or my partner of 58 years (and I have a VERY vivid imagination).

I would like to go like my friend Dot, affectionately known round these parts as Dot in a Hat. Dot came home after shopping, felt a bit tired, lay down on her bed for a rest, crossed her arms over her chest and died. Perfect! We had a great wake to celebrate her life, read many of her poems aloud, danced and shared stories about her life.

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For most of the week following the scan I had to face my fears and dark imaginings, and make my peace with them, to an extent, and with multiple provisos.

I realised long ago that the only thing I have control of in this great adventure we call life, is how I react and deal with what I meet along the journey. I am under no illusion that I have any control in how and when I will die, how long and painful the process may be, nor which one of us will go first.

Meditation has taught me to be able to focus my mind and stay as connected as I can to the source, the truth, the light that permeates all life. My spiritual teacher tells us that much of sadhana, the spiritual journey, is a preparation for death, the final letting go, the gateway to liberation and to merging back into the light of the Self.

And all this has helped greatly, but… and there’s always a but isn’t there? Well first there is the timing. I do not feel ready to die yet. I have too much left to do, to write, to see: I want to see what happens next in my grandchildren’s lives; to enjoy time with my daughters when they are retired. I am attached to life, and my family, and the beauty of this amazing planet.

I imagine it must be hard to simply let go and float across the river Styx to whatever lies beyond. And what about when one of us dies and the other is left here alone? That scares me. I tear up at the thought of my husband being alone, and I’ve spoken to both him and our adult children about his choices. I’ve also thought about my choices if he goes first.

I watched my daughter and son-in-law spend much of their free time over the past two years dealing with his mother’s belongings. And I look around at the stuff we’ve accumulated and I make vows to sort it all out soon, yet the drawers and cupboards remain too full.

My mum made me a list: ‘What to do when I pop off.’ She started it in her late sixties, and kept adjusting it until she died at 83, 19 years ago. I still have that list. It was such a help to me. And a great lesson in being prepared.

Death is as inevitable as life.

In these autumnal years of life, death is a constant companion. The other morning, I breathed in a bread crumb and coughed so hard my heart was racing and I felt really weird and had to sit down. And the thought flitted across my inner sky that I might just die, there and then. And it felt okay. And it felt scary.

When I had the bone density scan, I discovered that I have lost 3.25 inches in height. How did that happen? Where have my 3.25 inches gone? I’ve been noticing for the last two years or so that my trousers seem longer, and I have to go on tip-toe to reach some of my clothes in the wardrobe. But 3.25 inches in 2 years? If this keeps up, I will become a little old lady. I don’t really want to be a little old lady. I am consciously standing taller now, lifting my chest and straightening my shoulders. Striding bravely forward into the unknown.

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Oh, what fun it is to live in a human body.

May you enjoy every moment of life in yours, value each day, relish the taste of food and the tenderness of friends and loved ones.

Perhaps life is simply the antechamber, and the next room is even more amazing.

With love,

Josie

I will give the final words of this essay to the inimitable Rumi.

I am dust particles in sunlight
I am the round sun.

To the bits of dust I say, Stay.
To the sun, Keep moving.

I am morning mist,
and the breathing of evening.

I am wind in the top of a grove,
and surf on the cliff.

Mast, rudder, helmsman and keel,
I am also the coral reef they founder on.

I am a tree with a trained parrot in its branches,
Silence, thought and voice.

The musical air coming through a flute,
a spark off a stone, a flickering in metal.

Both candle and the moth
crazy around it.

Rose and the nightingale
lost in the fragrance.

I am all orders of being,
the circling galaxy,

the evolutionary intelligence,
the lift and the falling away.

What is and what isn't. You
who know Jelaluddin, you

the One in all, 
say who I am.
say I am you.

Jelaluddin Rumi

translated by Coleman Barks

Photo by James Day on Unsplash