Mors Omnibus Communis

The Latin makes the post sound interesting.  I'll save you the trouble of using Google - It means "Death comes to all men" (or, "all things").

I have been sick the last three days, with a fever and muscle aches.  This is the second time in a month, which is not normal for me.  Coupled with the sickness, though, is a form of - not depression, exactly, but a constant focus on my own demise.  I am sure many people go through this, a kind of grieving process for your own mortality.  (I know - I Googled it, and "Accepting own mortality" has 12 million hits.)

Perhaps it is this phase in life - the acceptance that one's life is finite, not the knowledge of it, but the full total acceptance - that leads to "mid-life crisis".  After all, why think about death when you can buy a sports car, ditch the wife for a silicon-implanted 20-something, and pretend you have a new lease on life? 

Maybe I could go the other direction, and become an old man before my time.  Take up dominoes, play checkers in the front lawn with an old coon hound, watch Lawrence Welk, and complain about all the "Noise" the radio stations are playing.

Nah, that doesn't sound like me either. 

Shakespeare wrote "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once."  I always believed that it was the running away that caused the "coward" to "die" a thousand times, but now I wonder if it isn't the worry, anxiety, and fear that the Bard was referring to.  If so, I am a coward.  I have tasted death hundreds of times, in my worry and fear.

I am a Christian.  I believe there is an afterlife.  I believe in the resurrection of all men.  "It is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgement."  I don't fear death, but dying scares the crap out of me.

I wonder why it bothers me so much.  I am a reasonably logical fellow.  I accept that everything that lives will die.  There just seems like there should be an exception for ME.  That seems selfish.  Ok, an exception for you, too.

Maybe it is because this is one of the areas where I have NO control whatsoever.  I didn't get a vote.  I was never asked my opinion.  I can't opt out of it.  I can't choose to pay a tax rather than go along with it.  (Yes, that was a dig at Obamacare)   (Side Note - I find it funny that spell check suggests replacing Obamacare with Macabre.) 

I assume this, like other overwhelming situations, needs to be handled using "Elephant Mastication".  (How do you eat an Elephant?  One bite at a time.)  Some things make it easier to take a bite.  This blog, for example, helps.  A warm bed with a soft body makes the nights feel less dark and scary.  Even knowing that all mortals before me faced the same inner turmoil makes gives me hope that I also may come to fully accept it.

Dylan Thomas wrote a famous poem, urging his father to fight death, to not give in.  It starts: 
"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."


I feel he was wrong.  When it is time, I pray that I will face my death with dignity, that I will be able to comfort my family with my acceptance. 

I know my life will end.  I just pray it is not too soon.