This thing we call death and what we do about it.

I believe that life is about letting go; letting go of things like materialism, ego, fear, resentments, blame of others, loathing of self, and any belief that separates us from one another.  And our last letting go will be that last breath which we then call death.

Beyond that, I will not speculate.  But I will tell you what I suspect.  Because hope always arises daily amongst our failures, losses and short falls, I suspect that death will rise up with a continued consciousness with no end to the river of life; even without another breath.

I have a dear friend who has confided in me that she sincerely believes that she will not die, contrary to the experience of those she has known.  She does not celebrate any birthdays since this would be an admission of a beginning and for her, since there is no beginning, there is no end, no death, no beyond; just eternity now. 

For myself, this barking body would lead me to believe that it will yet have its way with me.  Besides, the evidence that life is liquid and impermanent at every turn makes me admit that I have little influence over this mortal temple even with the “green smoothies” and ginger root that I drink daily from my Vita Mix. 

At an early age, I thought cremation seemed the most natural of ways to deal with death.  But my parents were critical of such a view and felt it unnatural.  And like their church, it was thought that it was not allowing the body to return to its original form of “dust to dust”.  But what is so natural about embalming the body with formaldehyde, placing it in a metal box which is hermetically sealed and then placing that box in a cement box in the ground? 

Reminds me of the young boy who went to church and learned that Adam was made from the dust of the earth and that when he died, he returned to dust.  When the young man arrived home, he turned to his mom and said; “Mom, there is a man under my bed but I don’t know if he is coming or going.”

Ultimately, it would seem that it is the intent of the living that determines if what we do with the body is a form of defilement or not.  Allow me to offer an example.  When Gandhi died, as a beloved soul he was cremated and his ashes spread on each of the rivers in India and some of his ashes are kept in various areas of India that he may be with us all to this day.  Ironically, when Eichmann was captured, tried and hung by Israel for his atrocities to mankind in World War II, he too was cremated and his ashes spread at sea so that he could never have any peace.   

With either way or means, I really don’t care; for me it is all a case of mistaken identity anyway since I am not my body.   Today, I believe the lesser of two evils is cremation and hopefully with what the wife saves in costs, she can book a cruise through the inner passage to Alaska with a room that has a balcony.  I would like that for her.  Better yet, maybe I should pay for the cremation now and then I can go on that cruise with her.  Surprisingly, I learned the majority of burials in my state are cremation.

However, my real preference is to lay the body out on the dinning room table as I have seen done in Argentina for friends and family to visit and to show their kids what death looks like.  Then wrap the body in my favorite area rug I like that is in the dinning room so Beth can later go to Lowes and get a new rug to go with her seasonal changes of the house.  And I would hope that each of my sons would go to the Dollar Store and buy something made of plastic like whirligigs that would last at least a thousand years and wrap it up with the body so that when some archaeologist runs across the burial, he will be completely flummoxed wondering what the hell kind of traditions we had in our day.

Karen Dinesen, a Danish author, whose writings spawned the movie Out of Africa, once wrote; “God made the earth round so that we cannot always see where we are going and our final destination.”   And while death’s final breath can be anticipated, it cannot be predicted for when and how.  So we return to our breath right now and again let go of our contemplating, ruminating, and conceptualizing what might happen beyond the breath.  Because that is how life is lived, one breath at a time.

"this is the only day I have, let me use it to best advantage."                                 Ayya Khemma