I just woke up from a nightmare...can't seem to shake it. Matt is at work and I am here alone with Kale, so I though perhaps blogging and some prayer time will help.
For years I have had nightmares about my mother's death. All the councilors I have had tell me that it is because of my fear of the unknown.
After my nightmare tonight, I realize something...
It is not death I am afraid of, it is the process of dying.
All of us have struggles, things that we are working to over come, terrors from our past or present. Mine has always been death. I learned too early about mortality. From the scary Catholic rhetoric about hell to watching all those I loved be ripped away from me...
I understand now. I see. It is like what Little Women's Beth says, "I am always being left behind..."
I know where we are going. I know the joy and happiness we will find there. My heart soars with the thought of such a peace...but the process...the last moments...
I was too young to watch my father face death time and time again only to lose.
I was too young to watch my mother suffer and die.
I think about my siblings getting older, am I going to have to lose them one by one? My husband? My son? Or will I go first?
Will I be able to be like Beth who says, "I am always being left behind...now I am the one going ahead, I am not afraid, I can be strong."
How interesting that my favorite song as a child was, "be not afraid, I go before you always, come follow me, and I will give you rest."
I didn't realize, until tonight, how fearful I have been of dying,but not of death.
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1 comment:
man...girl, I have never experienced anyone close to me dying. That scares the bejeezus out of me. I have NO IDEA how I will react when it happens. I have experience loss in other ways perhaps, but not really. Leaving...yes, never to be seen again in this mortality... probably, though not with certainty. There is always a possability, though an unlikely one, that I could run into them on the street, or receive a phone call from them. It never happens, but I hope.
Which do I fear more? If "death" and "leaving because they were done with you" were arm wrestling, who would win? (I am sorry to sound as if I am trivializing it) I think a part of me fears the unknown of losing my parents permenantly--to the "Big Sleep", not because I don't believe in an afterlife, but because I still have so many questions to ask them... so many.
I have gone on long enough---just to say, wow, sucka...you echo the thoughts of many.
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