What can you do when you’re facing death and that death is your own? Of course, we’re ALL facing death, we ALL die, and some people will say life itself is the illusion and we should just shrug and go on. But what if you’re not a very good Buddhist.
First of all, there are strategies that I would NOT recommend.
1. Denial.
2. Crawling under the bed to hide among the lint bunnies.
3. Crying and whining.
4. Blaming.
5. Asking why, why, why or what does it mean.
6. Begging someone to make it better.
The religious strategy (prayer, meditation, asceticism, penance) might work for you but if it does, you don’t need my advice.
This is what I recommend, but not all of them at once and only an angle that really works for you. This stuff is highly personal, even though death is universal. (The only reason an HIV virus itself doesn’t die is because it was never alive in the first place -- it’s only replicable.)
1. Personify death, the way Ingmar Bergman did (“You old cloaked death’s head, I will make chess moves that keep you at bay!") or the way the Westerns did (“Draw, you sunnavabitch! I’m gonna plug you full of holest!”). Talk to Death, tell him/her you know who else he’s scythed down and how you hate him for it and will not buckle in front of him.
2. Personify the universe and ask to be forever part of it, which is a request bound to be granted since once we exist we can never un-exist, no matter how dead we are, because our impact on time and place will go on down the centuries like the reverberation of a struck gong. Even if it was modest, even if it was only occupying space, your body had breathed in molecules, transformed them and breathed them out. That’s not even mentioning food. Think of how that monkey sold at market for someone’s dinner has now changed the fates of entire populations.
3. Stiffen up and play a role for the sake of your comrades. “Take away that blindfold! I don’t need it. Gimme a squib of marijuana -- I don’t want your tobacco.” Head high, shoulders square, defiant and gallant. And what else could you do while you still can? Write a letter? That counts.
4. Think of a hero (book, movie, real life person, mythology) and do what he would do. (“She” will also work. What would Sheena, Queen of the Jungle do?) When I get a little closer to the end, I intend to channel Sean Connery. At present, I’m settling for Christopher Hitchens who is meeting his prospect of death with amazing moxie for an atheist -- but wait, just what the heck IS he at this point?
Nothing wrong with “being Tim.” What would Timo do? What would Timothee say? You know, of course. Just got to ask yourself to bring up his image in your head.
5. Start with your own deep identity. “I am Flare!! I burn brighter than a volcano! Deep inside is a core of magma that can light up eternity and consume small towns! Death is an inconvenience. I am a comet in your sky!”
6. Invent the other side of death. My mother, dying, said, “I hope the next planet is as much fun as this one was.” She was faking it, trying to get us to laugh, and it worked. If reincarnation turns out to be a true story, what will you come back as? Tell us, show us. Make us laugh.
7. Get someone to help you by sitting beside you, maybe asking questions or maybe even holding your hand or even all of you, if necessary. Then sort your guts and plumb your heart. Tell it out, testify, witness, story, narrate, sing, draw, act it.
8. If you’re really tough, you could just write it out alone. But then you could write out what you feel, leave it until the next day or change colors of ink or turn the journal upside down, and then answer yourself. What would you say to yourself if you were someone else?
9. Never give up hope. Lots of people were told they were going to die and then they didn’t, which was awkward since they had given away all their clothes and had failed to pay the rent.
10. Death is not what hurts. Life hurts. When you get to death, you’ve won. You’re THERE. Not that there’s any particular hurry, esp. if you have comrades who love you.
Here’s a prayer. Sorta. It’s for me, but you can use it.
“Hey Cosmos! Hey Dark Matter! Hey Wormholes and Strings and whatever else you’ve got lying around out there in space! Pay attention! Here I am in this corner of the universe with my tiny fleshly life. I know that I’m basically a stack of muck worth a few dollars as chemicals but temporarily organized into something capable of sustaining a flame of consciousness that dances in my head and a drumhead heart that beats in my chest. There’s nothing wrong with temporary, but I’d like it to be a long temporary -- if you don’t mind.
“When my flame goes out and my muck drops to join the ground and the beat of my song has been silenced, know this: I was here. I counted. I saw the world and parts of it were good, parts of it were bad. I laughed and cried and fucked and kissed and did all that stuff. I saw the sun come up in the morning and go back down at night and I knew it wasn’t really gone -- just the other side of the planet. When I’m ‘over,’ think of me as being on the ‘other side of the planet.’
“Hey Rings of Uranus! Hey Pluto even if you aren’t a planet anymore! Hey Double Stars and Red Meanie Stars and planets with or without life. I was here. Once Time lets you happen, there you are -- always a part of Time. Time is forever. Don’t believe me? Well, I’m coming to see about that! Make some more space!”
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