Alive with Death

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Here’s the paradox: awareness of death clarifies life.

In my introduction to this series on The Five Remembrances, I mentioned the Buddhist practice of Maranasati or mindfulness of death and its benefits in fostering appreciation for life. In practicing Maranasati, I’m discovering that death is one of life’s foremost teachers.

So, I find it helpful to ask myself how the awareness of my inevitable death clarifies each area of my life:  my close relationships, the decisions and commitments I make, my interactions with acquaintances and strangers, how I use my time, how I use my money, what I think, say, and do. Pick any one of these and look at it in the light of your death. When I do so, I find that I have a clearer view of what is vitally important in each situation, what I can let go of, and what I most deeply desire. 

Yes, it makes a difference whether death is imminent or far off, but we don’t know, do we, when we will die. What would you change about how you live now if you fully accepted your death and the uncertainty of the time you have left? You are going to die, that is certain. When you will die is uncertain. How will you live today, knowing those truths?

Someone recommended that I consider how I would choose to live if I knew I had one year left, one month, one week, one day, one hour. So, I made a list.

Moriah, if you had one year left to live, who would you want to be and how would you want to use your time? First, I would want to spend no time trying to change the things I cannot change, which is just about everything except myself and how I choose to live. I would seek every opportunity to love, give generously, be present, and celebrate life. Of course, high on my list of how to use my time would be finishing end-of-life planning tasks for the sake of those left behind. I’d dispose of all my possessions except the essentials for the same reason. I’d hope to finish my novel and memoir because they are a kind of legacy. I’d spend as much time as possible in nature, and I’d want to write goodbye letters or have conversations with those to whom I have something particular to say. (Amusing that I think they might be more likely to listen if I am dying!)

And if you had one month of life left, Moriah? I suspect my energy would be waning, I would be sleeping more, turning inward, and disengaging from events and people. Still, if anything remains unresolved, I would like to try to resolve it, while understanding that it might be beyond my power. I’d like to flow with the process of letting go.

With one week left, I’ll be too weak to do anything but look at what’s around me; I’d like it to be nature. I’ll want to sleep and keep letting go.

One day? Love.

One hour? Love.

If these activities and attitudes become most important when my lifetime is short, are they not crucial for me in this moment as well, when my life expectancy is unknown?

Contemplating death causes me to ponder the meaning of my life. As hard as I have tried to change the world, the difference I’ve made is minuscule.

Still, every breath I take, every move I make has had an unfathomable effect, an irreversible impact. I will never know all my karma. So, while I can consciously change so very little, I am constantly changing everything. I want to do good, promote justice, relieve pain, and make peace, but I find myself with so little power to do so. However, my slightest movement, even my smallest thought, alters the world forever. What an enormous responsibility. What a paradox.

I am going to die. I don’t know when, but I want to be ready. I want, at the very least, to have my arms open to embrace death. I’d prefer for my life to be tidy, organized, complete, and meaningful, at least in my own eyes. It may be, but it may not. If death comes today, there will still be loose ends for sure.

Perhaps this year of focus on death is meant merely to clear the path, to let go of distractions so that the real work can begin. Perhaps this year is the first step, the step close in, as the poet David Whyte would say, the first step in preparation for whatever follows.

This year, I’m meeting monthly with a spiritual companion to discuss my reflections on death. I’m taking a Death Education Course and preparing all the appropriate legal and legacy documents. I’m trying to pare down my material belongings and my organizational commitments to open space and free up time for the essential. I hope to practice letting go of pet beliefs, projects, and habits in myriad situations every day.

I’ve been a Gandhi fan since early adulthood, especially attracted to his principle of the unity of means and ends: “the means are the ends, the path is the destination.” If the means are the ends, then living well is not separate from preparing to die. If the path is the destination, every attentive moment, every time I let go, every act of love foreshadows the way I will die.

Death is not only in store for me at the end of life; it is showing me, here and now, how to live.

Questions for Reflection: If you knew you had one year left to live, what would you stop doing? What would you begin? If you had only one day left, what would matter most? If you had only one hour?

Third Remembrance: Inconceivable Certainty

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Moriah, you are going to die.

No, really. Seriously. You are going to die.

This is the one thing you can be certain of.

Death is inconceivable, unimaginable, yet certain. That is the paradox: something that happens to every one of us—something we have known about since our minds became capable of self-awareness—remains fundamentally unknowable.

How do we respond to such inconceivable certainty?

First, by contemplating it as little as possible. Conventional wisdom encourages us to avoid thinking about death, to live as though we will continue indefinitely. Several readers have told me that my posts on aging and death are too much, too intense to dwell upon. They feel compelled to look away.

I understand. The temptation to look away is powerful.

Yet I am convinced that death, the one certainty, deserves a sustained and respectful gaze.

