Today is the day we die.
Each and every single one of us will die today.
I don’t mean you will die on the 18th of November, 2024. The date of your death is TBD.
Yet, whatever that date turns out to be, you will experience that day of your death as “today”.
It will feel just like this day right now feels. Just an ordinary day.
And you will feel no different on that day than you do on this. No matter how old you are. Don’t kid yourself. The body may age, but what it feels like to be you doesn’t change. Whether you are 18 or 80 - the experience is the same. The day you die will feel just like this day feels.
And if death were to come for you today, how would you face it? Are you ready? Are you prepared? Are you willing to leave behind your loved ones, your unfinished projects, your unrealized potential? Are you willing to let it all go?
How you answer that question on this day, is likely how you will answer the question on the day death does come for you. Death doesn’t recognize boundaries. Death doesn’t wait for you to “get it”. It doesn’t care if you have “made your peace”. It takes you ‘as is’.
Memento Mori. “Remember your death”.
I have practiced this for well over a decade now. Each and every day, I wake up imagining that THIS day today is my last. I don’t talk about it to my family because I have no desire to distress them. But I look upon them with gratitude and appreciation for having provided me with the privilege of their presence.
And when I walk with my dog in the woods I realize that I will never see trees again, or the sky, or the color green, or hear the sound of the wind whistling through leaves, or the song of a bubbling brook. These mundane phenomena that I have always taken for granted will no longer be gifted to me.
And when I eat lunch, I realize that I will never taste sweetness again, or spice, or bitterness or any of the rich and complex flavours that have brought me hours of gastronomic delight over the years.
And when I workout at the gym, I relish in the stress and strain my muscles feel. ‘Pulling’ and ‘pushing’, ‘lifting’ and ‘swinging’ - I am reminded of how powerful and miraculous the human body is and what it is capable of.
And when I hang out with my wife and daughters, my heart feels full of love, sadness, joy and pain all at the same time. Sometimes my eyes well with tears knowing I may never know what my children will look like as adults. Or how my wife will spend her remaining years.
My dog seems to sense what I am thinking about because I often catch him looking at me with his head cocked to one side and a sad, wondering look in his eyes. He must think I’m crazy.
I practice this active awareness of my impending death not as some macabre ritual or because I have a fetish for the gruesome. But because it orients me towards perceiving the miraculous within the ordinary. It allows me to grasp what an utter gift a human life is.
This evening as I washed the dishes, I couldn’t get enough of how wonderful the sensation of warm water on skin feels. And as I soaped each dish carefully, I began crying with joy at the simple miracle of soap bubbles. What a bizarre and wondrous phenomenon a soap bubble is!
Not every day is one of appreciation. Some days don’t go quite so well. An argument with my wife. A hard day at work. An unpleasant conversation with a family member. Frustration with the kids not listening. Worry about finances. These occur as well.
And on those days I reflect on my death with poignancy. How dying without having made up with my wife is such a tragic end to one of the most rewarding relationships of my life. How the last memory my kids will have of me was that of a frustrated father. I realize that I cannot time death to happen in the midst of well-being and happiness. It may come on a day which is a total shitshow.
And yet, when the day draws to a close I feel a great sense of relief. I make amends. The angst of the day gives way to gratitude once more. The miracle comes to the fore again.
Today is the day we die. This is not a platitude. Nor is it a metaphor. It is a fact.
No more trees. No more clouds. No more color green or red or blue or yellow. No more sound of the wind through the leaves, no more sensation of warm water on skin. No more gastronomic delights. No more movement - running, jumping, lifting, pulling.
No more music. No more words.
The end of everything we have ever known awaits us TODAY.
And yet, it isn’t quite here yet. Not in this very moment.
In this moment, we are still living. We are breathing. We are aware. We are here. We are present.
We don’t know how. We don’t know why.
But somehow we are still here.
This is the miracle.
I think about death a lot… I’m the child of a French Jewish holocaust survivor and grew up with my surviving grandparents as well. Death was a constant topic of conversation growing up. As an adult, I lost my brother to suicide and my beloved partner to cancer and my parents, 11 months apart, to old age. Death is my constant companion. Or maybe dying is… as I grow older and continue my equestrian activities, I think about my own death. I hope it’s quick . I imagine that it’s like a switch into total nothingness. So while I finally am content in my life , missing it doesn’t feel like an option in death. I don’t KNOW what it will be like. All I know is that it’s coming for me at some point. Might as well live for the curiosity until then.
beautiful.
I have a painting of thenatos, Greek god of death next to my desk (I got it soon after an almost freak accident at the gym when a barbell fell on the back of my head).
Death is depicted as such a bad, evil force, but in that painting, he is directing butterflies moving in a dance like flow. Coincidentally, it turns out that the artist painted it the same year my younger brother died after he OD’d. I ended up in the hospital, but he didn’t make it. I’ve had many near death moments. I always took my life for granted.
I am grateful for having existed and been aware of it. To have known someone like you. For there to be something rather than nothing.