I don't know about you...BUT I'M AFRAID TO DIE
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DON’T KNOW ABOUT YOU BUT…I’m afraid to die
I don’t really know how to write about death because I don’t believe there has ever been any format laid down, any blueprint to follow when talking about it. So I’m going to write down the many thoughts that pop randomly into my head throughout the course of my life as it unfolds this year and hopefully it will turn into something coherent and universal.
One cannot tackle the subject of death head on. One has to act like a matador; sidestepping and dodging death’s deadly horns in order to properly express the weight and depth of their many implications. To challenge it to a fair fight is to suffer inexorably at its hands. I’ve tried to do that in the past and have come out bruised and bloodied. I believe it’s time for a different approach. Einstein said: “We don’t need to think more, we need to think differently”, and when thinking about death this is the approach that needs to be taken.On a historical note, as I write this I’m not on my deathbed. In fact, I’m a healthy forty-eight year old man. This book is not about revelations I’ve had because I have six months to live. No, this is about living with death while living life….
There is only one place to begin this journey and that is with the truth. I am afraid to die. I don’t want to die, ever. I want to live forever because I love life so much, all of it. I love the pleasure and the pain. It’s real. It’s life. But death just lurks out there like this perpetual shade of gray that blots out all the color. It’s the inevitable end to the journey, a journey that no one has control over or can change and that no one wants…Every book ever written has sprouted from a seed planted at some point in a writer’s life and cultivated by his experiences and observations. The seed for this book was planted when I was 11 years old, as I watched, with paralyzing fear, my grandmother die a brutally painful death at the hands of Breast Cancer. That seed planted deep within the fertile ground of my feelings began to break ground and flower when my father died on December 14th 2005.
What will follow will be my thoughts on the inexpressible subject, death. It’s now December 14th 2009 and I plan on doing this exclusively for the next year and hopefully in the end I’ll understand a little more about myself and be more at peace with my inevitable fate than I am at this moment…which is considerably less than what I had hoped at this point in my life…We stood around his bed and watched as the nurse removed his respirator. She said there was no telling how long he would go on living after it was out….He lasted all of about 30 seconds and we watched as he his body exhaled one final time and that was it. He was gone. The man who had days earlier hugged me with great joy when I came to visit was no longer there. Just the shell of his body remained.
My father died four years ago today….I don’t understand how a person can be here one minute and then gone the next…Talking to you, hugging you and then gone…How can a person’s energy, their being, just disappear?Physics says that energy never disappears; it just changes form. Maybe we all just change form when we die. Sounds good intellectually but it doesn’t penetrate my heart...
What if there is nothing? What if awareness disappears at death? If so, then what’s the point of anything?But what if there is something? Then that changes everything… It makes me think about how well I’ve lived my life, how honest I’ve been, how good I’ve been. I guess if nothing else comes of this, just the fact that I’m questioning my worth as a person is a good thing.
So it seems like it’s all or nothing. If it’s nothing, then I guess everyone who is buying into this “real world” and grabbing for his or her piece of it is doing the right thing. And those who aren’t selfish, egotistical and grabbing for everything they can get are buying a huge load of fools’ gold called, the afterlife. But what if there is something else…what if?I watched a show on Animal Planet once and it was about all the amazing things that animals do. It was fascinating and made me think about who is superior to whom on this planet. But then at the end the narrator relayed an anecdote about a Robin, which was so subtle and sweet that the philosophical possibilities it presented were probably lost to most that viewed it. He said that when a Robin is about to die it perches itself on the branch of a tree and faces the setting the sun. Then once the sun has set beyond the horizon it dies and falls off the tree to the ground, where it is absorbed back into the earth completing the cycle of life...
I was stunned when I heard that beautiful little anecdote. In fact, I’m still stunned to this day. How did the Robin know? And why was it so peaceful and content? Here I am terrified to die and this little Robin just passes on with peace and tranquility of an enlighten Buddha.
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About the Book
Unbeknownst to everyone I have ever come across; I have been living a double life. My public persona has been the “normal” person everyone sees and most like to be around. The guy, who teaches high school math, was a baseball star in college and has been a songwriter for the last thirty years. Yet in private, behind the mask I’ve so meticulously molded, I’ve been living with a deep and sometimes paralyzing fear. That fear is…. I’m afraid to die….
….This book is about my journey into that world and my efforts to face that fear, a fear that I believe hides deep within the silent recesses of everyone’s soul, and to see if there’s a way out….
About the Author
In my first book “The Baseball Gods”, I examined and wrote about the new metaphysics, in the context of baseball, and showed that by looking at life through this different perspective one can have a better understanding of it and live it more successfully on and off the field.
Now, here in my second book, I use this same metaphysical perspective to delve into and face head on, a subject that ultimately awaits us all, death. Like many people, I have had both direct and indirect experiences with death, but unlike most I have not run from or lived in denial of its existence. Instead, my thoughts and feelings have been consumed by it everyday of my life. What follows are my thoughts and feelings from this improbable journey deep within the subject “no one wants to talk about”. It was a solitary trip I feel I was destined to make… down the road less traveled.
I am a math teacher, songwriter, musician, writer, and former college baseball pitcher. I currently live in Connecticut and am working on my third book as well as a new CD of original music.