Death Be Not Proud

I realize I haven't been blogging a whole lot lately, but that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking. In fact, I have..been thinking, thinking, thinking.

It is difficult for me these days to contemplate the world that is being remade. The U.S. has gone from a leader of the free world, to a near pariah. Leadership displayed as bluster, ignorance, prejudice and just plain nastiness holds the center stage. 

Of late, I find I can barely listen to the news. When I drive, I frequently have on satellite radio--NPR, or MSNBC, or CNN. But of late I can't bear to hear the drumbeat of destruction and the endless panel conversations about what it all means.  What does it mean anyway?

OK--so why the title of my post?  Death be not proud. Of course, the line is the opening for John Donne's Holy Sonnet 10.*  You can read the whole poem at the close of this entry.

So, what do I do instead of listen to the depressing news of the day?  I sometimes think about death. Lest you think me morbid or focused on a depressing subject, not so.  Every day, when I walk our dog, we go to a cemetery two blocks away from where we live. As I walk along, I frequently read the grave markers. I find myself doing the math of a lifespan in my head. Some are very short--mere weeks for babies who are born and then die. Some are several years--I do not know the circumstances, but there are possible explanations--a childhood disease, or maybe an accident.  Others that are several decades long--say in the 20s or 30s--offer another set of possibilities: killed in combat maybe.  Finally, there are the markers that denote a long life span. The common element for all, of course, is the inevitability of death.

So, why has this subject seized my mind? Well, perhaps it is because a friend of mine is dying. She is not a close friend, but a friend nevertheless.  She reached a point in her treatment for cancer when medicine could no longer "cure" her. So, she returned home and has been put on a diet which includes NO solids. Understandably, her death is imminent, even though she does not know the day.

Several days ago she posted on FaceBook "I'm still alive today... Friends visited so we have had a lovely day of conversations and a lot of puking actually. But it beats the alternative and we are laughing a lot."

Three weeks ago she posted this: "Sunday I had a very small group of close friends from church and other venues in my home for a Service of Transition, Anointing, and Healing. Padre did a service that was beautiful and so helpful for me as I was anointed like the dead are for burial and friends laid hands on me to pray. They covered me first in a funeral pall. Afterwards we celebrated the eucharist together. I wanted this particular blessing to mark that my upcoming death will be a sacred and holy transition. . .These past two weeks have been filled with notes of affirmation and wonderful shared memories helping me understand that I have lived my life as faithfully as I could, and spent myself in service to others as much as I could. I am rich in memories and friends around the world. Thanks be to God."

Clearly, this woman' approach to death is very much in keeping with the sentiment of John Donne's Holy Sonnet 10. 

And how does it connect in any way to the news of the day?  Just this. Nothing is eternal in this world. Powers and rulers and kingdoms all pass. History shows us that no human effort has lasted forever. Empires rise, empires fall. Rulers come, rulers go.  However, John Donne's assertion is that even though death rules over all, death itself cannot destroy eternity.

Heavy thoughts, indeed.  OK--time for my daily walk with our dog to the cemetery.
------------------------

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee

Mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so;

For those whom thou think’st thou dost overthrow

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,

Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,

And soonest our best men with thee do go,

Rest of their bones, and soul’s delivery.

Thou’art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,

And poppy’or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell’st thou then?

One short sleep past, we wake eternally,

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

by John Donne, 1572 - 1631

Matters of the Heart

Of late, I have been ruminating on the nature of the human heart.  More about the reason in a minute.  One of the things I think about is the way in which humans are generally binary—most of us are born with two of everything: two eyes, two ears, two arms, two legs, two lungs, two kidneys, etc.  When we get to some parts of us, we are born with one—one brain, one heart, one liver.  These one of a kind parts of our bodies are, understandably, mostly indispensable.

For centuries, humans thought of the heart as the center of human life—kind of a brain, seat of wisdom and knowledge and moral judgment, as well as of all life.  Understandably, when you consider how indispensable the heart is.  Oh, I know other organs are indispensable—your brain, for example.  But there is something about how we view the heart that is just...well...different.

So, why this rumination?  Well, as I have previously written, I had experienced over the past several years bouts of atrial fibrillation.  That essentially occurs when the heart begins to put out conflicting signals as to when to beat.  The heart functions on its own electrical system—the S-A node setting the pace, and the A-V node bridging the atria and the ventricles.  In atrial fibrillation, another area sends out a rogue signal to beat, somewhere in the atrium, so the atrium beats, and then the S-A node sends out its signal, so the heart beats again.  Chaos—yup, that’s what it is.  A good description of what it feels like is a fish out of water flopping around on the deck.

And that’s what I have experienced.  The immediate correction is to shock the heart back into regular rhythm—which I have had done several times.  The first time the “cure” lasted for a year and a half.  Then the interval shortened to a year, then less, and finally to several weeks.  So it was time to consider another option, if there were one.

