A couple of years ago I nearly died. I had a small bowel obstruction. I went to hospital by ambulance, was admitted to the emergency department and had laparoscopic surgery without which I would have died. During the extremely painful and frightening experience the thing most on my mind was my child. How the hell will they get on without me to guide them? It was very much an 'Are your affairs in order' wake up call. I've since sorted my Will and POA and made arrangements as best I can for my child if I'm not around. Not perfect, but the best I can do.
As a youngster I lived the devil may care, live fast die young and leave a good looking corpse lifestyle. As I got older and the inevitable finite-ness of life slips onto the horizon as something other than an abstraction so far in the future as to be completely ignored I started to think well actually... It's not a question of if, but when, for every human being that ever lived. Our control over when is limited.
I know it can come across as a bit galling when someone not currently facing any particular threat offers pseudo-sagely words because I have had some extremely stressful times in my life where no amount of rational thought could calm my 'monkey brain'.
But there's that which we can control and that we cannot. We do the best we can with the former and suffer no guilt or shame for the latter. There's nothing to fear but fear itself. And possibly my all time favorite quote that a helpful friend told me when I was distressed, "The mind is its own place, it can make heaven out of hell or hell out of heaven" Milton.
I want to delay dying as long as I possibly can and the thought of loss of my life makes me sad, but not anxious.
