Here we are again. Another diagnosis of horrible, life-ending disease for someone I love. If you live long enough, you experience these tragic pronouncements with increasing frequency. The excruciating helplessness of watching someone cross the ineffable rubicon between the living and the dead.

My instinct is to call my friend of many years, to tell him of the tragedy that has befallen this person that we both know so well and care about so deeply. As if the act of spreading the news could somehow dilute the horror, lessen the gut-wrenching sadness.

But my friend is gone; crossed the line between alive and un-alive many years ago.

Terminal

A terminal diagnosis triggers Kübler-Ross’ cascade of well-documented emotions; denial, anger, bargaining, depression. Many don’t live long enough to reach acceptance, rage vacillating with despondency to the end.

And hope. Hope springs eternal, it is said, but in the vast majority of end-of-life prognostications, it is false hope. It is in our nature to hope for the miracle we have all heard of, read about. Maybe we know someone who was saved against the odds. We Google in hope of an alternate reality; a new drug in Mexico, perhaps, or maybe an experimental treatment protocol in Sweden.

We are told that God saves, and surely He can, if He exists. But overwhelmingly  “faith” and “thoughts and prayers” and “best wishes” are silenced with, “The cancer has spread,” “The treatment is no longer working,” “We have done all we know how to do,” “There is no treatment for this.”

In the end, the fall from hope is so precipitous that we wonder if it would have been better to have just planned for the end. But we are hopeful creatures by nature. We can’t help but hope. And so it becomes just another sad memory - sometimes worse than the end itself - when our hopes are crushed.

Personal

There is another layer behind the grief, the sadness and depression. It is even deeper than the helplessness, the longing, the realization that soon there will be no more memories made.

When it is over and we stand next to the casket or hold the ashes, we are acutely aware that we will share that fate. This awareness is sometimes conscious, sometimes repressed, but is always present.

And so there is a very personal horror that lurks in the midst of the stifling sorrow. How long until each of us is a corpse, is ashes? Will we know it’s coming? Will it hurt? What will become of our loved ones?

And the most powerful, politicized thought of all: “What happens to us then?”

“Religion,” said Marx, “is the opiate of the masses.” I am not sure to what extent that is currently true, but I can assure you that religion exists because it promises a happy ending to our existential angst.

Is it true? Will we sit for eternity at the right hand of Jesus? Will we commune endlessly with God in Heaven? Become ascended Masters? Transcend samsara? Command our own universes?

I have no idea, and neither - in spite of what they will tell you - does anyone else.

What, then?

If you are a “believer,” I hope that whichever of the hundreds of afterlife stories you believe is the “right” one. Or, in any case, that it brings you peace.

For me, decades of work in emergency and intensive care settings, and - later - clinical psychology and counseling has brought me no closer to answers about the transition between the living and the dead. I have attended thousands of people who were actively dying; done my best to assist the recovery of their survivors.

For me, all of the study and observation and soul-searching and rumination that arises from those situations always ends in the same place: Be mindful of and grateful for what you have, while you have it. It’s great to post “Tomorrow is never promised,” and “memento mori” memes, but much better to really consider what they mean.

Allow yourself to feel fully the pain of loss when it comes; grieve completely. Then realize that the clock is ticking on your span of consciousness on this plane. Experience your life as deeply as you can and express intentional, detailed  gratitude for the fact that you are.

After all, we - for the most part - do the best we can in the face of continuous confusion and assured personal destruction. In the time between tragedies, try to be fully aware and enjoy the mysterious, inexplicable ride. The miraculous gift of consciousness.

We are limitless beings living finite lives. Chasing immortality.



I am a creator (musician, writer, live-streamer and podcaster), entrepreneur, educator and counselor.

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- JWW