Well, TA DA, there was one.  It’s called cardiac ablation.  I’ll let you go here to see what that entails.  It is not a simple procedure.  The doctor advised my husband and me it could take 4 to 5 hours. Mine took a bit over 6 hours—so, I am told.  I don’t recall any of that, of course.

Before I went into the hospital, I told very few people.  No need to parade my medical history around and share it with the world.  Naturally, my husband knew, and our children with their spouses.  My father, and siblings knew.  Also a handful of friends.  That was it—no posting on Facebook or any such public place.

The day before I went into the hospital, one friend called and asked if I was nervous.  Well, I pondered a bit—and said, no, not really.  Then my dad asked how serious the procedure was—could it result in death?  Well, the answer is it could—rarely does, though.  But, the same can be said about getting in a car and driving down the highway. 

Did I think about death?  Naturally.  I think about death from time to time.  I am not immortal. The bargain of life is we are born, and we die.  I also like the opening words from my denomination’s Brief Statement of Faith:  “In life and in death we belong to God.”

So, while I think about death, it holds no fear for me. In fact, I have mused that dying during surgery would be an “easy” death compared to what some people go through.  It is for the living that death is hard.

Oh, please don’t think me morbid—this blog is, after all, about “matters of the heart”—both in the sense of what our hearts mean to us as living biologic creatures, and also what our hearts mean to us in those that we love.

Perhaps a brief poem by X. J. Kennedy (whose birthday is today, August 21, as I write this) speaks words I would say--

“In Faith of Rising”
When all my dust lies strewn
Over the roundbrinked ramparts of the world
I can be gathered , sinew and bone
Out of the past hurled
Delaylessly as I
Flick thoughts back that replace
Lash by dropped lid, lid to eye
Eye to disbanded face.
No task to His strength, for He
Is my Head—Him I trust
To stray the presence of His mind to me
Then cast down again
Or recollect my dust.

And then these words, from Sir Walter Raleigh, who penned them the night before his execution.

"Epitaph"
Even such is time, that takes on trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us but with earth and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days;
But from this earth, this grave, this dust
My God shall raise me up, I trust!

In matters of the heart, I trust.

Unto Life Eternal

Yesterday, my husband and I attended the funeral of one of our church friends.  As is customary, the minister comforted the family members with the traditional words of the promise of life eternal.  

As I thought about our friend's funeral, one concluding irony occurred this morning, when I checked Facebook.  There was a suggestion that I might want to "friend" the woman whose funeral we had just attended yesterday.  So, even after our deaths we live on in many ways.  

We live on in blogs too--one of the first blogs I began reading was written by an incredibly brave woman who was slowly dying from ALS.  She had been a vigorously active woman in her life before her disease.  Her blogs were inspiring, warm, and full of a happy love of life.  But, over time, the entries she wrote became fewer and fewer--with longer distances between posts.  Then one day, there were no more posts.  I kept wondering--how was she?  And I kept checking her blog for news, any news.  Finally after a year of silence, there was a sweet final post--she had died.  Her name was Pam, and the final tribute to her was a quote from her: 

I have ALS, it does not have me

Art does.

She was an artist who, as she lost her ability to draw with her own hand, found new ways to express her creativity.  So she lives on in many ways:  in her art, in the memories of all who loved her --  her children, her grandchildren -- and in her blog which is still "out there" for anyone to read.


Some researchers assert that we humans are hard-wired from the moment humans began to exist to contemplate a life beyond our human existence.  Early burial sites are discovered that include various items placed around the deceased to ease passage to the next life:  food, coins, clothing, various objects to speed the journey.  Many religions have woven into their belief systems various concepts dealing with a life beyond earthly existence.  No one religion has a claim to an exclusive belief in the next life.

But, an amorphous promise of life beyond our present existence does not satisfy our human need to be remembered.  We want our existence to be acknowledged--some of us have children, and grandchildren.  That's one way to achieve immortality, for a while.  Some of us have places--roads, buildings, bridges--named after us.  Some of us give MONEY to make sure we have places named for us.  Some of us do great or terrible deeds, and history remembers us.

Please understand, this is not an invitation to argue the subject, nor is it even a challenge the assertion that we do or do not continue to exist.  This post is not to elucidate the merits of a belief in eternal life; rather it is my rumination on our human need to contemplate, and sometimes even insist, on a life beyond the life we know.  I suspect part of this drive on our part is the human need to be remembered.  After all, the only way we experience anything is through our lives.  When we no longer live, we wonder what comes next.  Do we continue? Will those who remain remember us? 

A closing thought--one of the theologians whose works I enjoy is Bart Ehrman.  His own faith journey has moved to a point where he now considers himself an agnostic.  When asked by someone whether it bothers him that his agnosticism robs him of the comfort of a belief in an afterlife, he responded--no.  Here's his reasoning: before he was born, he had no consciousness and was not troubled by that; after his death, he assumes he will have no consciousness, so why would he be troubled by that?

I know, I know.  I have tangled up two separate streams of thought--the need to be remembered with a contemplation of life eternal.  Are they different?