“I go down to the shore in the morning

and depending on the hour the waves

are rolling in or moving out,

and I say, oh, I am miserable,

what shall— what should I do?

And the sea says

in its lovely voice:

Excuse me, I have work to do.”

– Mary Oliver

 

 

“Why,” said my brother-in-law, tears streaming from his eyes as he held his newborn, “do we bring these innocent children into the world, knowing that they’re doomed to die?”

“And why…” he continued,  wiping the back of his hand against the betrayal of his tears, “…why the hell can’t I stop crying?”

I woke from that particular dream segment this morning. (As an aside, it should be noted that my brother-in-law is retired and his kids are grown up. The only babies in his life are grand-ones).

But then, dreams aren’t always about reality right?

Right?

The other night’s dream delivered an old friend in an old-style coffin, the kind of wooden boxes that show up in cartoons starring Dracula. The coffin was on a gurney in a hospital room. I slipped into the room to pay my respects, placing a goodbye letter in the coffin.  I lit a candle. The light flickered in the room as I stood silently beside my dead friend.

Suddenly, he sat up, and then, dear God, he crawled out of the coffin. I slammed myself against the wall, terrified he would see me. I was blasted awake from my rabbitting heart.

You might say that dying and death have been on my mind lately.

Some say that we play all the parts in our dreams, so perhaps my brother-in-law is only voicing my daytime wish to stop crying all the time.

As for the other dream, it’s had me asking myself whether that Lazarus story was such a good idea. I can’t begin to imagine how confusing it would be to deal with a resurrection, especially if the person was only brought back to their pre-death state of health. It would mean having to go through the whole debilitating process of watching someone die all over again. What could be more cruel – for either party?

These questions, and others like them, dog me all day and then hound me in my dreams.

In between these nocturnal landscapes, where people don’t stay dead and babies are born to suffer, those same questions toss off their dreamland costumes, wake me up and torture me with random bouts of insomnia.

I want off this crazy carousel.

Unlike the movies, there is not often any real drama in death. Instead, there is a terrible mundaneness, a maddening non-time when we’re waiting for someone to die. It’s not like we’re sharing last good moments with the dying person. That period has passed. Instead, we are just waiting. Waiting for it to be over. Waiting to move to the next phase, any phase, just something that isn’t this interminable nothingness. What is it with this stupid human need to feel like we’re moving somewhere?

Maybe, we are waiting to be released from this purgatorial nightmare of nothing to look forward to, and no way back to how it was, a nightmare landscape called Nowhere.

We wish for this release, fully aware that what lies beyond this limbo, is a different kind of horrible. And still, we pray for it, both for the person dying and for ourselves.

Dying goes against our entire societal contract. We have this notion, this silly premise, that if we just exert effort and plan and do, well, then…something/anything will happen. Our goals will be realized.

But dying doesn’t care about our efforts, our plans, our timeline.

Dying does what it wants, when it wants. It takes its own sweet time.

Dying teaches us to live with no answers, to embrace uncertainty and to recognise that we were never in control.

Perhaps, most importantly, dying reminds us that life is what we make of the time between birth and our ultimate demise.

Yes, there will always be suffering, but there are exquisite moments of joy and beauty too.

These are the gifts we need to remember.

These are the gifts.

We need to remember.