The circle of life...do you take pause or simply move on?

Scathed, most definitely. @Cruiser, my husband passed three years ago and I am still very much in the aftershocks. We were married 33 years, add on the courting years and it was more like 37. We were set to enjoy our golden years together and then “it” happened. Digging out emotionally and practically has been quite consuming for it changes EVERYTHING, or sure feels like all is different. I am struggling to re-create my own life and not be an add on to someone else’s while in this transition. I do know that staying in the moment and being aware of what’s happening with the 5 senses is a good thing. Guess you could call it trying to “smell the roses”

Yesterday one of my closest friends went up to Oregon to watch her father die. Oregon has assisted suicide laws, and he took advantage of it. My friend was able to be with her dad at that last moment, knowing it was coming. I am hoping she found some comfort in it.
I, however, still ache from having to take my Mom off life support 6 years ago.
It is an experience of life, but one I hope others don’t have.

I am very aware of the passage of time, and that LITS.

It comes with age and experience, I think.

@smilingheart1 Being aware is a main reason I grow as many roses as I do! ;)

I’m very aware. My sister nearly died in a car accident when she was just 19. My husband and his brothers had to make the decision to take his dad off life support. Three years ago I had make the decision to take my mom off life support.

I’ve known too many people who have died before their time.

All of this has caused me to not take one moment for granted. My family all know how much I love them as do my friends. I don’t miss an opportunity to encourage and support the people in my life.

Think about this- This new dog I got last year is most likely going to be my last. Hmm?

I got scathed first when at 24 my grandad died at the age of 91. The big realization that first time was, I was’t crying because he died, which I knew sooner or later was inevitable, but because I’m going to miss him and regretted that I did not spend enough time with him so I could write down his stories of the past.

Second scathing came three months after a dear friend of mine who was a tarot card reader foretold that there was someone very important in the family that will soon pass away. I didn’t really believe in such things and got read just for fun. I did think about my parents then and kinda worried. Turned out it was my oldest uncle. He died in his sleep at the age of 70. I still think my tarot reading friend did not just predict that. But I did not want to get another reading from her after that.

My uncle passed 12 years ago. Now, I sometimes wonder which loved one is next. Could it be me? Death does not age discriminate you see. And I do have seven other aunts and uncles and about 25 cousins. Thing is I do think of dying everyday, it varies from 3 secs to one or two minutes. But I never feel depressed thinking of it. Just wondering.

I think some deaths will always cause a person to pause longer than others. But eventually you learn that you must move on. We pause long enough to say we will not let any wasted days go by but eventually we let small, unimportant things get in the way and we go on till the next pause.

There have been a couple of things in my life that I hold onto when I think about getting older and how short life really is.

I heard a story years ago that has stuck with me. It was one of those things you might read and it has no effect on your life. To me it was one of those things that touched my touched my psyche. The story goes something like this.

There was a man who was given the opportunity to sell his soul to the devil in exchange for a lifetime of total happiness. Satan told the man he could live a life without worry about money or health if at the end of the man’s life on earth he agreed that Satan could have his soul.

The man agreed – with one stipulation. The man asked the devil to allow him a notice before his death. Satan agreed that before the man’s time on earth was over, Satan would give him a warning of sorts. A notice that the end was near.

Well, the man went about his life, married, raised a family, watched his children grow and thrive. He loved his wife and had grandchildren to sit on his knees. He watched as friends he’d known all of his life were buried. He cried at his parents’ graves when they left this earth. He lived to watch neighbors and friends who he’d worked side-by-side with live and die.

One night the man was awaken by Satan telling him it was time to go. The man reminded Satan of their agreement. He couldn’t just come in the middle of the night and steal him away without warning. That was the deal.

Satan shook his head and told the man he’d watched his children grow up and have children of their own. He’d watched his very parents grow gray and feeble and friends he’d loved his entire life die. Many too young and many old men like himself.

This was your warning. “Every day you were given a warning that your life here on this earth will soon be over. What more could I have done?” Satan said.

When people die old, that’s one thing I accept. When people die young or from a disease rather than age then I have some troubles celebrating their lives as easily because of the hurt of their passing.

Most of the time I’m good at moving along in order not to waste what could be wonderful times, most of the time.

Sweet holy moly, there is not s time I see a baby in a stroller or a toddler in tow that I am not reminded I am in a losing race with the grim reaper.

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death
(Rodger Waters)

Every morning I wake I am thankful, and every day I waste not getting to where I hope to get to I cringe, all the time I know I lost and can’t get back I regret, and the little time I have left to do anything I am sadden. If you are not working on your dreams by the time you are 14yrs it is pretty much a wash. Your dream will go bye bye and you will just be a cog in the wheel.

Thank you for this question. It reminded me that LITS. I am once again grateful.

@Hypocrisy_Central that’s one of my favourite verses in a Pink Floyd song.

When I was 8, my great grandpa who lived next door, passed away. I remember my parents picking me up from school, taking me for ice cream, and then telling me when we were home. My mom said, “when I woke up this morning I decided I wanted to take Grandpa Joe out to get breakfast. But it turns out, God thought he should go to Heaven instead.” I just remember sitting there and staring out the window at his house and wondering what was going to happen now.

The weirdest funerals for me have always been for people my age. A friend’s brother died after he hit his head in a rock climbing accident and hearing his friends and seeing everything he was involved in made me panic a little bit because he was such an incredible person and I feel like the world still needed him.

