Mortality

I keep thinking about my remaining days and how precious each one is becoming, you know, September Song thoughts. I find them going too fast, and I hate it when I feel like I’ve spent one unproductively. Scares me to think that I have only a few years left. Maybe more, but not necessarily. And even if more, would they be good years? As long as I can keep reasonable physical and mental health, I can always be happy. But if unreasonable, then I’d rather be dead. I really must look into a cyanide capsule I can get fitted into a back tooth, for that time when I want to go and about all I can do is bite down hard. But knowing my propensity for error, before it was time, I’d probably be sitting in a darkened theater, eating my popcorn, and bite down on what I thought was an old maid, and that would be all she wrote.

About a decade ago every now and then I’d get this wave of depression at the thought of my own mortality. It was never an intellectual thing, something to ponder. One moment I’d be thinking about what I was doing that day and then suddenly thoughts of my demise would overwhelm me and I’d feel this rush of emotion about what it actually will mean when I die. This long (all too short) practical joke will be over and what will my existence have meant? Then the feeling would go away for several months only to pop up again when I wasn’t paying attention.

I’m still a non-churchgoer and have been for most of my life, so church faith doesn’t help me in my bouts of depression. I’m too much an outsider and disbeliever to feel comfortable in churches of any order. I envision Christ on the cross and Eve offering Adam that expensive apple. I find both to be powerful images, but I don’t find much about either that I believe. I guess my skepticism must be traced back to my mother’s half-hearted Episcopalianism and my own questioning of formal Christian religious beliefs. I can relate to Adam’s preference for reading, but I can also understand why he finally put down his book and took that fateful bite.

Figuring I have five years left, that leaves me slightly more than 1800 days. Not that I plan on dying at eighty-seven, but the quality of life may not be too high beyond that time. So 1800 days may sound like a lot right now, but I know how fast they can be spent, like gold coins in profligate hands.