Real-life encounters with death may be frightening, ugly, mundane, or occasionally peaceful, but they reveal little about what dying actually feels like. Death is always happening to someone else, and we cannot enter another person’s experience.

For several years, I served as a hospice volunteer and kept vigil at many deathbeds. During long hours, often in the middle of the night, I watched the work of dying. I hoped these experiences would grant me insight into its mystery, but death remains incomprehensible. What I carried away instead was another paradoxical truth: death is both my unique work and completely beyond my control.

Some people seek understanding through stories of near-death experiences, many of which describe light, warmth, joy, and the presence of loved ones. One friend found comfort in the belief that her beloved grandmother and several cherished pets would greet her when she died. Yet just before her final breath, she became conscious, looked around, and asked, “Where is everyone? I thought they would have come for me?”

Rather than confronting death directly, we often surround it with metaphors. These images may comfort us, but they are necessarily imperfect because we do not know what they point to. Common metaphors include journeys (“walking each other home”), sleep and rest (“every falling asleep is a little death”), transformations (“passing away”), thresholds (the pearly gates), personifications (death as a thief), and natural cycles (winter as the season of death). While intellectually interesting, they all seem like attempts to describe what ultimately resists description.

Despite all the pain, sadness, disappointment, and failure I have experienced—along with joy, of course—I do not want life to end. I want this awareness, this self I call me, to continue in some form. Though I am tired and will become more so as I age, I cannot truly conceive of my own nonexistence. Some people speak of death as peace or rest. I worry instead that it might resemble a never-ending anxiety dream—something with which I am intimately familiar—when I would much prefer it to resemble the complete blankness of sedation for a medical procedure.

This raises a knotty question: Moriah, are you afraid of death?

Not exactly.

I am afraid of pain, disfigurement, suffocation, cold, hunger, sleeplessness, and shame. But death itself? How can I fear something I cannot imagine?

Over time, I have replaced fear with curiosity and experimented with different theories about what death might be.

I once believed in heaven and hell. For a while, those ideas fit comfortably. Eventually, however, they lost their hold on me as I came to see many religious traditions as attempts to understand the divine through human images and characteristics.

As I explored Buddhism and Taoism, other possibilities became more compelling. At present, two concepts compete for my allegiance.

The first is death as nothingness: a vast, dark void. The metaphor for this theory is outer space. I imagine myself floating endlessly in a 1980s-style spacesuit through silent, sightless, senseless emptiness. Yet even here, some faint awareness remains—not awareness of anything, but awareness of nothingness itself.

The second theory is inspired by the law of conservation of energy. In this view, the consciousness I now experience as Moriah does not simply end but transforms into something entirely new and unrecognizable, even to itself. My physical remains return to the earth or ocean, nourishing other forms of life, while whatever energetic essence animates me returns to the source from which all things arise.

I am not especially a fan of The Black Eyed Peas, but the opening track on their 2009 album The E.N.D. has captured my imagination. The lyrics begin:

“Welcome, welcome to the E.N.D. Do not panic. There is nothing to fear. Everything around you is changing. Nothing stays the same … The energy never dies.”

The Buddhist teaching of “no birth, no death” offers a similar perspective. Life and death are not singular events but aspects of an ongoing process of transformation. The concentrated energy that is presently me will disperse and perhaps reassemble into something that will no longer be identifiable as Moriah. Yet it will not disappear.

In that sense, I am infinite.

These theories satisfy my longing for connection with the source of life. They also address my incomprehension of annihilation by allowing for some form of continuation, whether formed or formless.

So I have looked death in the face—there is another metaphor—as best I can for now. I have acknowledged its certainty and its mystery. I have admitted my worry, sadness, and sense of loss when contemplating the end of my life. I have indulged my curiosity. Yet every attempt to explain death through language, metaphor, or imagination ultimately falls short.

I know I will die.

I cannot imagine what death is.

And I cannot look away from it.

What does all this contemplation of death mean for how I live today? Does it shape my daily choices and attitudes?

I will explore those questions in the next post: Alive with Death.

Questions for Reflection: How do we live with absolute certainty about something we cannot imagine? What is your own theory about what happens at death, and what emotional need does that theory satisfy?

No Escape-Only a Path

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The Second Remembrance: I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.

Ill-health is part of life—one that challenges our illusions of control, inviting us into deeper acceptance, compassion, and understanding.

.        .        .

What, exactly, is “ill-health”?

Something in the body is not functioning as it should. The result may be pain, nausea, fatigue, or an inability to perform basic functions such as walking, breathing, digesting, or eliminating. Ill-health may or may not take the form of a disease like diabetes, multiple sclerosis, or cancer, but it causes a sense of dis-ease.

