My Own Mortality

Do you ever think about your own mortality?

I guess I mean coming to terms with your own mortality, how do you do this? How do you accept that this is inevitable at some point? I often get this stuff in my head when thing like surgery are near and as you know it is very near right now.

I am petrified to die, I am petrified that (as selfish as this will sound) that life will go on without me. I am so worried that although I believe in heaven that there will be none and I was wrong. I am scared that I will go inside some box and be put in a wall (hopefully, I have already warned Peter no ground burial) and that is it..... Nothingness.

The first holiday after your death everyone is sad that you are not there but the years go by and although someone may give a little thought about you, life goes on for them and you are forgotten some.

I am so scared of the thought of leaving Ryan, especially at the age he is now. I now see why people have children younger (not that I had a choice) because as you are older you think more about this. I know he would forget me and I would be nothing more than a picture on the shelf of his mother. How do you tell a child who loves his mother so much she is gone? How do you tell the child that wakes up in the middle of the night and calls his mother just to say "I want you mommy, I love you" that she no longer exists?

This stuff drives me nuts, do others think this way? I often wonder how people come to terms with their own mortality. You hear people who have terminal illnesses talk about being OK with dying or ready to die, how do they get there? Is that all faith? How do they get past leaving life?

I remember this past April/May when my 97 year old Grandmother was dying. She basically stopped eating or drinking anything which bought her to her death. There were very specific stages to the death process which was explained to us by Hospice and they gave a a guide on the stages of death. She did exactly what the book spelled out, EXACTLY. It explained that when someone is going through the dying process whether sick or old they all go through the same process, like its a higher plan. I remember feeling like "Why are you doing this? Just drink and eat! Why?" I felt like I could not understand why she did not want to push on and live anymore. Does you really get to the point you are done?

The Catholic priest called me father during this whole dying process and told my father that he needed to tell his mother that is was OK to go and die. He said that although people come to terms with death that their responsibilities in life, like being a mother, keep them in the living world. My father went to her that day and told her that it was OK to die, that it was OK to go and see my Grandfather and be with him again. She had been completely comatose, for the lack of a better description and she reached for his hand and she squeezed it almost acknowledging what he said. She died the next morning.

Maybe in the end it is not so scary after all?

I am FAR from ready to die, the world is not ready for me to leave yet, and in my fear of all of it and the whole process of surgery, I know I will be OK. God gave me Ryan for a reason, that same God would not take me away.

I also have to believe in some small way that God will someday, when my time comes, make me less fearful of death and it process and OK with eternity.