The Picturing Death Project Journal Entries from 1999-2003

The simple but effective structure for the Picturing Death Project, a cast glass table, four chairs, and journals, provide a structure for journal writing with 4 questions that help participants examine how we will choose to live with the knowledge that death is inevitable. Currently, the project table, chairs and journals reside at Hospice Care of Southwest Michigan in Kalamazoo. http://www.hospiceswmi.org

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Journal Entry 668

1.

From warmth, flexibility, pink, or grey skin the sparkle is no more, expression painted on or not... there is no more. Memories tacked on a bulletin board to observe, but yet glancing over to me wow, hum... not the same. I am no longer in the room, I am gone. I see you, but you do not see "me". My time is elsewhere... waiting out there somewhere... Do I understand? Well, yes. Now I will know if dying hurts or not, was it easy or hard. My body will be carried out that is for sure... I am only human.


2.

As I watched my father in ICU he so frail (huge in life) hooked up to tubes, wires, wires, tubes, machines running, making sounds and hums I will never forget... I know he is not going to die I think to myself; my family all there with that hope also. Dr's talked as if he had a good chance. See, as a child, teenager, wife, mother, widow, new bride I feared my father. Therefore he could not die, no not yet. He still needed to be my daddy, dad; my father... where we could get together void of all that tension. Yes, I loved my dad, he loved me... he coded 3 nights in a row before he Really Really (in disbelief) did die. I wanted that chance to be his daughter, that chance for him to be my father. Too late... Please no...


3.

My life if it should end now? I will have been blessed. Even as I sit here thinking about... "I am going to die"... one day I would be ok with it, what choice do I have. I do know my life thus far has been a short one; (I am 51). I say this so for sure because every time I learn something new I think to myself wow I will carry this new knowledge with me and apply it. I know I do not want to die now, but with the newness of everything I learn; I trick myself into thinking I've just started living... yes I still say if I should die tonight I will have been blessed with what ALL has been offered to me.


4.

I picture me having that hope to not have those fears and to allow myself to let go. To have the "courage to" not fight death as I imagine me right now, if it should die.

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