Another thing that I’d better blog while it’s on my mind: two deaths. One occurred while I was in Wales – a teacher from my old school, though he never taught me. He was a friend of my parents, and a pillar of the local community, especially through his work in researching local history, and the many books he published about it. Not long after he’d been walking in the Alps, he was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer of the liver, pancreas, and lungs, and died a few weeks later. I’m not sure of his age, but late 50s, early 60s would be about right.
The other death happened a couple of years ago, but I hadn’t heard until a friend told me last week. This was a young woman I vaguely knew from the Welsh cultural scene, and the pub, in Aberystwyth. She was younger than me, a first-language Welsh speaker from North Wales. She was both beautiful and brilliant; one of those people who you just know is going to have a wonderful life. As I understand it, she just dropped dead one day from a brain hemorrhage, at 30 years old. I simply couldn’t believe it.
Just goes to show: you never know when your time will come – are you ready for it?
Well, can anyone be truly ready? I guess it’s possible when you aren’t all attatched to most thing in your life…
There’s a Taiwanese old fella here where I live. He teaches Taiji a few mornings a week and is “teaching” me and some more people about the “5 Truths”. He kept saying about attatchments a lot.
I think about death very often during the day, actually. I can’t remember how it started. Probably reading about how meditation may be seen as preparing for the moment of our own deaths. The question of course follows: Am I ready? It sure helps me get back into meditation practice!