*Originally posted on my Wordpress blog 09.27.2022
Warning: This post contains a graphic discussion of death. If you are not in a space to be reading about death, just close it and go on to something else.
For most of my adult life, I have been curious about my night time dreams. I have kept a notebook on the bedside table and, if a dream shakes me awake or remains vividly in my consciousness upon awakening, I write it down. If I don’t write it down right at the point of waking up, it will most likely fade away and I will lose any chance I had of learning something from it. About three weeks ago, I had a short but very startling dream. In the dream, I had a premonition that I was going to be run over by a truck and I was going to die instantly. Here’s the rest of what I wrote in the night:
“Literally, here now, and then dead. I would disappear. I would be gone. I would not matter anymore. I would be gone. I need to go through my stuff. I will disappear. None of this will matter. I will cease to exist. It was going to be night time and the truck will be following me. At one point it will literally drive over me in my small VW bug, crushing me and I will die instantly. I will disappear. I will become nothing.”
So it’s a premonition within a dream. Does that mean it’s a premonition IRL? Is this dream letting me know that I will die instantly? Crushed in some way? It might not be by a truck and I might not be in my car, but will the life be crushed out of me? One can be on a bike and be crushed (not uncommon around here) and one can be crushed and die from a medical diagnosis . Is this my fate? And when?
I am intrigued because the dream tells me it is a premonition. But is it?
From the text of what I wrote in the night, I would say I was feeling the dream’s power. Death does mean disappearance in that you are no longer physically available to people you know on the planet. Death does mean that you become nothing in this material world. You cease to exist in your familiar form. What happens next? No one knows. Scary, I suppose, but the truth is we don’t really know what’s going to happen next while we’re alive so there’s that. Death isn’t really all that different from life. We just think it is.
This dream has been in the back of my mind since it woke me that night. Comically, I am uber aware nowadays while driving or riding my bicycle. Not that I wasn’t before but I’m looking for that truck in my rear view mirror all the time now. But I think the dream is really saying, yes. Pay attention. Death is coming. Death will take you whenever it wants to so, I don’t know? Be prepared? What does that even mean when you are talking about death?
I think immediately that being prepared for death means making sure that all is right in my world, making sure that I have fixed any hurt that I might have caused. Check. (at least to my knowledge). Then I think of my legacy, what is it that I leave for the world. I don’t know. It feels as if, for the most part, that has already been established. My legacy includes my children and my influence on them. My legacy includes my impact on my larger family and my community. It includes my influence on the people that I have known. It includes the way I treated people in my life. I can say that I have always attempted to be the best I could be, to be as tuned in to others as I have been to self. You can only ask that a person do the best they can do with the tools that they have. So, yeah. Legacy? Check. Of course, as of this moment, life isn’t over for me yet so both of these checked items require monitoring.
I wonder if another part of being prepared for death includes living life now. If death is coming, have I done what I want to do in this life? Again, it’s an “I don’t know” kind of answer. That bucket list thing that people talk about? I don’t have that. I enjoy traveling and would be delighted to do more but there is no travel adventure that is a MUST do kind of thing. There are people with whom I would like to visit but it’s not imperative. There are books to read, movies to see, classes to take, adventures to be had but they are all attractive and not essential. So, living life now? Check.
It seems kind of funny but the one thing that I do think I could do to prepare for death is not so much for me but for those I leave behind. I own a home and a moderate amount of possessions. My home is not stuffed with possessions but I do have a basis of comparison. When my mother died, my siblings and I cleaned out her house. The cupboards and shelves were jammed - and over-jammed - with things. It was both poignant and a big job to clean out her house. I find myself now looking critically at the things that occupy my closets and cupboards. I am starting to divest myself of possessions. I am dropping a book a day off at one of the local “little libraries”. I’m not giving up my best book friends but there are plenty of book acquaintances that can go to new homes. I could do that with clothing too. I have things I used to wear to work but never wear now. Let them go to new homes. Ditto some kitchen items that I maybe used when the kids were here but not now. Let them go. In fact, it feels good to let things go. It makes the house feel more expansive. When I die, there will still be stuff to go through but it will be manageable. And, possibly, between now and the time that I die, I will move away from this house. If so, then my culling now makes that job easier for myself.
All this thinking about death. Again, I don’t know. I need a way to fully grasp death. Yes, I have lost loved ones and I know how it feels to be left behind but I don’t know how it feels to be the one going. Can I compare it to moments in life when I have taken leaps into the unknown? How’d that work out for me? Usually, in the end, it all worked out just fine. If that’s the example I have to go by, then maybe I can practice simple curiosity. I can think of death as transformation of a sort. We human beings are made of energy. The laws of energy say it can be neither created nor destroyed. So that leaves transformation. I can stay open to a transformation of some kind. I can pay attention to the things I wrote about here and just wait? I don’t know.
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