Death...
Right on. Other than my granddad and my parents friends, I didn't experience death in close proximity until I was in my mid 20s when my friends started dying of drug overdoses. My uncle who was a junky with a failed liver and hep C, was on deaths door for half a decade but somehow, every time the hospital called to say "come see Mike, this is it," he pulled through. Then my grandmother got cancer, did the chemo thing, beat the cancer, but the chemo made her body so weak that one night she fell getting out of bed and died a few days later. After that, it was like flood gates opened and a rainbow of death began to shine around me. Some rich kid killed my uncle in a hit and run soon after my grandmother died. From then on it has seemed like every year, a family member and at least 2 kids I grew up with/skated with/musicked with has died. It's been a long period of grieving that really popped off over the past few months. Most of these people who have died were suffering, so at least they're not suffering anymore, but it's still a strange thing to wrap the mind around. I think about them, I miss them sometimes. I remember what we used to do. I wonder what was going on for them. And still, I can't help but think that at least they're not suffering anymore.
When I was 18 I got hit by a car and was almost killed. I definitely had what could be classified as a Near Death Experience with a sense of a whitish-bright space, my being/soul floating the physical earth. It wasn't scary, it was more likely similar to some states that I experience these days when I've been sitting in a strong meditation, a sense of awareness "Ah, there's so and so. I'm right here. I see..." there wasn't any value attached, just, like I said, a sense of awareness or presence. I've experienced similar sensations while ingesting psychedelics, the most predictably similar being DMT.
I enjoy being alive. Loving my family. Loving my partner. I enjoy breathing clean air and swimming in clear water. I get off on meditation and skateboarding and playing music. I dig learning new things. I enjoy eating food that has myriad flavor. I love waking up in the morning and stretching. I want to keep teaching people and collaborating, connecting as humans. I don't want to die yet, and while I'm kind of afraid of long time, agonizing pain, I don't think I'm afraid of dying. I don't believe in heaven or hell, suffering after death. Maybe my energy, as such is neither created nor destroyed, contributes to something else. Worm food>bird food>fertilizer>plant food>people food. Maybe the impact I make on individuals carries the mental energy forward along the whole of existence. Who knows, maybe I'll be terrified when the time comes, maybe not. All I know is that through experience, NDE or those life flashing before your eyes when you fall down a rock face waterfall and somehow land on a small outcropping, is that I haven't been afraid or in pain until after the event occurs, and in the case of death, there's no space left to be in pain or in fear.
I'm trying to live pretty fully and in preparation for a good death. Trying to be aware that it's inevitable and that I can get ready for it. Teachings of the Buddha, through Thich Nhat Hanh's book, No Death, No Fear, really made a lot of sense for me back around the time folks in my sphere seemed to start dying with eerie regularity. Y'all can probably find a free PDF if you're interested.