I don’t fear the moment of death.
I think.
I mean, how can I know until I’m there? But I think it’s true.
See, I spent a lot of time thinking about my own death when I was young. I’m not sure why. But an idea had occurred to me at a pretty early age: You are 100% alone when you are born, and you are 100% alone when you die. There may be people surrounding you at the moment of your death, and certainly your mother at least is present with you at the moment of your birth, but no one can actually go through those experiences with you. Your consciousness is truly alone when you come into this world, and your consciousness will be truly alone again when you leave it. And once I realized that, I had to find a way to be okay with it.
So I practiced. I meditated. I imagined nothingness, infinity, the void. I imagined myself fading away into that nothingness. I would lie awake in bed at night and project my consciousness out into the emptiness of space. I would try to feel the cold, try to sense the complete darkness and solitude. And somehow, finally, it worked. My consciousness became so diffuse that I sensed what it would be like to cease to exist. It was very strange. But it was not frightening.
It’s hard to explain this, but I was ultimately not frightened because I sensed something looking back at me. And that something may or may not have been me, or an aspect of me. But I knew in that moment, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that my being, my consciousness, had existed in some form before the moment of my birth, and I knew with equal certainty that it would continue to exist after my death. And I have never forgotten that feeling, that knowing.
(I don’t honestly know how any of these ideas came to me at such an early age. My next-door neighbor, Jack, used to call me a “little old man.” I don’t believe in the notion of “old souls” versus “young souls.” I think all souls are actually the exact same age. But maybe some just remember more of where they come from.)
All of that being said, I have learned, however, that I am afraid of many things surrounding death. I am terrified of being surgically disfigured. I don’t want to be forced into a wheelchair. I don’t want a diagnosis of stage 4 cancer. I don’t want to be anesthetized into oblivion.
What does this mean?
I recently got an unpleasant diagnosis, and I (unconsciously) fought the doctor at every turn on every issue. Scheduling. Cost. The procedure itself. It wasn’t until the diagnosis was repeated a third time, after two unsuccessful attempts to correct the problem, that it dawned on me: Perhaps I have a problem giving up control. The doctor, whose job it is to deal with these situations and who certainly has the experience to know what should work, had suggested a course of treatment. But I was unwilling to accept that I couldn’t figure out the best solution for myself. I simply couldn’t give up that control.
I think I don’t fear the moment of death because I can tell I will be making a choice in that moment to accept (welcome?) the transition. I will presumably recognize that a moment has arrived when the only forward step is death. And while I may miss people and things, I’m not afraid to make that choice and take that step. Alone. But these other situations I describe above—surgical disfigurement, stage 4 cancer—I think what I really fear in them is the lack of control. I fear giving control of my physical body over to anyone or any situation. And I shudder to think that I might have to depend on someone else for my basic needs.
Is that weird? Does everyone feel that way?