Why does ill-health happen? The causes may be many, and are often beyond my control: genetics, environment, toxic exposure, or accident. Or, as discussed in the previous post, my body may be wearing out with age. Sometimes there is no discernible cause for ill-health. For those of us used to seeking answers at the tip of our fingers, this can be the most disturbing kind of dis-ease. Though we like to think that if we use our bodies well and carefully, we can avoid ill-health, discipline and preventative action can only take us so far, they do not create an impervious protective shield.

Why do we resist ill-health? We are a control-prone culture. Lack of control can provoke reactions from mild discomfort to intense fear, so we collude with one another to perpetuate the illusion of control. Faced with loss of control over our bodies, we will go to almost any length to reassert it.

Modern Western medicine focuses on control: identify the cause, intervene, cure if possible, and if not, manage symptoms. We tend to consider health our birthright, even as we refuse to recognize health care as a basic human right.  When a cure is possible, we pursue it intensely, sometimes indiscriminately, if we have the financial means. If a cure is not possible, or we can’t afford it, we rebel and rail against our misfortune.  Only as a last resort, we reluctantly accept our ill-health and turn to palliative care—to relieve instead of fix.

I’ve been fortunate. None of my conditions of ill-health is immediately life-threatening, and most are at least partially treatable. Still, since my mid-forties, ill-health has been my reality, and I, too, have struggled before reaching a measure of acceptance.  I inherited Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) from my mother. Peripheral neuropathy followed on its heels, producing numbness, tingling, and pain in my hands and feet. A couple of years ago, a cardiologist informed me I have lived with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy all my life, but I only recently became symptomatic, experiencing shortness of breath, chest tightness, pain, and fatigue.  I’ve dipped my toe into cancer, skin cancer to be exact, with a melanoma in situ on the right side of my face and squamous cell cancer on my arm. My family has a history of colon and pancreatic cancer, so I have some anxiety about developing these. Add the chronic conditions: GERD (Gastroesophageal Reflux Disease), osteoporosis, and sleep apnea, and the picture of my ill-health is complete. Naming these conditions is, in a roundabout way, part of my attempt to both control and accept them.

I‘ve patched together my own brand of palliative care, combining medications, diet, and exercise. These interventions help me exert as much control as possible; the rest I must accept, because I am of the nature to have ill-health, and more of it as I age.  

But does ill-health bring only negatives and losses, or does it, like aging, also offer opportunities and graces?  What can I learn from ill-health? Are there any up sides?  

At a basic level, ill-health may provide an opportunity to loosen control and soften into self-compassion and empathy with others who share my conditions. It may enable me to touch into my vulnerability, reveal interdependence, and offer a chance to receive care from others.  Or, with a more active approach, I can study my condition, support research financially, or participate in trials that may lead to a treatment or a cure. In this way, I may help others who share my form of ill-health.

I live in a retirement community where most of us are seventy or older. We are all experiencing some form of ill-health, and we are famous for reciting our ailments and their treatments; it’s one of our common pastimes. Even this can have its benefits. Sometimes my ill-health forges a bond with others—an understanding that can, in itself, be palliative.

The Second Remembrance is not only a caution, but also a summons. Like everything else, ill-health may provide an occasion for growth and transformation. Is this not what the Five Remembrances as a whole teach us? What cannot be avoided can be met with curiosity, awareness, acceptance, and perhaps even wonder. So, we face into ill-health, looking for the opening along with the closing, looking for the way through rather than the way out. There is no escape, but there may be a path, otherwise overlooked, toward unanticipated freedom and unexpected meaning.

Before closing this brief essay on the second of the Five Remembrances, let me remind you that my reflections arise, not from formal study, but from meditation and observation—from my attempt to grapple with the choice to intervene or accept, to discern whether to flow with or swim against the inescapable tide.

Questions for Reflection: Is ill-health as inevitable as aging and death? How do I meet ill-health—with resistance, acceptance, or both?  Do I seek to escape ill-health more than aging?  Why?

There is no escape

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The Five Remembrances (Plum Village Version, Thich Nhat Hanh)

  • I am of the nature to grow old. There is no way to escape growing old.
  • I am of the nature to have ill health. There is no way to escape ill health.
  • I am of the nature to die. There is no way to escape death.
  • All that is dear to me and everyone I love are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them.
  • My actions are my only true belongings. I cannot escape the consequences of my actions.

For the past five or six years, every January, I have chosen—or been chosen by—a single word as a linchpin for the year ahead.  It’s called the One-Word practice.  The chosen word becomes the subject of intense reflection, aspiration, and intention.  My One-Words have included: slowly, rest, flow, love, write, and Wu Wei (non-forcing).

My word for 2026 is Death.

“Why do you want to focus so intensely on death?” a friend asked.  I responded that in Buddhist practice, meditation on death is recommended to foster the fullest possible experience of life.  Maranasati, or “mindfulness of death,” reminds us that life is transient and precious and we must live with intention and purpose.

