What are your fears about death?
I am writing a book, with the working title “Time Bomb,” a how-to about aging and dying. Well, those will happen without instruction. What I am addressing is how to remain stable in the midst of the process—with curiosity, humor when appropriate, kindness, strength, and other capacities to carry you through gracefully.
Understanding the spectrum of fears that many people carry will help me know what specific issues to write about.
Please share this topic with other circles you are connected to, and send yours and their responses, thoughts and reflections to me via my business email: [email protected], or by phone at: 415-849-3909.
With great appreciation,
David Colin Carr, freelance editor, writer, and writing teacher.
Yo David:
My fear regarding death is not in dying!
I had a number of out-of-body experiences many while at the National Naval Hospital in Bethesda, MD. While they’ve all run together in my mind now, I recall thinking at the time, and now recall them generally, as the most most tranquil and peaceful experience of my life. Since then I never feared dying.
What I fear, is dying in pieces. When laying in that hospital surrounded by shot-up Marines, I witnesses many of America’s finest, brightest, most courages, and occasionally our most intelligent, living less than a whole lives due to missing body parts, loss of eyesight, etc. One of the most pathetic was “Little Jimmy”, from PA. All 70 pounds of him. He’s lied about his age, joined the USMC, got to Vietnam and on his first day in the field (I think???) it was his 17th birthday when he stepped on a land mine.
By the time I got to know him, Jimmy’s left leg was missing from the knee down. His right leg had been amputated at the hip. All except for two or three fingers, his left arm and hand were in tact, but unable to be used. From the shoulder onward, that left arm was absolutely rigid and uncontrollably. Jimmy hated being in his wheel chair in part because that left arm and hand would get caught in the spokes of the wheel. It was always amazing how many hospital volunteers wanted to push Little Jimmy, but pay no attention to getting his hand and arm caught in the spokes.
Jimmy’s right arm was missing from about 4 inches just below his elbow. This “stub” gave him just enough strength and agility to hold a paper milkshake cup against his chest so he could drink through a straw. For that, he was thankful and often said so.
Among his other “disabilities” was being mostly blind. If we sat (in our own wheelchairs) such that the light came from being Jimmy and onto our bodies, he could tell that a person (?) was in front of him. As a courtesy, we all learned to speak up whenever we arrived so Jimmy would know who was there. Jimmy, like many of us, was also totally addicted to the narcotics we were being given.
The thing Jimmy liked most, but got least often, was someone who would hold his cigaret for him so he could smoke it. The Red Cross was good about giving us free cigarettes.
Jimmy was rare for another reason. Most of us in that environment, did not fear death. In fact, even though we got in trouble for it when the officers discovered it, we often had betting pools on how long someone was going to live, whether they were going to loose their feet to amputation, etc. We didn’t really understand why the officers and doctors were so upset with our gambling on death, but we had a definite sense that they were different than we were. In retrospect, I think maybe it was that none of them had come face-to-face with death. Except, the one guy whose body give him the least reason to live, Little Jimmy, appeared most afraid of all of us.
Another point of view about Jimmy’s fear of death is that maybe he just wasn’t ready to go yet. That is, there were still things (which probably didn’t even yet know) that he needed to get done first. That was certainly a factor in my out-of-body experience. There was a point where I could have very comfortably slipped permanently into that tranquilly and peacefulness (and I remember thinking about it) but decided I had more to get done before that time came.
Interestingly, that time spent at the Bethesda hospital changed my life dramatically. Before then, I’d always been the big dumb kid in the back of the classroom, and always on academic probation. After that, school was really easy. I typically received all A’s and an F on my report cards, and ended up graduating in the second quarter of my college class: pretty good for someone who’s spent the first 3+ years at the bottom of the fourth quarter.
My “death fear” now is in loosing my autonomy and ability to be of value. My eyesight is going. After an entire lifetime (since about age 10) of being an expert marksman, I can’t see well enough to focus on a target at a reasonable distance. My stamina and strength is waining. Due to the tremendous amount of drugs administered to prevent blood clots while at that hospital, I now have osteoporosis to the point that the last time I went SCUBA diving I pulled the bone in my thumb into pieces just getting myself back into the boat.
I have two things I need to do before I die. Maybe that’s at the source of my procrastination in getting them done. Whatever, I’m beginning to feel the pressure to get them done or I’ll run out of time. For me, its a race of getting them done before I loose my capacity to be of value.
A point very much in need of public exposure is that (used to be anyway) the chances of you’re becoming incapacitated before you die is 14 times greater than merely experiencing death. What’s more important than taking care of death is taking account for incapacity. In all my decades of law practice, I’ve seen many (in fact most) inexpensive matters of probate. I’ve never seen an inexpensive conservatorship. – – – As a second point, the moment someone learns of their becoming disabled, that is when to go out and float the largest loan possible as they are probably in the best financial position they will ever be. Once disabled, your earning capacity goes to hell in a hurry.
Good luck, David. – Nothing here is proof read.