Facing Life's End 2-12-12

By Ginny Finch

“What troubles me about my own dying and death? What grounds me?”  For the third year in a row, Dumbarton’s Pam Thielmann and Arlene Kiely led adult ed in a conversation on these arresting—and intimate—questions. To make it easier for Dumbartonians to respond, Kiely asked them to first reflect silently, then share in twos, and finally share (if they were willing) in the larger group. Here are some of the themes which emerged in the discussion:

• “One day I’ll have to accept the fact I can’t do all the things I want to do or even take care of myself."
• “I don’t have my affairs in order. What kind of a mess would I leave if I died suddently?”
• "I’m sorry we won’t be here to watch our grandson grow.”
• “What will I miss? What have I left undone?”
• “I’m concerned about others’ grief.”
• “I know I’ll be forgotten.”
• “I’m annoyed I have to prepare for death financially.”
• “Memorial services and celebrations of life ground me.”
• “I’m grateful for the good fortune of being alive…against all of the odds.”
• “We’re all in the same boat, and that’s very comfortable to me somehow.”
• “I’ll be surrounded by animals when I die, and that will give me enormous comfort.”

Kiely finds comfort in trusting the “unknown.”  “When you learn to float, you totally let go and the water holds you up,”  she said.

For Thielmann, poetry is helpful, such as these lines from Billy Collins’"November:"
How senseless to dread whatever lies before us
when, night and day, the boats,
strong as horses in the wind
come and go,
bringing in the tiny infants
and carrying away the bodies of the dead…