A Reflection on Death and Dying

Some people are afraid of death, imagining it to be something frighteningly mysterious and darkly disturbing that they must fight against all their lives. I think death is a relief, a rest, a rite of passage, for all of us. Nobody is escaping life alive, we’re all going to die, somehow, somewhere, some day. The mystery might be that we do not know the details, and what really happens when we die, but it’s going to happen whether we have those answers or not. 

I really do think the secret to living fully is fully accepting the inevitability of death, not exactly inviting it but simply acknowledging that it must surely come. And then living life without fear or frenzy, as if one must pack in electrified energy into every second but rather breathing in the essence of each moment in a calm and peaceful way. Savouring each breath as a gentle ebb and flow of waves upon the troubled sea of life, rising above the worry and woes, and recognising one’s place in time and space. Content to be as tiny and insignificant as a grain of sand at the ocean’s edge, as a drop of water in the sea, as a speck of dust floating in the breeze above the tempest. 

Might death then be the same, like a breathing of the soul, finally exhaled from its tiny, caged, physical frailty and set free to wherever it must go? Does the mind live on with its myriad thoughts and ruminations, or does consciousness cease to be? Is the soul an ephemeral or eternal thing that God breathed into us on the day He saw fit to bring us to life, binding us forever with our fellow living, breathing, sentient creatures on this planet, and perhaps beyond? Where will it go when we die, if not back to Him, for all eternity? 

What is a human life, so short, like flowers swaying in the wind, the grass trembling in the rain, or the butterfly fluttering by in the sun? We’re here today, and gone tomorrow, a memory in the hearts of those who loved us, until they, too, are gone. Where do all those collective memories go, and who remembers the ones gone many moons before? 

Death is the only certainty once we are born. Embrace it, expect it, live it. Dying to self is the first death we must endure, and the better we are at dying to ego, the easier that final physical death will be, the one mystery that truly sets us free. That moment in which we gladly say, “It is finished, take me back to Thee”. 

Thanks for reading, 

Pav