With another crisis in my health last night, my mind was on thoughts of mortality this morning.  Life in the physical body is so fragile - in an instant, it can be over. 
It doesn't take much. 

We tend to think of ourselves as almost immortal sometimes, or at least long-lasting but, in actual fact, our bodies are no more immune to death than that of the cockroach I squashed the other day. 

My grandmother had a long string of health problems over the years and was always
warning everyone she might die soon.  However, even with a bad back, an enlarged heart, emphysema and Parkinson's disease, it took a rare form of cancer of the nervous system to kill her at the ripe old age of 83. 

Funny that, how really sick people can linger on for years and years. 
Maybe there's hope for me yet. 

My adoptive father's dad was sick for years, too, and his wife always fussed over him. 
But he outlived her.  She died very quickly of pneumonia. 
He died many years later, of a heart attack. 

My natural father died of a heart attack, too.  He had bowel cancer at the time.
As I said, life is so fragile. 

We could easily have lost our son, Sean, when he was hit by a van in 1994.  His life hung in the balance.  And I was torn between wanting to heal him and bring him back, and wanting to be there for him to guide him on his way, if he really had to go...  

There are no rulings over death but that of the divine. 
It's all up to God, in the end. 

So many people fight death like it is something terrible.  Others seem to covet it, like those continually seeking Nirvana, or Heaven.  What's wrong with just living this life
to the best of our abilities till it ends?  Didn't we choose to come here in the first place? 
There must be some reason for that, for why we'd choose to incarnate and leave that very Heaven behind for a while. 

I'm not afraid of death, just of dying.  I'd like to hope it would be easy, but it's an unknown.  Death always means a cessation of breathing, and  I well know how panicky that can be.  I think everyone should be prepared for death, though.  It would save a lot of heartache with people hanging on in their last months just so they could say things they haven't said, or do things they didn't do, or let people get to know them in ways they hadn't before... Why aren't we all already doing all this?  It should be part and parcel of everyday life, not something we do as an afterthought. 

Life should be lived to the full, or the fullest it can be, in every moment of every day;  to the extent that you can, of course.  Then there are no regrets when death does come, and everyone can rejoice for what your life brought to the world.