The toughest part about dying, I’m guessing, is thinking one’s life didn’t matter. We know this, of course – we are specks in infinities, molecules in the ocean; everything vanishes – still we cling to some hope of consequence like a drowning person to flotsam. We mattered to our kids, yes, and friends, and to the few we touched, but what happens to us when they and their descendants disappear?

            I’m feeling fine, by the by, no dire diagnoses, but the closer we inch toward extinction, the more we feel its fetid breath. 72 is not the new 27: it’s good to ready ourselves for a certain journey: what to pack, how to say goodbye?

            Our society discourages the contemplation of death, as we steer children and pets from glop that’s yukky. Why pollute the present with forebodings? Why not live it up? We’ll reach our finish line soon enough; maybe with luck, we’ll never have to think about the topic, but “go out like a light.”

            Instant extinguishment, while easier, would not be my preference. Death is our great fact, often our most memorable act; I want to taste it, know it, get it right. The poet John Donne in his later years slept in his coffin, wrapped in a shroud. While a tad theatrical for my taste – and uncomfortable – it’s the right idea. Get ready – greet your great opponent – be quiet or even, if you can manage it, glad.

            The more one gazes at death, the less it spooks. I’ve watched people make ugly, frantic deaths and the recollection lingers repugnantly, souring what went before. If you cannot exit graciously, you’ve not learned to live, flunking your existential finals. One of Shakespeare’s warriors salutes a colleague:

I’d be grateful for such a grade.

            If I can’t console myself with a dream of consequence, how to make myself easy at last? God comes in handy here – we are “welcomed home” – but that strikes me as evasive, not persuasive, the afterparty that makes the whole shindig worthwhile. I need my God now, to better me; to count on His posthumous regard feels like funking today.

            Some thoughts that soothe as I gaze. Death’s

·      common; everybody does it. As Gertrude puts it to her mopey son Hamlet: “Why seems it so particular with thee?”

·      restful. Who doesn’t relish a good sleep – and what sleep’s deeper than this? To crud up one’s afterlife with Bosch-like monsters is masochistic bosh, humans at their most willfully self-abusive. Hell was invented by the Church as an enforcement tool and to line their coffers. To hell with it.

·      conclusive. Alive, we’re beset with anxiety about our narrative. (I am, for sure.) We want to be thought well of by those who know us. We’re restless to do better, expunge the record, “leave a good impression.” Dead, we’re off the hook. Done is done, we’ve been who we’ve been, R.I.P. Not until I quit breathing, I sometimes think, will I breathe easy.

·      embracive. Dust gets along well with dust. The brook and trees and rocks out my window welcome and accommodate each other. Nothing in nature needs to make a case for itself. Each molecule in nature nutrifies tomorrow, making seeds grow. Humans grump and stomp but nature smiles. That sounds heavenly.