death-and-dying

The theme of the book is simple: a man is dying: you feel him sinking throughout the book; his thought and his memories pervade the whole with greater or lesser distinction (like the swell and fall of uneven breathing), now rolling up this image, now that, letting it ride in the wind, or even tossing it out on the shore, where it seems to move and live for a minute on its own and presently is drawn back again by grey seas where it sinks or is strangely transfigured.

Old age is catching up with me, or am I catching up with it?

Our existence comes with Death. And it comes with suffering, death alone is not enough and pleasure have consequences. wicked and fucked. love comes with hurting. And having means losing.

I remembered screaming then, screaming until my voice stopped.

There are so many ways to exit towards the Light, but with my luck, I'd be the one electrocuted by Diwali lights. Or the one who cracks her head falling off a footstool. I'd still be a jester, leaving the audience with a stitch in their sides.

Death isn't a tragedy to God, only to those left behind.

Death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again for ever. I envied those who could believe in a God and I distrusted them. I felt they were keeping their courage up with a fable of the changeless and the permanent. Death was far more certain than God, and with death there would be no longer the daily possibility of love dying. The nightmare of a future of boredom and indifference would lift. I could never have been a pacifist. To kill a man was surely to grant him an immeasurable benefit. Oh yes, people always, everywhere, loved their enemies. It was their friends they preserved for pain and vacuity.

Dying in vain isn't really all that bad since nearly everyone does it. It's the living in vain you really have to watch out for.

Don't worry," he would say, smiling. "Dying is much more difficult than one imagines.

Concha would cry when she found out I was dead, she should have no taste for life for months afterward. But I was still the one who was going to die. I thought of her soft, beautiful eyes. when she looked at me something passed her to me. But I knew it was over: if she looked at me now the look would stay in her eyes, it wouldn't reach me. I was alone

On the flight over to Chicago, I thought of a story Mom had once told me from her days as a pediatric nurse. "There was this little boy I was taking care of," she said "and he was terminally ill,and we all knew it,but he kept hanging on and hanging on. He wouldn't die, it was so sad.And his parents were always there with him,giving him so much love and support,but he was in so much pain,and it really was,time for him to go.So finally some of us nurses took his father aside and we told him, 'You have to tell your son it's okay for him to go. You have to give him permission.' And so the father took his son in his arms and he sat with him in a chair and held on to him and told him over and over, that it was okay for him to go,and,well,after a few moments,his son died.

But she left him. That night the angels came back for her, like she'd asked them to. And nobody who saw the heartbreak on Grandpa's face when Granny breathed her last would have thought for one minute that he was glad to get shet of her . . . .

Hamlet misspoke, Strawl decided. It is consciousness that makes cowards of us all, not conscience. Right and wrong are venomless when compared to the simple awareness of being alive. The knowledge that existence can equal something past the sum of our circulation and digestion, that those corporeal purposes serve a galaxy of space between a man's ears, whose suns and planets obey his own peculiar science, but one in which he alone recognizes the order, and only in glimpses, epiphanies that melt before he can speak or even think them--and the knowledge even this distant self is not his possession but belongs to others weighing and judging the dim and distant light he emits.

I never really wanted to die. But I followed through anyway. The pain in my heart was excruciating, and death was beautiful.

Are you scared?___f what?_ __ying._ Jemma was nothing, if she was not blunt.____ not expecting to die, Jemma. I__ expecting to have treatment, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, whatever it takes, but I__ expecting to come through this.

t nightfall, atthe oppressive moment of transition, a storm of carnivorous mosquitoes roseout of the swamps, and a tender breath of human shit, warm and sad, stirredthe certainty of death in the depths of one__ soul.

And then the sword came down like a flash of lightning, and then her head was off her body and the long rivalry between me and the other Boleyn girl was over.

He dropped the phone back onto its cradle, began to turn around and felt a sudden ice-cold furrow open up in his side. Strength drained from his legs, and a moment later he sank to his knees. There was warmth now that ran over the initial and persistent cold.Mohammed was confused, and barely noticed the briefcase being removed from his grip. He heard the click of a cell phone opening, and a soft beeping as a number was dialed.'The package is in my possession,' a female voice said, and the phone clicked shut.