Before We Say Goodbye: Preparing for a Good Death. Ray Simpson
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setback or a disappointment. It might be a low biorhythm or a seasonal disorder. It might be exhaustion or depression after a prolonged period of activity.
By learning to go with the ebb tide, we learn also to go with the incoming tide. There is a time to rest and a time to act. If we fail to practise this rhythm, we fail to become renewed. We become like an overused machine which is fit only for the scrapheap.
Go with the ebb tide and, if the tide comes in again, think that you have prepared yourself for the final ebb time.
We also need to learn to flow with the seasons. We cannot enjoy the autumn if we won’t let go of summer. We can’t experience new life in spring if we have lived through winter at summer’s pace. By learning to go with the rhythm of the seasons, we embrace the cycle of death and rebirth. These cycles reflect in an earthly way a truth about the world of the spirit. If we embrace this, we also embrace death as a friend.
Let go of summer
The leaves are falling gently
In their colours of yellow and brown
Hanging on to the last
Before finally falling down.
Each letter to the earth
Is posted by the wind
For nature knows just what to keep
And what she should rescind.
Though we like to cling to warmth
And the joy of longer days
We need to restock our strength
In store for winter’s ways.
Let us write our own farewell
As the fading summer goes
Seeking a different vision
In the way that nature shows.
STEVE FRANKLIN PALMER11
Although some of us have sweet and untroubled deaths, we need to face the fact that for others dying will be a rough passage.
These things can be rough:
• Constricted breathing
• Accumulating fluids
• Terror
• Excruciating pain
• Loneliness
• Loss of control
• The death rattle
Some cry out to end it all, and a few do just that.
There is another way to approach this, however: to gain experience of coming through rough passages in life, and so also in death.
A rough passage in life might consist of any of these things:
• An illness
• A broken relationship
• An unjust situation
• Breakdown
• Debt
• Failure
Always remember that the journey is as important as the destination. How we handle defeat is more important than what we have lost. Qualities of perseverance, humility and unselfishness can only grow if we have arenas in which to exercise them.
Practise being fully present to another during a rough moment today. Hang on in there. Make it your aim to exit this life as an overcomer; to go out in triumph, not defeat.
Three kinds of death were once sought after in a popular movement. These were red, white and blue deaths.
Red was the colour of the martyrs, people of great spirit who allowed their blood to be shed rather than deny what they knew to be right and true. Stories of their noble deaths during the early centuries of the persecution of Christians stirred many people to rededicate their lives.
When the period of persecution passed, these rededicated people asked themselves, ‘Is it possible to be a martyr in a different way?’ They may have read what Jerome wrote to a young woman whose widowed mother had given away all her possessions and entered a convent:
Your mother has been crowned because of her long martyrdom. It is not only the shedding of blood which is the mark of a true witness, but the service of a dedicated heart is a daily martyrdom. The first is wreathed with a crown of roses and violets, the second of lilies.
They also read in The Life of St Martin, the first person to be officially declared a saint who had not been killed for his faith:
He achieved martyrdom without blood. For of what human sorrows did he not, for the hope of eternity, endure the pain – in hunger, in night watchings … in the persecutions of the wicked, in care for the sick, in anxiety for those in peril. 12
They therefore decided to call those who gave up home and possessions in order to serve God and others ‘white martyrs’.
The Irish came up with a third idea, that of ‘blue martyrs’ (blue being the colour of death), linked to extended penance or pilgrimage, going into exile from home comforts for the love of God.
The twentieth century had more red martyrs than any other century. Perhaps the twenty-first century will have more white and blue martyrs than any previous century? We can each be a martyr by laying aside everything that comes between us and God, or by laying down our life for our neighbour.
It is certain that, as we practise laying down our lives in any form, we shall be better able to lay them down at the curtain call.
A good way to befriend the ultimate edge of life is to reach for the edges in various aspects of life. These may be physical, moral or spiritual edges.
David Blaine, 25, buried himself alive in a plastic coffin for a week. He did this after experiencing his mother’s funeral. A year later, wearing nothing but combat trousers, boots and a woollen hat, he agreed to be entombed for two days in a six-ton block of ice. ‘I enjoy setting myself goals,’ he explained. ‘This is my way of challenging every human fear.’13
That may be bizarre, but it is good to challenge our fears.
Kevin, at roughly the same age as David, went to live in a tomb cut out of the rock 50 feet above a lough. His clothes were animal skins. Each day he prayed for an hour in the icy waters, even when a scaly sea creature, feared by local fishermen, curled itself around him. Kevin of Glendalough had discovered this truth: ‘Go to the place of your greatest fear and it will become the place of your greatest strength.’
The exploits of David and Kevin are not for everyone. Indeed, some would regard them as foolhardy, just as they would the exploits of bungee-jumpers and paragliders.
There are other ways of reaching for the edge. Howard was president of his student union, and an atheist. Some Christians challenged him to make an experiment: to do unconditionally whatever his conscience told him to do. The results were