Visiting my new home

When my wife, Lynn, who has a wicked sense of humor, refers to our cemetery lot, she usually refers to it as  "our future home."  So when the monument maker called this week to say that the granite marker we had ordered in the spring was ready to be installed, I asked her, "should we invite people to a wine and cheese--like a housewarming party?"

Laughter is certainly helpful in dealing with matters of mortality, the topic we Americans tend to avoid (except when we indulge our love of guns and watch our fellow citizens being shot nearly every day).

It was a positive approach to death and dying that led me last year to give a talk at our church on "Making Friends with Death."  The resulting essay is now almost ready for publication on Kindle.  And then this year to order a "pre-need" monument for the graves where one day our remains will lie.

I found that writing about my deepest fear was the only way to deal with it, and that talking about it with others was essential. I am not, as they say, getting any younger.  It was also useful to find quotations from wise men and women over the centuries who have, without being morbid, reflected on the fact that, as Shakespeare wrote, "all that lives must die, passing through nature to eternity."

Now, having made some basic funeral plans and preparations, I feel a bit less anxious. I try to see death as an inevitable part of life and a great transition--to what? To that unknown realm where so many people dear to me now dwell.

To talk about death is to talk about the meaning of life and the need for faith in coping with the darkness. I want to feel comfortable with the darkness, even with the fact that my identity, memory and consciousness will be forever erased when my body dies.  What remains will be, I hope, happy, at least free from the "thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to" (Hamlet again, sorry).

As the great 16th century poet and mystic St. John of the Cross wrote, "I don't know what lies on the other side, when everything for me is turned into eternity; I only know that a great love awaits me."

I thought of this when Lynn and I went alone this week to look at our new monument, carefully carved with our names (spelled correctly, to my relief). There was no need for a party.