Death is an unbreakable contract, you may hide from it, not wishing to discuss it, hoping it will simply pass you by. It's not just yourself which death impacts, but also your loved ones and friends.
I read an interesting article on the BBC website today about how carers should fall silent after a patient's death. This silence allows a time for reflection as often surgeons, carers and nurses are so quick to move to the next patient, their thoughts drifting away - perhaps running from their own mortality, their own thoughts of death.
There has been some studies which suggests that our consciousness doesn't die with the body - it can take time - just because our heart has stopped pumping or our brain has ceased functioning doesn't necessarily mean that our minds, our awareness, soul or spirit has also stopped functioning.
What a wonderful way to remember and respect a patients life and existence in this world - by taking some time out in reflection and working through their own grief and thoughts about dying.
Death is an uncomfortable word for most people for we never know when our time is up and the fear of the unknown.
I have discussed it with my partner - what would happen if one us dies before our time. He knows my wishes and I know his as well as how we will continue to live our lives after the other has gone.
Once it's out in there in the open and discussed it helps to create understanding that death is just a natural part of our process, of being human. One way I look at death is thinking that death is the place and space I return to before I was born.
By being at peace with death or at least accept that you are going to die at some point helps you to enjoy your life, being present in this moment in time.
How do you cope with death, your own mortality?
Here's my favourite poem by Mary Oliver, I first heard this on a meditation retreat before we started a meditation. It's is such a beautiful poem and I will always remember where I first heard it and the emotion it evoked within me. Life is beautiful and each day a gift.
The Summer Day, by Mary Oliver
Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?
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