Dying to know

I had an extraordinary dream the other night. I was involved in a road accident, whether as  pedestrian or passenger I’m not sure. I was violently flung about, and realised in the dream that I had died. In the calm which followed, I reflected, still dreaming ‘Mmm! That wasn’t so bad! I’ll never need to do that again.’ And then I woke up, and realised I was still alive, and concluded that that was OK too.

Last Friday at Inverness Town House, NHS Community Development worker Kate Maclean hosted an event called Dying to know, which aimed ‘to encourage people to find out all they ever wanted to know about dying – but were afraid to ask.’ Hospital chaplain, the Rev Derek Brown was one of the speakers.

It’s not a subject we’re comfortable with. I remember speaking to someone in Dingwall a couple of years ago who brought up the subject of his own mortality. He was comfortable acknowledging that he would die, and as an atheist he was fairly certain that death would be the final line in his story. I shivered – death, certainly not my death was not something I wanted to consider.

Almost a year ago now, I had what the doctors call a ‘Transient Ischaemic Attack’ (TIA), or a ‘mini stroke.’ This was minor in itself – thought it left me feeling drained and exhausted for weeks – but the medics took it very seriously indeed, as a warning that I was vulnerable to further strokes or heart issues. I was prescribed long-term medication to reduce my blood pressure and prevent blood clotting.

In those days immediately after the TIA, I was aware as never before of my own mortality, and slowly came to terms with the fact that I will die, that I will not be here forever. My death is no longer something I am uncomfortable discussing.

What follows is simply a note of my personal experiences on this part of the journey, a page from the log book. We will each have our own story, shaped by our age and experiences, our state of health and of mind.

But I’m convinced it’s not just people with terminal illness who discover that acknowledging and accepting that your time here is finite, that each day is a gift sets you free to live life to the full.

Last week my daughter Beth drove me home from work up a Culduthel Road lined with leafy, sunlit, autumnal trees and I had a sense of ‘Well I may not be here tomorrow, and that’s OK, but for now I have this moment, this experience, this precious ordinary time with my daughter.’

On my clearer-seeing days (and I emphasise that there are many days when I’m numb or tired or struggling and don’t see so clearly) realising that I will die enables me to relish the day and to live more fully in it, to value the great gift of family and friends, to prioritise my time, recognising that I can’t do everything, and not worrying about tasks I must leave for someone else, to seek to live with no regrets, to chill out and love life.

I’ve discovered that accepting that I will die somehow redeems nostalgia. I’ve tended to recall a distant past with a sad yearning to live now as my recollection tells me I lived then. But accepting my mortality somehow sets me free both to look forward in hope, and to look back with thankfulness, without wistful sadness. To enjoy the autumn colours and falling leaves rather than to see them as gloomy portents of my own time of withering because I have already accepted that withering.

The biggest unknown of all – what lies beyond death? Nothing, as my contact in Dingwall claimed? Or the continuing life Christians expect? I realise that I may be wrong, that I may have been following a shadow. But I have come to believe that death is not the end, that there is a vast Being who enchants the whole cosmos, crying out in every molecule ‘I am here!’, working enchantment in us, summoning us to life.

This faith, centred in Jesus Christ has led me beyond times of grief and misunderstanding when I was wounded by bad religion to a place of wholeness, joy, contentedness and love in discovering who I truly am.

We’re dying to know what lies beyond death, what the experience now is of those who have gone ahead of us whom the Church remembers on All Saints Day and All Souls Day on 1^st and 2^nd November. But I believe that, secure in God now, we will be secure in God then, and  beyond death will wake up and think ‘Mmm! I’ll never need to do that again.’

(Christian Viewpoint column from the Highland News dated 30th October 2014)