It has been quite a while since I have opined on this space. The life and death of John McCain bring to mind a dictum that I have carried with me from the moment that I first heard it some 60+ years ago. It is the title of this reflection...Our death defines who we are. It is a mystery that we all have to live and a truth that we can easily find within ourselves.
I spent a lot of my earlier years in a family that experienced a period of two decades during which most of my closest first degree relatives died of acute heart attacks. In fact all but my sister Jeanine and my God-Mother Grace died that way. Nevertheless, the dictum applies to them as much as to anyone else. The lives that they lived before the final event is graven in our memories by the mysterious chisel of the process that leads to death.
Consider John McCain. Two or three days after he terminated the medcine that was keeping him alive, he died. He decided that the artificial life that he was experincing through the effects of modern medicine was not true to the life that he had lived in the natural environment of pain and suffering that he had inherited from his war time experience. He must have decided that if his internal bravery was not enough to keep him upright, he would detach himself from the pharmeceuticals and accept to battle on his own. This time, as he was sure would happen, the attacker won.
I dare say that there are precious few of us who will forget the definition of self that is graven into our own beings. Some for good and some for less than good, but each and everyone bright and long lasting. Each and everyone of us is introverting our image of ourselves and asking ourselves and wondering if our death will be kind to our biography or not.
So, fear not the death that will define you. Challenge the evil potter and give yourself over to the potter who fashions beings who are kind and loving, generous and brave, just but mercifully forgiving. Now that's a definition that will get us somewhere.
Finally, remember that you are reading the thoughts of the one who reminds you that there is to be no crying at my funeral, no matter what the definition turns out to be.
I spent a lot of my earlier years in a family that experienced a period of two decades during which most of my closest first degree relatives died of acute heart attacks. In fact all but my sister Jeanine and my God-Mother Grace died that way. Nevertheless, the dictum applies to them as much as to anyone else. The lives that they lived before the final event is graven in our memories by the mysterious chisel of the process that leads to death.
Consider John McCain. Two or three days after he terminated the medcine that was keeping him alive, he died. He decided that the artificial life that he was experincing through the effects of modern medicine was not true to the life that he had lived in the natural environment of pain and suffering that he had inherited from his war time experience. He must have decided that if his internal bravery was not enough to keep him upright, he would detach himself from the pharmeceuticals and accept to battle on his own. This time, as he was sure would happen, the attacker won.
I dare say that there are precious few of us who will forget the definition of self that is graven into our own beings. Some for good and some for less than good, but each and everyone bright and long lasting. Each and everyone of us is introverting our image of ourselves and asking ourselves and wondering if our death will be kind to our biography or not.
So, fear not the death that will define you. Challenge the evil potter and give yourself over to the potter who fashions beings who are kind and loving, generous and brave, just but mercifully forgiving. Now that's a definition that will get us somewhere.
Finally, remember that you are reading the thoughts of the one who reminds you that there is to be no crying at my funeral, no matter what the definition turns out to be.
