THANATOPSIS - A View of Death

First, let me say, I’m not planning to die any time soon. As far as I know, I have no illness or other infirmities that would in any way affect my near term existence. I don’t know any more about death than anybody else, but after having just watched “Meet Joe Black” again with Justin, and after Helen and I having had lunch at the Chicken Place on Wedgewood with JR, (at which time he told us he had a dream the night before that I had died, a dream where he would wake up, realize it was a dream, heave a sigh of relief, go back to sleep and start back in on the same dream, with me dead all over again), I wanted to write something down about the reality and certainty of death, and the fact that it doesn’t scare me. When we give death a personality, (Joe Black), he becomes less a mystery. Death wraps it all up. The final ending, the "deadline", as it were.

If you haven't watched Meet Joe Black with Brad Pitt and Anthony Hopkins lately, or ever, let me recommend that you do so, (again). It's one of those movies that, to me, gets better every time I watch it. If we can see that Joe Black is coming for each and every one of us, maybe we will get busy doing and saying those things which, at the end, we might look back and wish we had said or done. I thought it especially touching that this movie showed up on DirecTV less than a week after JR's dream. I have heard "dream analyzers" say that dreaming of a parent's death indicates struggling with an approaching change in your life. I don't know if that is true, or if it is, how they would know, but supposing it is. Death is just one more piece of the ever evolving puzzle of life. Nothing more.

All the same, we tend to fear death so much we don't want to talk about it. Yet we would be so much more mentally healthy if we embraced death for what it is, the inevitable conclusion to life. A well lived life should lead to a satisfying death. The flowers bloom in the spring and die in the winter, but new flowers come back the next spring and the cycle repeats as it has for mellinia.

Each of us has a little slice of time and a a small piece of geography on which to have an impact during our living years. The very best thing we can do is be kind, be helpful to others, and to love everybody. Those things will pay tremendous dividends to you now and again, when the time comes for you to take that final walk with death, you will have made some warm memories to look back on, both for yourself and the ones you leave behind.

If you have the time, you owe it to yourself to read Thanatopsis by William Cullen Bryant. Though not everyone accepts it, it is believed that he wrote this poem when he was 17 years old. SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD!! Our English teacher at Clarksburg High School, Mrs. Euva Therrell, required us to memorize the last verse of this poem and recite it to the class, teaching us the discipline of memorization, the love of poetry, the ability to speak in public, and a pattern for life, all in one effort. She was an amazing teacher and I still owe my love of a well turned verse to her. I especially like poets who are referred to by all three names, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Whitcomb Riley, Horace Eldred Dill, Edgar Alan Poe, John Greenleaf Whittier, Henry David Thoreau, and of course, William Cullen Bryant. 

Thanks poets. I'm glad you said what you did. It's helped me. 

Now y'all read, "A Psalm of Life" by Longfellow. "Let us then be up and doing, with a heart for any fate;"...  and get busy, Joe Black will be here sooner than you realize.