My time is limited, I explained, and I want to live as fully and consciously as possible. My friend and I both admire Mary Oliver, and, particularly, her poem “When Death Comes.”

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Like Mary Oliver, I don’t want to just pass through life as a visitor.  I want to embrace and inhabit it with amazement.

One way I am practicing mindfulness of death this year is by meditating daily on The Five Remembrances, Buddhist contemplations that acknowledge the inevitability of aging, illness, and death, the reality of impermanence, and the consequences of every action (karma).

I’ve been doing so since the beginning of January: reciting the words of each remembrance, looking deeply into their meaning, reflecting on my experience of each, and writing those reflections in my journal.  The following series of brief articles is based on those journal entries. These posts are not a scholarly exploration of Buddhist philosophy. They are personal and experiential.  I offer them in the hope that they will resonate with others—especially those who are no longer young and are approaching “The Big Let Go,” Death.

Stillness, Silence, and Solitude II

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Continued

Solitude

At home, I am not solitary. I live with my spouse, my dog, and two cats, in a vibrant retirement community in a college town where intellectual work, art, theater, and music flourish. Tourists stroll the streets in summer. I am always meeting people I know well—or not at all. This social identity feels so natural, so me, that it is hard to believe it is constructed or conditioned.

Entering solitude, for me, is like going home. Though I am far from my physical home, I feel more at home here. Alone, I am more aware of my feelings, more curious, open, at ease, and forgiving. In the quiet of this cold winter morning, I ask: Who is my essential self? Is it distinct from my conditioned self? Does my essence emerge in solitude, or in relationship with others, or somehow in both? The witness self—the continuous, conscious observer—appears more readily for me in solitude.

Still, I must be careful. I am convinced that truth lies in balance rather than extremes. Perhaps I value solitude so deeply because I have so little of it.

Stillness

I arrived with the hope that my days alone would be unstructured, guided by the heart’s promptings. I imagined staying in my pajamas all day, doing nothing at all. That fantasy dissolved when I decided to bring the dog. I have meandered from one activity to another, discovering that it is far easier to imagine being still than to be still.

What do I want from stillness? The word that arises first is settling. I long for the persistent sense of inner agitation to give way to calm. Through meditation, I have learned that this happens when I sit still for long periods. Buddhist teachings liken the mind to a muddy pond: when left undisturbed, the sediment slowly settles, and the water clears. In my own experience, my body settles first, then my mind, and finally my emotions; clarity emerges.

With clarity, my actions become more intentional. This week, in my efforts to be still, I have taken special care to cook nourishing food and arrange it beautifully in the mismatched bowls and plates I found in the cupboards. I eat slowly—and, of course, silently—savoring each mouthful, noticing flavors and textures, surprised and grateful. No conversation distracts me from chewing thoroughly, to the relief of my delicate digestive system.

I read slowly, reflecting on what I read, appreciating the symmetry and beauty of language, and letting words sink into my consciousness, hoping they will water the seeds of my own writing.

Slowness, I tell myself, is the first step toward stillness, as the dog and I head out on our thrice-daily walks. Snow, ice, and mud slow us down, and we accept and adapt to them all. He stops often to sniff each new scent. I stop too—standing still, looking around, breathing, inhabiting the moment.

Fast and slow, motion and stillness, cannot exist without each other. Neither is inherently good or bad; each has its season, even if I have my preferences.

Silence

It almost goes without saying that outer silence supports inner silence. Alone and still, silence becomes tangible. I soak it in, treasuring it. I resent the heater kicking on with its low hum, the sound of the upstairs neighbor’s truck pulling into the driveway, his boots pounding up the stairs, the clicking of my keyboard as I type. When these sounds subside, I sink into the silence and luxuriate in its nothingness. It wraps around me like the heat in an empty sauna.

For a moment, I imagine never speaking again, never hearing another word. I contemplate the silent emptiness of death, and while I imagine it, I notice a quiet gratitude arise. Then the heater kicks on once more, and I feel my body tense—just slightly—reminding me how much stress accumulates when we are constantly bombarded by sound. How restorative silence feels, with its sisters, solitude and stillness.

And yet, silence is not the same for everyone. If I could not hear, would I long for sound? My partner is functionally deaf. Without her hearing aids, she hears nothing at all. Deaf since early childhood, her experience of silence is marked by alienation, misunderstanding, and disconnection. For her, sound can be orienting and connecting—or overwhelming. She reminds me that silence, like solitude, is not inherently sacred; its meaning depends entirely on context.

As I bring these reflections to a close, I search my OneDrive for a poem I wrote some time ago and read it carefully, recalling the feelings behind the words.

THREE MAGI

Stillness
Silence
Solitude

Three Magi, wise and noble,
Enticed
By intuition,
A common secret dream.
Set off to find the source of all that Is—
of love,
of hope,
of truth.

