S-l-o-w Learner: Life and Death

S-l-o-w Learner is a series based on the premise that I seem to require more time than most to learn basic life lessons.

As I was following the casket at the funeral of yet another friend who had taken her last breath a few days earlier, I was once again struck with the realization of how fragile and fleeting this experience we call life really is. Walking along the corridors of the mausoleum past marble enclosures housing the departed, the muffled sounds of crying and shuffling feet echoing through the halls, I wondered how soon this memory would fade amid my daily preoccupations.

I listened to and participated in the comforting exchange of words among the mourners – the renewed pledges of love, the promises of staying close and spending more time really appreciating each other and the time we have together. I don’t doubt the sincerity, the good intentions, but I wonder about the follow through.

It seems that no matter how often I’m confronted with another ending, another experience of the narrowing circle of family and friends, it doesn’t take long to absorb the new reality and carry on as if nothing is more important than my personal agenda. I suppose this response, variously referred to as moving on, bouncing back, persevering, and letting go of the past, is a natural survival mechanism, and I don’t dispute it’s value. But do I learn anything; do I change, as a result of so life-altering an event as death?

When I take a hard look at my reaction, I realize that I may be operating under the dubious assumption that death is for other people. Regardless of the number of memorials I attend and the fact that loved ones with whom I’ve had a deep connection are no longer here, my behavior would indicate a person who thinks he has unlimited time to stop and smell the roses but only after all the important details of daily existence are attended to. While I would never express such an irrational notion out loud, I have only to look at what I do each day, operating for the most part within my carefully crafted parameters.

I envy people who seem to live more fully in the present and become more connected to others after having what they describe as near death experiences. Presumably surviving a miraculous firsthand confirmation of their own death is the lightning bolt needed to clear the fog of self-absorption.

You would think that watching someone you love take their last breaths and feeling the stillness of their absence as you walk behind their empty shell toward their final resting place would be a near enough death experience. It seems to me the very definition of slow learner that I still resist perhaps my most important lesson, not to miss the essence of life in the process of being busy living.

~ A.G.R

Comments

[Janice Ladden]

I have never seen anybody die but I sure know of many people who wished to die at one point of their lives. One of the worst cases is a happy young girl I knew who was involved in a horrible car crash. Her mom, who was driving, was killed instantly, while she survived - with both feet amputated. She really wished every time that she was dead; even missing her sessions in physical therapy Dallas. Tx but her therapist was a very friendly woman, married with no children and she "adopted" her as her own daughter. She slowly changed her life, until one day she asked for and started reading her school books. It was like pulling her out from the jaws of death and her family was over enjoyed with her miraculous recovery. There is no such feeling of happiness as that seeing a young girl want to live again.