I think the more important message in @Hypocrisy_Central‘s post is that we fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way.

I’ve come close to death a few times. Unfortunately, these close calls came in my youth (I turned 40 this year). I assumed that since Death hadn’t taken me, those many times he had the chance, that I was meant to do something. I figured that life would just kind of lead me to what it wanted from me and then, well, lights out.

It hasn’t happened yet and in the interim I have become a middle aged man. I have also realized that when I was younger I didn’t know shit. What I, in my youthful arrogance, figured was destiny turned out to be me with a wife, three kids, and a couple of dogs. I now have a very healthy respect of death, not only because of the self-abusive way I have lived my life, but because the thought of leaving my family behind now leaves me with a horrible ache that I can barely stand to contemplate.

Time creeps up on you kids. Make the most of it and take your own bullshit with more than a grain of salt.

I have always had a weird feeling that I won’t live to a ripe old age. I think this is a consequence of both my parents dying at a fairly young age (Mother 43/Father 62). My sister also died quite suddenly a few years ago. I do think I live by the mantra LITS. I am very conscious of spending time with the people I love and feel quite remiss when I don’t manage this. I remember when my father died and didn’t have much to leave financially but had a wealth of people he had connected to and family who loved him, what a rich man he was.

I was watching that program Who do you think you are? and I remember thinking about all the people on the planet who have died and how few of them we remember. It gave me pause to consider what really matters. Most of us are not going to invent something, or write something or do something that will see our memory living on in the general population. For many of us we will live on only in the minds of those we love and the history we leave behind. It really made me consider all the crap we spend so much time worrying about that really, in the whole scheme of things, mean nothing.

I don’t really care what people outside of my family think of me, but I do care about those who follow me and want to know about their origins. I am now spasmodically researching my family history and I am very much reminded of this truth. I wish I had written more down about my life as I lived it and spoken to my parents about their memories and my grandparent (most died before I was born) too. In the future, someone is going to look back and wonder who I was or who someone connected to me was. I hope I leave something to give them a sense of me and of those I love. Life is very short, but the threads that connect us to our past and to our family in the future can be very long lived.

Sorry for the wall. Sometimes my thoughts run away with me.

I’ve had to face my own mortality a few times, and @Cruiser is right, the older we get, the more we have to deal with our loved ones going however it happens. LITS indeed, but I’ve learned over the years that, for me, it’s the quality of the small moments that count the most. I recently lost someone very dear to me, and my outlook shift was small but significant. I don’t feel that I have to sky dive or bungee jump to live each day to the fullest, but being aware is a huge factor.

I never consider my mortality, so long as I pack as much into this one crack at life & I don’t outlive my kids, then i’m a happy camper. When all’s said & done, when your times up there’s very little can be done to alter it & on reflection, if you’re lucky 80+yrs is a heck of a good innings. LITS? I tend to think differently.

Just had a talk with my 91 year old gentleman friend last night, after he had just finished a glass of red wine. He told me he doesn’t mind slipping away in his sleep. His wife passed away 6 years ago and he chuckled, adding he of course lost his parents and only brother whom he all loved many, many years ago before that. We both agreed every waking day now for him should be a celebration! : )

When I was 12, in the course of nine months we buried the three most important adult males in my world. You learn to pack as much as you can into each day and take nothing for granted. In the words of Warren Zevon, enjoy every sandwich.

I love staring at trees in the Autumn and Winter, sitting there and looking at melting rivers in Spring or checking out the night sky during any time. I do this often enough to often think like, whoa dude. Seasons come and go and come back again, years go by, and I’m gonna die someday.
I’ve never seen seasons wholly as a cycle, rather than that cycle being a byproduct of time moving on, and me with it. Then it’s like, dude, life’s too short to sit in the woods and stare at trees all day lol. But, then I just keep on doing it.

Whoa… GQ and all GAs.

Today I was driving back home to Minnesota. I just left my mom and stepdad’s house. He is not doing well- he has dementia and is fading fast. It made for a stressful stay at their house but in one of my stepdad’s moments of lucidity, he talked about how much he loved me and wanted to be there for me for the next few months during my divorce. He also said he loved my mom very much and looked forward to 20 more years with her. It was a very LITS moment, yes.

Not only is life too short, moments are not plentiful enough because of all the crap we load into our lives to run the rat-race. I know I’m guilty of that—putting my energy into people that don’t give a flying fig if I died tomorrow. That will change.

LITS to hold onto grudges, to not say ILY to the people you care about, to not go after what makes you happy, and to not make memories. LITS to not share with others and relish everything life has to offer- good and bad!

It’s funny that this question was posted—while I was driving the 8 hour stretch today, and my daughter was asleep, I thought about that. I thought about how much many of us put into fighting for success and the approval of people that don’t matter, while we don’t put time into the people who matter. In 100 years, I’ll probably be forgotten, like most people—I thought about how many of us are living our lives like we’re trying to be the next historymaker or the next big name, and grieving when we don’t luck out or win—when our “winnings” really are right in front of us in our family, friends, nature, the smile from a stranger at a store… and the fact that we’re on the right side of the grass, to quote a jelly. (I forgot which one…was it @Cruiser who said that??)

Ahh, what a wonderful thread. Thank you @Cruiser!!

@linguaphile: I remember reading that too (in your last paragraph) and really felt it.

Which jelly wrote it, please? Thank you, again