Stillness ambles imperceptibly.
Motionless, she travels far—
deeper,
nearer,
clearer.

Silence speaks no words,
Adds nothing to the frantic roar
of hate,
despair,
and lies.

Solitude bears destiny as she strides forth.
Knows birth and death and all between alone. Her heart
a pulsing,
throbbing,
longing.

Three Magi,
seeking their soul’s star,
walk home.

What is the soul’s star I seek during this week of stillness, silence, and solitude? As I ponder the question, my witness-self watches thought-clouds drift across the sky of my mind: essential, real, true, authentic, love, compassion, home. Any of these could be my soul’s star. And these three wise magi—Stillness, Silence, and Solitude—are my companions and guides as I walk home.

I rise from the computer and walk slowly to the kitchen to boil more water for tea. The kettle whistles, breaking the silence. The dog stirs, stretches, and hops down from his chair to follow me. I look out the window at the fresh snowfall, still undisturbed. I remember that I have a few more days alone before rejoining those whose lives are bound to mine. I give thanks.

I give thanks.

Author’s Note

This essay grew out of a week-long solitary retreat in central Maine in 2023, and reflects my ongoing spiritual inquiry into stillness, silence, and solitude. Written as contemplative nonfiction, it blends my lived experience with reflective practice. My intention is not to idealize the three s’s, but to examine what they offer when approached with curiosity, humility, and balance.

Okay: Part Two

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Though I am categorizing this as a story, it is creative nonfiction — based on real events. Names have been changed to protect privacy. Each of us approaches and responds to death uniquely. I want to honor that particularity.

Over the last three years, I visited Sarah about every couple of months.  I’d call or email a day or so in advance, and we’d agree on a time in the early afternoon.  Sarah didn’t see well or move quickly, so I would ring the doorbell, peek in the window to see her sitting in her usual chair awaiting my arrival, and then I’d open the unlocked door and announce myself.  “It’s Moriah.”

“Come in, come in.” 

I’d settle in the chair opposite her, and she’d ask how I was.  I’d tell her exactly what was on my mind at that moment, no matter how personal or difficult it was to admit or express.  Her head shook, and her voice quavered more and more as the months passed, but I listened closely to every word she said in response. I had come to rely on her utter sincerity and genuine concern. I was convinced Sarah, who had only recently become my friend, understood and cared deeply about me.  When I was finished opening my heart, I’d ask about her, and she would tell me—honestly but without drama—the health problems and every day difficulties she was experiencing; not in a complaining fashion, but matter-of-factly, always ending with gratefulness for the simple gifts in her life that brought her happiness.

I learned that Sarah was a Buddhist of Tibetan lineage and that she meditated regularly.  I meditate too, so that created a bond between us.  She told me about her teacher and some of the practices she had learned.  She joined me several times to meditate with a local mindfulness group. She always asked me about my writing and insisted on buying my novel when it was published.  I don’t know if she was able to get someone to read it to her. Her near blindness prevented her from doing so herself.

Sarah was so quiet and undemanding that people may have forgotten she lived in the neighborhood.  She would tell me she felt lonely and she was hungry for news about the neighbors and the goings-on in our retirement community.

She found workarounds for her limitations, though.  A personal assistant helped her with email, bill-paying, and the ubiquitous paperwork that inundates us all. Her daughter, Riley, came every evening to have dinner with her and help with anything that Sarah could not do on her own.

About a month ago, we noticed more traffic in and out of Sarah’s driveway. Riley began coming during the day, as well as in the evenings. Then she started staying overnight also.  I stopped in for a short visit to learn that Sarah was on hospice and declining rapidly.  Riley led me to Sarah’s room, where she was stretched out in a recliner with a cool cloth on her forehead.  She clasped my hand, told me how much I meant to her, and thanked me for our friendship.  She knew her time was short and was ready for death. We were both aware that this was, perhaps, goodbye. 

But it was not. She lived for another week or so, and I saw her a few more times.  The last one was the evening of her death. She was unconscious, breathing very lightly and gently.  While her daughter took a short break, I played a Buddhist chant, hoping that Sarah could hear and understand the reassuring words.  In the early morning, while I slept, a text came in that she was gone.  I saw it as soon as I awoke and rushed to her house in my pajamas to see her one last time, standing by her bed, kissing her smooth forehead and gazing at her peaceful face.

After that, Riley came and went from the house, handling the tasks one does after death: taking care of property, family, and financial matters with the help of Sarah’s personal assistant.  When I was finally able to catch her alone one evening, just before Christmas, she showed me the memorial altar she had lovingly and sensitively created around Sarah’s colorful tree. In the center sat her urn, carved with a Tree of Life.  Surrounding it were photographs and mementos from her life, several that I recognized, and one, a Buddha card I had given her a while back.  The altar was characteristically Sarah—unpretentious and beautiful. 

