Dialogue with Dying

I am so sick, and getting sicker. Sleeping eighteen-twenty hours a day, getting up to nibble on a cracker, slipping my muumuu over my naked body, dressed to see the doctor.

“You have allergies,” says the Doctor Shane, a new doctor who has joined my old Doctor Sharkis’ practice. “Everyone has them,” Doctor Shane says. “I have them, too. This has been a horrendous allergy season. Wait two weeks and you’ll be better.” He shakes my hand, smiles and opens the examining room door.

I am home, back to bed.

I feel worse and worse.

I am dying, I think.  I am dying.

I am not afraid, angry, or dismayed. There is no one I want to see or talk to, nothing I want to do, nothing I want to finish. Nothing I want to touch, not even my dogs, who are stretched out on the bed next to me.

I am dying and that’s okay. Dying, I think, would be just more sleep, and I do like to sleep.

I sleep some more.

Cremation, I think. I’ll be cremated. That decision had alluded me until now. A body? Ashes-to-ashes.           

For two weeks I sleep.

I have no physical, psychological or emotional pain.

Sleep, I think, sleep. I like to sleep. When I am dead, I will be asleep. I won’t miss anyone or anything just as I don’t miss anyone or anything now. I am sorry that others will miss me but I will be asleep and won’t know that.

I am not fearful, angry, or fretful. I am at ease in a way I have never been before.

My spirit will continue. Energy never dies, just transforms.  I’ve been a good spirit in this body and so my guess is my spirit-energy will continue for good.