Are you afraid of death?

I'm not sure why but I've been thinking about death a lot lately. Maybe it's that we're getting closer to Christmas and my mind's been turning back towards the past, or that we observed Remembrance Day on Sunday and it's been lingering in my thoughts. It's not unusual for me to think about death; I've always thought that death, though sad, is a natural part of life and there is beauty to it, if you know where to look. But for some reason it's been different this time.

I wouldn't say that I've felt depressed, but my thoughts have lingered more on the process of dying than they usually do. I've had people I've known and loved in my life pass away before their time and it was painful; they didn't seem like the same person and it was very difficult seeing them like that. Peaceful certainly isn't the right word for their passing, but it was almost a relief to see them go in the end, their agony relieved. We had a chance to say goodbye, something a lot of people don't have; for many people death comes suddenly and everything that they wanted to say or do is suddenly out of reach. That's the kind of death I think must be the most difficult to adjust to, for everything to be normal, and then suddenly so different.

My poem from a few days ago is about death. I tried to write it in such a way that the reader could take what they wanted from it, but my inspiration was death. I had been thinking about what it must be like to know you're dying, to know this or tomorrow will be your last day. What must that be like? Can any of us really know until we're facing it ourselves? I think if it were me I would be trying to remember the moments of my life, perhaps the regrets as much as the achievements, the friends I had and hopefully would still have around me, and taking the chance to say goodbye.

I think under those circumstances death would be peaceful; perhaps still not something I would be ready for as I'm not sure I ever could be, but at least surrounded by family and friends I would hope it would be a time of remembrance rather than sorrow. Respectful. But to be honest I'm not sure if I believe that's what would happen. I'm not sure what I believe any more.

I'm not afraid of death. If for some reason I learnt tomorrow that I only had a few days left to live, I wouldn't fear it; I might be angry, or sad, or any of a thousand different emotions that I couldn't possibly describe, but I wouldn't be afraid. I consider myself a spiritual person rather than a religious one; I don't know if there is something after death, but I would like to feel there is. But even if there isn't that's not something I would fear; death is natural and as long as we meant something to someone, that they held us dear in their hearts for a time, then I believe we live forever.

What I am afraid of is leaving people behind. Of leaving things unfinished... of starting down a path and finding I can only follow it a certain way. That to me is the scariest possibility of all. People say it's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. I don't believe that. Does anybody seriously believe that? It's certainly better to have experienced than to have experienced nothing, but to have loved and lost is to have left someone behind... perhaps someone who depended on you, and needed you, and suddenly you aren't there. Yes, if you're the other person, you can love again and the pain will ease in time, but the relationship is different. Not better, not worse; just different. There's something lost you can't get back.

I suppose my one greatest fear in life is that I won't measure up to my own standards. I look at myself and I'm relatively happy with who I am; I won't lie and say that there aren't things I wouldn't change, moments I wouldn't live again, or friends I wish I had stayed in touch with and miss dearly, but I take all that as a part of what makes me who I am. But no-one knows what their future will hold and I don't know where I will be in twenty years. I hope I will be successful in the ways that matter; earning a respectable living, being a good person. I'd love to have a novel published, obviously, and to be secure in where I am. But I'm not sure I will be that. I feel like I'm at a stalemate right now that might last awhile. And if that's true and I don't achieve what I want, will it have been worth it?

I don't know. That's the one thing I can't answer and that's not me being negative, it's simply that I do not know. How do you weigh what your mind says is possible against what your heart says it wants to achieve? By what measure do you weigh the soul of a man? By the life he has lived, the sights he has seen, the people he has loved? I would hope it is that, but is it really? I lost a friend when I was very young. It was a senseless death, just one of those things that happens for no real reason. I think she would have been a great person and I often wonder what she would be like today. We'll never know, but I often think of her. And maybe I hold myself against that sometimes, even though I don't mean to.

So I think that's what I'm afraid of; not of death, but of what death represents, the measure of what you leave behind. Of course in the end there's not much anyone can do except to live and value each moment, but I don't think a lot of people do. I think a lot of people really are afraid of death, or if not death then of the unknown. They push it back as long as they can; they destroy their bodies in the pursuit of youth, they create conflict, they try to be remembered. We have an unhealthy relationship with death, particularly in Western culture; it's a part of our lives but we try to ignore it or not think about it. And when we are touched by death, we grieve, which is natural - but we don't always remember. We don't see beauty, memory, life. And if we don't do that, I'm not sure we really live.

My favourite poem is Kipling's If. If you can dream-and not make dreams your master; if you can think-and not make thoughts your aim. I love those two lines in particular; I think they say so much about being creative, but also for how we should treat each other and value life. To dream, but not to dream so far that the dream becomes bitter when it doesn't become true, in relationships, in life. I think that's a good way to live and that's what I try to do. I think most people probably would too, if they thought about it. It just saddens me when I turn on the news and all I see is... death isn't the right word. Carnage. There's nothing natural about what we're seeing on our TV screens every night and that's why I think it's all the more important to hold onto some of the more peaceful aspects of death, if we can find them. That's what I tried to represent in my poem.

Anyway, to anyone who's got this far, sorry if this seems like a darker post... I'm just in a bit of a melancholy mood at the moment. I've said more here than I intended to, more about myself than I usually do... and that's okay because increasingly this blog is becoming a window to my thoughts on life, and I can't do that without investing some of myself into it as well. And it's helping me sort through things more than I expected.

But I'll have something lighter for you tomorrow.