What feeling do I have that I find most difficult to share with you? DYFF.

Dear LORD:

Help me to be completely open and honest with my sweetheart. Amen!

MDDL:

Your MEQ just now was laughing at my joke. I love to make you laugh!

The feeling that I have that I find most difficult to share with you (indeed the most difficult feeling that I have to deal with in my own heart) is my fear of death, dying and disease.

I dread my death. I dread the process of dying. I am afraid of being in pain. I am afraid of being sick and a burden on my family. I am afraid of losing my mind and faculties.

In recent years, as my health has declined and I have become more and more uncomfortable physically, I have dealt with this feeling day-to-day. It is not a good feeling. It is very strong at times. I have described to you before when I will wake up in the middle of the night , overcome by a feeling of dread and apprehension. That is my death, stalking me, hunting me, waiting to make the kill. He is not my friend. But he is a very close companion.

You must remember, for you have been with me through much of it, that death has been a close companion much of my life.

OK, let’s go through the litany.

First there was my father who was obsessed with death and made a point of creating as many near death experiences for himself and those around him as possible. Who according to his own estimation was personally responsible for the deaths of at least 10,000 human beings as a result of all of the bombing he did during his years at war. Who constantly was haunted by death, as I am.

Then there was my mother who he drove insane, who herself courted death, attempting suicide multiple times during my life. (I have honestly lost count.)

Then there was my sister at the age of 29 shooting herself with a 32 caliber pistol, fulfilling my father’s instructions.

Then there was my father, dying at the age of 64, 10 years older than I am today. I had to literally abandon him in favor of my mother as he lost his mind when the cancer ate away at his brain. Whose sole companion became a Baptist minister. The only word I have on the last few days of his life was from this man, a stranger to me, whose name I cannot even remember, but who took my place in comforting my father, a man I hated my entire life, during the last few hours of his life.

Then finally, again, was my mother, who I literally had to pull the plug on, figuratively speaking, by telling my brother not to take her to the hospital again, to simply “let her die”, thus becoming the proximate cause of her death as much as the cancer which ate her body up.

Is it any wonder after that litany of experiences that I view death and the process of dying in our current society with horror? That I would prefer suicide (I actually prefer the term euthanasia), while still whole, fully sane, capable of making my own decisions, and not a burden on my family, once the reality of the end is clear.

This was the way of all societies but ours until very recently. The horrifying way in which we allow the sick to linger is an invention of our modern medical industry nothing more. It is like the death of Sean I described earlier in which my parents for some insane reason (probably the cost) refused to put him down when his death was very obvious, and allowed him to whimper in pain until his final death. I swore at that point in my life (which actually I now realize was my first really close brush with death) that I would not do that to myself or to anyone I loved if I had a choice.

I have spoken many times about my desire to live 1,000 years. It is actually not a joke. I fear death so much I hold out in my mind the possibility of extending my life indefinitely through age reduction therapy, which may become available in about 20 to 30 years. That would allow you with your mind intact to rewind your age to young adulthood multiple times. Whether that will ever be a reality is debatable, but it is an insight into my own mind that I must construct such fantasies in order to function.

I seldom discuss this. I prefer not to. Death is never a pleasant subject. Suffice it to say, I am not at peace with my own death because I have seen too many deaths of those I love which were violent, tortuous, and long. My fear of death, and my unwillingness to accept it, is born out of experience.

You are here so I will close.

Love
Me