Sarah told me she was okay after Joe’s death, and I am okay after hers.  Each morning for the forty-nine days of her journey through the bardo or transitional state, I am ringing a bell and saying this gatha in her honor: “Body speech and mind in perfect oneness, I send my heart along with the sound of this bell.  May all who hear it (especially Sarah) be awakened from forgetfulness and transcend all anxiety and sorrow.”  Because everything is impermanent, I am letting Sarah go, along with the bell’s vibrations, into the universe on her journey home to the Source of Life.

The End

Okay: Part One

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Though I am categorizing this as a story, it is creative nonfiction — based on real events. Names have been changed to protect privacy. Each of us approaches and responds to death uniquely. I want to honor that particularity.

I was away when Sarah’s husband died. A neighbor sent me a staccato email, “Joe died this morning. Been over with food support.” We all expected Joe’s death. He had been on hospice for about a week and was declining rapidly. A couple of days before I left on my trip, when no hospice volunteers or caregivers were available, I sat by his bedside for a few hours one evening while Sarah rested. He talked deliriously for most of the time, the large-screen TV just feet from the end of his bed, blinking incessantly with wild-animal videos from the San Diego Zoo. I found the flashing images distracting and asked if I should turn them off. He said no, he liked the creatures, so I put down the remote and repositioned my chair so my eyes would not stray to the screen. I muted the sound, but the colors still danced on the wall behind his bed.

I had not talked with Joe for a while. Before COVID struck, we went out for coffee a few times. He told me about his life, work, and some of his unusual adventures. I mostly listened, except when asked a specific question, but the conversation always floated back to whatever was on his mind. He’d had a challenging career as an engineer, a happy family life, and enjoyed travel and living abroad. I relished getting to know him, and as a bonus, he introduced me to an excellent local café.

Now, as I sat beside his bed, he told me that he was content with the way things were ending. His children had taken good care of him during the last months, and he knew they would be there for Sarah after he was gone. He had completed everything he felt he needed to do and was ready to die. Even his garage workshop, where he had repaired all sorts of electrical and mechanical gadgets for folks in the neighborhood, was in order, thanks to his son’s help.

I moistened his cracked lips and dry mouth. I said I was happy to sit with him, that he needn’t talk, that he could close his eyes and rest, and he did so for about five minutes. Then the phone rang—his son was calling to say goodnight. I held the receiver up to his ear. After the call, there was no stopping his flow of words. As I hung up the phone, he launched into tale after tale about his life, much of it incoherent, with occasional dramatic bursts of clarity. He kept this up for nearly two hours until Sarah came into his room from her nap, and I rose to go home. I said goodnight and told him I was glad we had spent some time together. Indeed, I was grateful to have the opportunity to say goodbye to this gentle and kind nonagenarian. However, I didn’t know if I was saying goodbye for the night or forever. The next day, I left for a week’s vacation.

When the email announcing his death came, I decided to give it a day before calling Sarah. I know a lot of details must be settled immediately after death, and she and the children would be occupied. So, when I called, I just said I had heard, asked how she was, and told her I would come for a visit when I got home. She was grateful, and I found the call easier than expected. She seemed poised and peaceful, and that eased my shy discomfort. 

A day after I arrived home from my trip, I went into my garden and picked a few autumn flowers—some dahlias, some ferns, and tiny sunflower blossoms. I placed them in a vase and, taking a deep breath, called Sarah to ask if I could come over. She said a visit then would be fine. It took her a while to push her walker to the door, but it finally opened, and she warmly welcomed me. I offered the flowers, and she led me to a table along the dining room wall where she had put pictures of Joe, a copy of his death notice, and another small bouquet. Finally, she added my little offering to the display, invited me to sit, and suggested tea.

“Thank you, but no, I’ve just had my morning coffee. How are you?”

“Well, I’m okay, really,” she replied. I smiled and nodded, my eyes inviting her to say more. It seemed clear to me that she was, indeed, okay.

“Things went well at the end,” she continued. “He had finished everything he wanted to complete, made all the necessary legal and financial arrangements. He said goodbye to the children. Once he stopped eating and drinking, things went pretty quickly. I was sitting with him when he died, and he was peaceful. After that, my daughter came, and we just sat there for a couple of hours, looking at him, saying our goodbyes, and quietly talking until we were ready to call the funeral home. Of course, I’m exhausted. I haven’t slept much in the last month, but I’m relieved that it all went so smoothly. We had wonderful help from hospice and the children. I couldn’t have asked for it to go any better.”

I told Sarah about the few hours I spent with Joe the week before—that he had expressed gratitude for his life and peacefulness about death. I wanted to validate her sense that his end had been good. She smiled and thanked me for being there for Joe and here, now for her.

“Do you have the support you need right now?”

