…that is, a death you see coming. You’re going over, or going on…or just going. Time and geography and people coalesce. Whoever else is present, they are not participating. There is only you. It reminded me of my father, who died at 78 from a massive coronary. He’d had a couple earlier heart attacks, and my mother hated for him to be in his garden, out of sight. She was afraid something would happen and he’d have no one. But he would say, “Dying is something I have to do alone anyway.”
I have no insights or wisdom to impart, only the image of that existential singularity of time and place and person. It brings clarity: What must we do now? How must we live? What must we believe and act on that will make that last conscious thought one of peace and acceptance, and not one of regret and longing?
LIGHTS OUT
I have come to the borders of sleep,
The unfathomable deep
Forest where all must lose
Their way, however straight,
Or winding, soon or late;
They cannot choose.
Many a road and track
That, since the dawn’s first crack,
Up to the forest brink,
Deceived the travellers,
Suddenly now blurs,
And in they sink.
Here love ends,
Despair, ambition ends,
All pleasure and all trouble,
Although most sweet or bitter,
Here ends in sleep that is sweeter
Than tasks most noble.
There is not any book
Or face of dearest look
That I would not turn from now
To go into the unknown
I must enter and leave alone
I know not how.
The tall forest towers;
Its cloudy foliage lowers
Ahead, shelf above shelf;
Its silence I hear and obey
That I may lose my way
And myself.
Edward Thomas
I heard a Fly buzz
by Emily Dickinson, 1830 – 1886
.
I heard a Fly buzz – when I died –
The Stillness in the Room
Was like the Stillness in the Air –
Between the Heaves of Storm –
The Eyes around – had wrung them dry –
And Breaths were gathering firm
For that last Onset – when the King
Be witnessed – in the Room –
I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away
What portions of me be
Assignable – and then it was
There interposed a Fly –
With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz –
Between the light – and me –
And then the Windows failed – and then
I could not see to see –
Sonnet 71: By William Shakespeare
No longer mourn for me when I am dead
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world with vilest worms to dwell;
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
O, if (I say) you look upon this verse,
When I (perhaps) compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse,
But let your love even with my life decay,
Lest the wise world should look into your moan,
And mock you with me after I am gone.
Death, To The Dead For Evermore
by Robert Louis Stevenson
DEATH, to the dead for evermore
A King, a God, the last, the best of friends –
Whene’er this mortal journey ends
Death, like a host, comes smiling to the door;
Smiling, he greets us, on that tranquil shore
Where neither piping bird nor peeping dawn
Disturbs the eternal sleep,
But in the stillness far withdrawn
Our dreamless rest for evermore we keep.
For as from open windows forth we peep
Upon the night-time star beset
And with dews for ever wet;
So from this garish life the spirit peers;
And lo! as a sleeping city death outspread,
Where breathe the sleepers evenly; and lo!
After the loud wars, triumphs, trumpets, tears
And clamour of man’s passion, Death appears,
And we must rise and go.
Soon are eyes tired with sunshine; soon the ears
Weary of utterance, seeing all is said;
Soon, racked by hopes and fears,
The all-pondering, all-contriving head,
Weary with all things, wearies of the years;
And our sad spirits turn toward the dead;
And the tired child, the body, longs for bed.
Thanks, Michael, for all of these. But then, we shouldn’t forget the other perspective. The contrast between what you provided and this one are at the heart of my post.
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Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
By Dylan Thomas
Or then there is this, which I wrote three years before the death of my mother. As things worked out, I and my sister (along with her husband) cared for her over the last month, and I got the distinct impression she knew death was coming, but was afraid of it. It made me sad.
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To Sleeping Mother
When in your prolonged twilight
Will the beckoning rest of death
Entice more than the mystery
Of your life’s next happening?
Will you one day lie to sleep
And, in its sheltering mantle,
Choose some earlier dream over the
Lessening rhythm of your days?
Let us pray…
st, 2005
The English major in me thinks that is quite a good poem, Bob. In another context the last line might arouse my dismay but it works here as an acknowledgement of the almost unendurable and inexplicable contrast between a living person and a dead one. I felt this acutely when my parents died; it is precisely this contrast that gives the Iliad its hypnotic power. As for Dylan Thomas, I much prefer Greco-Roman stoicism and its portrait of quiet resignation in the face of Death’s inevitability. When facing what cannot in any case be avoided, rage—toward whom or what—scarcely seems the right tone. The death scene in the Phaedo has represented for 24 centuries the most enviable way to face one’s end.
I know, I have to read the ancients. You keep pushing me in that direction…albeit, perhaps, unknowingly.