Category Archives: impermanence

The Buddhist concept that all of existence, without exception, is in a constant state of flux, teaches us to allow things to arise and pass without fear or judgment.

What do you do for a dying person?

same battle every day
Photo Credit: Stefano via Compfight

This morning I had a dream that I was dying.

I sleep deeply and awake ready to go, so I’m hardly ever aware that I’ve had a dream, let alone remember it in any detail. But every once in awhile  I have an incredibly vivid dream—a technicolor dream that is so full of life that when I wake from it, I feel like I’ve been pulled out of reality into a place that is not quite as interesting as where I have been—the dream.

The dream that I was dying was one of those vivid dreams. So real. Super-real. A feeling I don’t have the words right now to explain. But I felt no sadness in the dream. No sadness about dying. Rather, I felt excitement about a new project I had started. Get this: I was starting a new blog post to be called, “What do you do for a dying person?”

I stayed in bed and pondered this dream. I focused on this: I am a dying person. We’re all on the journey towards death as soon we’re born. At age 61, the inevitability of death is something I am more starkly aware of than when I was 16, or even 56. I remembered when my father died. I remember the moment he died, and I remember my own thought: 89 years and it’s not enough time. And this morning, lying in bed post-dream, I thought, however long I live, it is not enough time.

I pondered my ever more impending death, oh so seriously, and then I laughed out loud. I mean, I am hardly the first person to see my mortality staring me in the face, am I?  What a cliché! Suddenly, I found it absolutely hilarious that I would consider thoughts about my inevitable death special in any way, and for a long time there in bed this morning, I laughed about what a silly human I am.

The oh, woe is me, I am dying, was not the important message of the dream.

“What do you do for a dying person?”  That was the important question of the dream.

If the dream had continued, I wonder what I would have written. Now awake, I am confident in what my answer should have been. You’re already doing it, Mary Ann. You’re already doing it.

 

senior moment

The ticket-seller at the movie today asked for $7. I thought $7 was strangely low, but I figured that might be the matinee price. Nope, it wasn’t. As I walked to the theater, I took a closer look at my ticket. She had charged me the senior price. Ack.

“Think of it this way,” my son said when I told him about it later, “you saved $3.”

Vanity, thy name is Mary Ann de Stefano. Even though every penny counts these days, I would have rather paid full price, or even be over-charged, than have an anonymous ticket-seller think I am older than I am. How pathetic is that?

Ironically, one theme of the movie I saw that day, Elegy, is senescence.

Lately, I’ve had this thought: my life is over. It’s not something I dwell on, or even believe. But the thought rather sharply passes through my mind these days with scary frequency. Friends who are somewhat older than I am (or was?) told me in the past they’ve had that same thought. I always brushed it away, called them silly, and reminded them how young they are yet. But now I know how they felt.

I’m not much different than anyone else when it comes to worries about age. In my adolescence, I thought I was immortal. In my twenties and thirties, I couldn’t see the horizon as my whole life spread before me. In my forties, when my father died, I had the stark realization that my time on earth was limited, too, and the pressure was on to be clearer about the path I wanted my life to take. The horizon came into view.

Now, the horizon is closer than ever. When I shared the my-life-is-over feeling with a friend, she understood what I meant. And she didn’t brush it off as silly. But she did say, “Be careful about that. Because it’s a choice.”

Right. A choice.

So here is my choice.  I’m am going to make it all about age and time as I hurtle towards sixty, but only to heighten my awareness of impermanence. I’m not going to fall into the my-life-is-over trap, but I am going to use that feeling like a nudge to cultivate mindfulness and the pleasure of the moment. I’ll use it to remind myself it matters not how much time I have, or where I will be in the future. What matters most, what always matters most, is what I am doing now, at this very moment. The moment is always young, always abundant.