“I do. I’ve never lived alone in my entire life, and my health is still good enough that I think I can do that for a while. I’d like to see what it’s like to be on my own. So many people have been in and out of here, all his caregivers, hospice nurses, people bringing food, family. I’m enjoying the quiet and getting some rest. Yes, I think I will be fine, and I know the kids will help when I need it. And I’m fortunate that I can afford to stay here. Very fortunate.”

I asked a few more practical questions, to which she had ready answers, delivered calmly and confidently. She said that hospice had offered her grief counseling, and she might consider it. She thanked me for the few hours I spent with Joe before his death, and I expressed my gratitude for them. I said I sensed that she would, indeed, be okay.

As I got up to go, she remembered something she wanted to tell me. On the day of Joe’s death, an appliance technician had arrived in the morning to install a new dishwasher. Unfortunately, theirs had broken down, and the one ordered a couple of weeks ago had just come in. She explained to the fellow that Joe was dying and suggested perhaps he could come back another day. “I’ll be quiet,” the technician replied, so she let him go ahead with the installation.   

I chuckled and thought that Joe, an engineer and consummate handyman, would have appreciated that life goes on and dishwashers get hooked up, even while one is dying. Neither Sarah nor I put our thoughts about the peculiar irony of Joe’s final morning into words, but Sarah had a twinkle in her eye as she waved goodbye from behind the screen door. I walked home smiling and feeling okay, too.

Continued in Part Two

2025 Wrap-Up: Looking Back, Looking Forward

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I’m closing out 2025 with a review of the most popular articles I’ve posted on this blog since its inception in January 2017. With All Due Respect has a limited audience of just over one hundred followers, composed chiefly of friends, former colleagues, and a few strangers who have found me through internet searches. It’s intriguing what people find interesting. 

LOOKING BACK …

…at my stats over the last nine years, the most popular post, the one with over 1.5K hits, surprisingly is Nursing Homes: Clothing and Incontinence. It has topped the list of most-read annually for the life of the blog, including in 2025. Indeed, five of the top fifteen articles are related to aging, senior health care, and nursing homes. Is this surprising? Is aging of concern just for my peers, or more generally these days?

This article on incontinence and the treatment of patient clothing in nursing facilities gets at the very heart of human dignity and the respect or lack thereof that we demonstrate toward one another. Incontinence is often viewed by those who are gradually losing control over their lives and their bodies as the last frontier, the most humiliating, debasing loss. I’m not surprised that search engines have brought readers to my humble blog post.

I imagine a reader, perhaps a daughter, exhausted by months or years of care for her elderly parents, seeking advice on what to expect if she gives in and places one or both in a nursing facility.  What would upset Mom most, she wonders. What would Dad hate the most about it? Sitting in a urine puddle in a bed or wheelchair, she suspects. So, she searches the internet to find out how nursing homes manage incontinent patients.  Up pops my post, and she is mesmerized and appalled.

Little has changed in nursing facilities in the nine years since I wrote that article. The better-funded and staffed ones do a more acceptable job of managing incontinence and clothing care. However, the direction of senior health care funding in this country does not bode well for the future of even these places. The general societal attitude toward the elderly has not improved appreciably, though end-of-life care through hospice and Death with Dignity legislation have advanced the quality of life approaching death for many.

Curiously, my second-most popular blog post is The Waterwheel, with 803 hits.  It quotes well-known and beloved poet Rumi’s wisdom and was written just a few days after the start of the COVID pandemic. Its message of taking up and letting go, embracing and relinquishing, is just as personally, socially, and politically relevant now as it was in March 2020. I suspect most readers find it by googling “Rumi” or, perhaps, “letting go,” a frequent theme in my writing.

The Anatomy of Respect, with 617 hits, comes in third. It goes to the heart and root of this blog over the last nine years by emphasizing the role of listening deeply to understand and develop respect.  I have tried to link each essay, poem, and story in the blog to the theme of respect and have encouraged my readers to share their experiences and reflections in response.  Truthfully, only a few readers have done so.

The most extensive dialogue with a reader occurred when a self-described, deeply conservative Republican, then Trump supporter, businessman, and father, Ryan, challenged me to engage in conversation about our differences after I posted the next-most-popular article (with 323 hits), Deep Listening, in December 2020. Our exchange of philosophical, political, and religious ideas, recorded in the comments following the Deep Listening article, began in February 2021. It ended in July 2022 when his family and business life became too busy and complicated for him to continue writing. It was fascinating and encouraging to see how much we had in common. Also, it was extremely challenging to be open-minded and respectful when we differed.

Often, at the beginning of a new year, I launch a new theme with the intention of focusing my writing on a particular aspect of respect throughout the year. It’s not always apparent how the theme relates to my overall subject. For instance, Practicing for the Big Let Go, begun in January 2024, initiated my reflections on letting go in everyday situations as a way of preparing for our final surrender at the time of death. What does this have to do with respect? Letting go involves engaging with the fundamental truth of impermanence—constant change. It requires respect for oneself, others, the flow of events, and our nature as human beings.

