The Big Lie Down

A friend of mine from years gone by, if he was going to have a nap, would say, "I'm going to lie down to help get me ready for the Big Lie Down.'  At this time I was already racking up a fair experience in palliative care and of course I got the joke, appreciated it and, having always had a sense of gallows humour, laughed at the joke.  Death was very close then, even though I had barely gone thirty.
     I love naps and treat them like an under indulged pleasure, which for me they are.  It isn't that I never have time to rest, though that is sometimes the case, but simply I forget to.  Or I am afraid of what I might miss, rather like the child who does not want to go to sleep yet.  Forty-five minutes ago I just woke very gradually and oh so gently from an hour long nap following dinner.  Since I generally eat while lounging on my bed sofa, propped up like a decadent Roman by beautifully coloured pillows (I still have to pop my own grapes into my mouth and am usually too lazy to peal them) it can be only too easy to slip into an altered consciousness while listening, then not listening, and listening again to the radio (this time of day, the CBC Radio One current affairs program "As It Happens") and suddenly I do not want to stir.  I am not in a terribly deep sleep though I drift in and out but it feels wonderful and refreshing in a way I cannot describe and I suddenly don't care that the residual food is drying on my plate and that I'm not writing my blog or doing dishes or finishing this painting that has been driving me nuts.
     I think of death these days more than ever.  Recently my step cousin and dear friend, Lanice, whom I have memorialized on these pages, died from cancer.  She was sixty-five, or seven years my senior.  I am fifty-eight and know that I am not going to live forever.  On my fiftieth birthday eight years ago I celebrated that I have lasted this long.  I have been through a long and tough haul and to simply turn fifty with only a little wear and tear I think is a worthy achievement.  Just after turning fifty my psychotherapy came to an end.  My shrink was retiring and he had already declared me recovered and well, so this was anther threshold.  Then came the swelling small victories resulting from my mental health recovery that still confirm to me day after day that I am well again; and that even though chronologically, death and I, like the breasts and knees of an aging woman, are gradually and inexorably drawing closer to each other, so is this sense that I am entering into a new stage of life.  Heck, I am entering into life itself.
    Today, knowing that I am living, as they say, on borrowed time, and that each day, and each moment, is a gift, I got through my day at work, a meeting this morning, time to check in and debrief with colleagues, and two meetings with different clients, as well as time in the staff room to finish a drawing, and...well, I am getting a bit lost here.  But the sense of celebration is not lost on me.  Especially celebrating life during this month of May while the earth is positively giddy with joy and flowers and scintillating new green leaves are spilling out everywhere and the air is bathed in fragrance.
     Coming home, walking three blocks from the bus stop I was thinking that today could be my very last, or I could live on past one hundred and yet it doesn't make any difference.  Life is a terminal condition and I want that same heightened experience of life that people have when they know they are going to die if that's what it is going to take for me to live in a state of perpetual gratitude for this ineffable gift called life, while squeezing and wringing every single drop of enjoyment as from a garment soaked in holy wine.
     Preparing for this second half of life, spiritual matters have taken on a new intensity and importance.  God, daily, has become more than ever a present reality.  I don't think this is from fear of death or dying.  This was dealt with during my second last visit to Mexico two years ago.  I went to bed one night in my hotel room and felt suddenly engulfed in a gripping terror of death.  I cried out to God for help, then suddenly lost consciousness as though I had fallen into a deep sleep, but within a moment or two I was awake again and I suddenly felt well and comforted, consoled.  From that moment on I have known that I have nothing to fear.  This happened again during this trip when, in San Cristobal De Las Casas, in the hotel restaurant during breakfast I passed out and came to on the floor, surrounded by worried and compassionate Mexicans.  I was almost overwhelmed with a strange sense of peace and I knew, in the words of Lady Julian "That all manner of things shall be well."
     I am not afraid of death.  I am not afraid of hell.  I am not afraid of judgment.  I know that God is taking me through day by day teaching me and directing and filling and inhabiting my days.  I know that I am being taught love, forgiveness and compassion.  I know that I am still a slow learner and with Our Lord Jesus Christ I strive also to be patient with my slowness, knowing that He will finish and complete in me and in all of us the work that He has begun.