Prepare to die!
And get a discount on shipping when you order your coffins in bulk | Listen (3 min)
In college, I was a procrastinator. Countless reports and assignments failed to meet their full potential, because I couldn’t bring myself to research semiotics or Plato’s Republic any sooner than was absolutely necessary.
The result was always one or two exhausting nights of frantic page-turning and Ctrl F searching, ending in a pompous, meaningless essay, turned in with a ghost of regret that I hadn’t bothered to engage the material.
I’m still a procrastinator. I’m working on it, but it’s easy to put off an assignment when I sense its demanding nature, when I know I’ll emerge from the work a changed woman.
As I reach middle age, the value in these soul-shaping struggles becomes dearer. I understand, for example, that reading and contemplating Dante will bring me deeper into the unity of matter and spirit, but I also know I’ll feel the nagging pull of transformation (never mind having to wade through footnote-Hell). In the end, I’ll be glad I went through with it, but I won’t be the same person I was when I started.
There’s no end of discouragement or distraction, whether the assignments are ones we choose or ones that are given to us. I usually stuff my life assignments under a stack of overindulged pleasures. But I only have so much time on this earth. One day, I’ll be gone. I don’t want to leave anything important buried in the pile.
One of my and my husband’s goals for this year is to make a death plan. A will, funeral and burial arrangements, even ordering our coffins (we’re purchasing our simple wood boxes with a few other people at church, since bulk orders get a better deal on shipping; and there’s an option to use them as bookshelves until you need them!). We’ll talk to friends and family about our final wishes. We’ll make arrangements to rehome our animals once we’re both gone.
If ever there were a chore I wanted to stuff under a mountain of Parks & Rec rewatching, it’s this.
But I know, from personal experience, that these are not the tasks I want to be attending to in the wake of a terminal diagnosis or from my deathbed. I certainly don’t want to leave them for my family.
I made room for silence in my life, and this is where it’s got me. Planning for my inevitable end. Facing my mortality.
Like most assignments, it’s the buildup, the dread, the putting it off, and off, and off that makes the preparation for death into a source of distress. Once I took the first step, I felt a great deal better. Even learned a few things. I can only imagine the rewards that come with a steady, studied conclusion.
Painting is Absorbed in his Studies by Eilif Peterssen, 1874