LOOKING FORWARD

As 2026 looms on the horizon, and I take stock of the world around me, close to home and farther away, I find it disingenuous to wish an uncomplicated and joyful “Happy New Year” to my friends. I wonder which aspect of respect we will encounter, reflect on, and perhaps write about in the coming year.  As I grow older, my journey toward self-awareness takes me into more vulnerable, authentic, and intuitive territory. As I approach the culmination of life, I’m confronted by my affinity, even my oneness, with those whose ideas and actions I find disturbing or even abhorrent. Painful as it sometimes is, I sense my kinship and interdependence with everyone and everything. Thich Nhat Hanh called this “interbeing.” Acknowledging our interbeing, my three-fold aim to do no harm, help everyone, and embrace life just as it is, is a perennial and unrelenting challenge.

So, instead of “Happy New Year,” here’s my wish for us all. May we seek to respect one another, and may we meet next year’s opportunities to do so with courage, accept their invitation with curiosity, and respond with compassion.

Love in All Seasons

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“Farewell to thee! but not farewell
To all my fondest thoughts of thee:
Within my heart they still shall dwell;
And they shall cheer and comfort me.”

—Anne Brontë

One morning, a couple of years ago, as I accompanied my dog on his first walk of the day along a well-worn trail through the woods near my home, I was surprised by something I had not noticed before. I saw a path, intentionally bordered on either side by clean barkless branches, which led away from the beaten track over dead leaves, broken sticks, and brown ferns shriveled by frost.

 It was the height of tick season in Maine, so I hesitated to step into the underbrush, trailing my dog on his lead, but my eyes followed the branch borders of the path deeper into the woods.  There, on a stick wedged between two conjoined tree trunks, something brown and out of place dangled.  I couldn’t believe my eyes, so I had to get closer to be sure. 

Taking a deep breath and hoping no deer ticks would crawl up my legs or bury themselves in my dog’s curious muzzle, I stepped onto the path and gingerly picked my way about twenty paces into the woods.  My eyes had not deceived me.  A sturdy pair of men’s walking shoes hung by their laces, artfully draped over the stick. What could this mean?  Who would leave their shoes behind in the woods?  These lace-ups still had a lot of life in them.

Something prevented me from touching them—some intuition that this was a holy place.  I took a picture of them, and retraced my steps, my dog tugging me back to our usual route. However, the image of the shoes stayed with me for the rest of our morning walk, and the place where they hung became the destination for frequent pilgrimages in days to come.

After several visits, I began to suspect that these were my neighbor Simon’s shoes, and that they had been lovingly arranged in the woods where he frequently walked, his camera dangling from his neck.  Simon had died several months before, and I surmised that his widow deposited the shoes in a setting he loved near their home, where she could visit them often to commune with her husband.  I took the risk of asking her if I had guessed correctly, and she, blushing but shyly pleased that someone else had discovered her memorial, confirmed it. 

Over the last couple of years, my pup and I have visited Simon’s shoes countless times.  Cynthia, Simon’s wife, adds bits of flora to mark the seasons—sometimes delicate wildflowers in spring, ferns in summer, red, yellow, and golden leaves in fall, and, of course, winter provides its own decoration. Each time I set out on my pilgrimage, I look forward to discovering these simple but artful adornments.

All I know of Simon are these shoes and the few memories of her beloved husband that Cynthia has shared with me. By the time the couple moved into my neighborhood, he had already begun to decline.  I would pass him on my afternoon walks and receive a silent smile in response to my cheerful hello.  He was, by then, not much of a conversationalist, especially with strangers.  His soft-spoken words were sparing, but the few I heard were direct and gentle. 

I marveled that the memorial shoes were in such good shape.  According to his wife, Simon had worn them on hikes all over Europe and America.  Once, on a walking trip in Ireland, amid a powerful wind and rainstorm, he and Cynthia took refuge in a farmhouse along their way.  The family welcomed them to warm up and dry off at the hearth. So, Simon propped his feet in front of the open fire, scorching the soles of his shoes before he realized what was happening. Thrifty as he was, he saw no reason to replace the singed footwear. Like his shoes, Simon was humble, loyal, and resilient.

Simon’s memorial shoes, their constancy, adaptation, and beauty in every season, have become an icon for me.  A symbol for the humility that embraces and accepts what is, even when the reality is absence. Gradually, these old shoes will succumb to the elements and disintegrate, but not before they have taught many passersby a profound lesson.  We continue after death, transformed surely, but ultimately, reunited with the elements that made us, enlivened us, warmed us, fed us, cleansed us, and sheltered us. Finally, we come home.

Simon and Cynthia are not the real names of my neighbors.