"I'm Dying"

A friend said to me recently “I'm dying.” She's ninety years old and in precarious health, so it's likely that she will die any day now. She said it in that sober way of people who have done a lot of thinking in preparation for the event. I recognized what she was saying immediately because dying has been the central question of my own life for over fifty years now.

What surprized me was how good her statement felt. It was true, and she was sharing it with me, and it was helping us both to hear it said, to acknowledge it, to deal with it. We would help each other with dying, help each other out at the end, like God's spies, a phrase that she has used with me. It felt good to hear her say “I'm dying.”

Conversely, I now see what a down, what a drag, what a frustration, it is to be with people who don't believe they will die.