death-and-dying

But it's hard to explain, Mitch. Now that I'm suffering, I feel closer to people who suffer than I ever did before. The other night, on TV, I saw people in Bosnia running across the street, getting fired upon, killed, innocent victims... and I just started to cry. I feel their anguish as if it were my own. I don't know any of these people. But--how can I put this?--I'm almost... drawn to them.

No person can escape the germs of their eventual deterioration and destruction. A round-table of physical breakdown and death awaits the rich person and the poor person, as well as the common people and world leaders. The skulls of noble men and savages alike litter the streets of ancient cities. Modern humans live longer than the ancient people did, but eventually we all succumb to the same wretched infirmities.

The dimension of space and time, represented by what is transpiring in the here and now, is all that we will ever know. Unlike the continuum of perpetual time and infinite space, everything that we know will experience disruption, dissolution, disintegration, dismemberment, and death. The inevitability of our ending represents the tragic comedy of life. Much of our needless suffering emanates from resisting our impermanence rather than embracing our fate. Only through acceptance of the events and situations that occur in a person__ life including suffering, and by releasing our attachments, will a person ever experience enlightenment.

Death is the destroyer and giver of sense.

It is the honey which makes us cruel enough to ignore the death of a bee

Her body accepted my brutal seed and took it to swell within, just as the patient earth accepts a falling fruit into its tender soil to cradle and nourish it to grow. Came a time, just springtime last, our infant child pushed through the fragile barrier of her womb. Her legs branched out, just as the wood branches out from these eternal trees around us; but she was not hardy as they. My wife groaned with blood and ceased to breathe. Aye!, a scornful eve that bred the kind of pain only a god can withstand.

I know you__e tired_but this is your time, Laney. Claim your power. Make everything_from the beginning until the end_make it all count.

Although it's great to appear to a feast, home is always sweet, though it may be lonely and cold like death

The biggest magic of the world is DEATH.

I don't want my life to be defined by what is etched on a tombstone. I want it to be defined by what is etched in the lives and hearts of those I've touched.

We try so hard to put our mark on things, we like to tell ourselves that what we do has import or will last. But the truth is, we're all just passing through. So little survives us. And when we're gone, it's simply the memory of others that keeps our time here alive. And when they're gone... That's why - when I go - I'm asking that my dust gets tossed on the water. Because ends up floating away.

There is a continuity in our lives__ strain of music that flows through it all, unaltered by death or pain. It is true that in the face of pain and death, we are very small. But in the face of life and memory and love, even death is very small.

Lacking natural equilibrium, I used writing as an illustrative means to center myself in a world filled with haziness and uncertainty. My self-drafted obituary will not bemoan death but shall celebrate life by giving heartfelt thanks for all the people that brightened actuality with their kindness, friendship, noble acts of charity, and expressions of universal goodwill. It was a privilege to exist in this wrinkle of time with many people devoted to burnishing the sharpen edges of life. The heavens blessed me with many years to discover why it is beautiful to live and die in a world where the hills and wind, the rivers and seas, stars and moon, and revealing sunlight shall persevere.

The ending shouldn't determine the meaning of anything, a story or a life. Logically, I don't think it can--didn't Heidegger say something to that effect? That the meaning of all our moments cannot be contingent upon an end-point over which we have no control? That if we are happy right now, that means something, even if we die tomorrow? Narrative integrity is overrated. I don't need to know that the story of my life has a happy ending to enjoy it. A good thing, too, because I hear all the characters die in the end.

This is unbelievable,_ James said. __ mean, you guys are out here planning to build an armored car out of my dad__ old, and I mean old, car. Mom is in the house making cookies like this is just an everyday occurrence. Once this starts, you guys probably won__ live through it, and nobody is acting like it__ a big deal. I don__ know that I__ comfortable with my parents preparing for their funeral._ __veryone has to die of something, son,_ Rick said. James looked stunned. __o you are thinking about that as a possibility? Then why go to all the trouble of putting armor on the car and putting in that big engine?_ __ecause I have to get back to the starting point, which in this case is the Deal__ Gap,_ Rick answered. __nd the car won__ make it if I don__ make modifications._ __nce they figure out what you__e doing and where you__e going, they__l ambush you. You won__ be able to get out of it. They__l gun you and Mom down in cold blood._ James was trying to hide the emotion from his face.

He tried to disguise how tired and ill he was, how depressing the thought of death was to him and how he spent his days and nights thinking up schemes of living beyond what the prognosis said. His hope, if not his heart, would find a way.

The dead only knows their world.

There's a saying that you can't put a price on a human life, but that saying is a lie because we have. We have, and it's so much lower than you would think. Yes, human life has its price like anything else, and will continue to do so for as long as it doubles as a commodity.