LOOKING AT PERSONAL DEATH

Mortality vs morbidity. Thinking of dying need not be morbid. We are all living and dying this and every conscious moment. When and how is the question.

To live is to die. To die is to be reborn, to be free, to learn, to complete this voluntary journey.

I have here done as always, till now, looked at death as a concept, from a distance. My now intent is to analyze death from a real, personal, close distance.

Why? I need to. I recently (six weeks ago) shockingly fell and broke my hip. Another 87 year dude, broken hip — get ready to turn the lights out. The party is over.

Bullshit.

Bones break, bones heal. It is the psyche that most resists healing. After six weeks, I have dealt with physical and mental injury. It isn’t over, but progress is being made. Progress? I’m facing death in a new way, getting ready, but not ready. I am in the mid zone keeping a grip on both of the usually widely separated extremes, finally ready to talk about it.

Thinking deeply of death seems dark and unnatural. But need it be so? No. This is a most natural, necessary process of being alive, reminding me that death of the material body is one with life in the material body. That is the deal to which I agreed in order to be Rip for a brief time. Rip is a temporary student in this strange and wonderful school of life.

I have returned to keeping death as a distant subject rather than a close, personal issue. Let us return.