Most of your life you don't
think of the eventual ending. When you are young, you are preparing
for the rest of your life. When you are a young adult, you are
working to establish a good life. When you are an older working
person, you are preparing for retirement. When you retire, you plan
on all the things you have put off to do in your retirement. We all
face an ending sometime, but we tend to put off thinking about it
because we have more immediate things to think about.
I am now 10 years into my retirement
and have end stage renal failure. That means that my kidneys quit
functioning and without them my whole body would be poisoned and I
would die. I am now on dialysis (a way to filter my bodily fluids so
they don't
poison me). I was researching on the internet the life expectancy of
someone on dialysis. It's
hard to be definitive because so much depends on the general health
of each individual, but it appears that I should have between 3 and
10 years with an average of 5 years of life expectancy at this point.
It's good to be
prepared. So many others have no idea of how much longer they will
live and it is hard to budget and prepare when it is so nebulous. In
my situation, I now know about how long I have and can no longer put
off till some future date those things that I have always wanted to
do but would get to later. Later is now.
Actually, it's
comforting to have a glimmer of my mortality. It helps me prepare
and get said and done what needs to be.
I have had a wonderful life up to and
including this point. I can't
complain. Looking forward, I want to finish up some projects around
the house and leave some notes behind of thoughts I have had and
knowledge that I have gained. I'm
really not sure what lies ahead, after death, but it might be a new
adventure in another realm. I will go ahead of many of you and be
waiting on the other side. It's
hard to think that this persona that I have developed over all these
years will cease to exist – it seems to be a form of energy and, as
we all know, energy cannot be destroyed – it can only change form.
I hope that the I of me will continue to exist in this vast
multiverse. If not, I suppose I won't
know the difference.
I
know that I don't want burial – just cremation and
ashes scattered in locations where my daughters and family will have
pleasant thoughts remembering. I don't want a long
drawn out end-of-life sequence where they extend, by mechanical
means, a miserable life for a short time. I'm
quite ready to accept a quick and painless death without a lot of
fanfare. Many of my friends and loved ones have preceded me and I
look forward to spending some time getting reacquainted. I guess the
question is: does time exist in eternity? And are there alternate
universes where I exist without the dialysis? Many things we
don't know and may not find out, ever. But I'm
glad I lived when I lived and how I lived and am glad for all the
friends and family who shared this time with me. It has been
exceptional.
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