Visiting My Death Bed

by Alton Gansky

I suffer from a recurring vision, a bit of nightmarish imagery that would fit in an old Twilight Zone episode.

The room is sparse, hosting only a single-wide bed. No night tables. No artwork on the walls. Just a bed with white linen covering a man from foot to neck. The man is gaunt, pale, and a forest of gray-black stubble carpets his jaw and jowls. His eyes closed and sunken. Gray hair rests at odd angles on the thick pillow beneath his head.

The man is me. At some future date to be sure, but it is me. I am viewing my last moments in this life.

It is an odd sensation to be alone with one's self, the only music the wheezing from tired lungs. I see my lips move, but the words are too heavy to make it past the lips of my dying self.

I approach and lean to place my ear near my parched lips.

Final words are considered sacred. When a man has only moments, he doesn't waste words on puns, jokes, or politics.

I can feel tiny puffs tickle my ear. I close my eyes and strain for each syllable as it tries to reach escape velocity.

"I--I wish I had tried . . . Afraid. I wish I had tried--"

Then comes the gasp; the exhalation of a man trading a tired world for an untarnished one.

Afraid? Tried? Afraid of what? What do I wish I had tried?

To die with an unfulfilled wish on my lips is a frightening thing. Every time the vision comes unbidden to mind, I notice that my regret wasn't failing to achieve, but failing to try. Like everyone else, I'm uncomfortable with criticism and am devastated by rejection. It's a human trait.

In my philosophy, courage is not the absence of fear, but its conquest. "You failed," the critic says. "But I tried," I reply. There's no shame in that.

When it comes to writing, there are five things I know:

1. If I don't write, then I won't have to wrestle with ideas.
2. If I don't submit what I write, then I won't be rejected.
3. If i don't publish, then I won't have to endure criticism.
4. If I have no goals, then I can't fail to reach them.
5. If I accept fear, then I won't need to be brave.

If you visited your death bed today, what would your future self tell you?

Be brave.

 

Comments

[Charles (Pastor Chip) Short]

Excellent.

In the movie, Ballroom Dancing, a wise old woman tells a young woman, "a life lived in fear is a life half lived."

As an introvert in the ministry I often have to push myself to live this courageous life you reccomend. Years ago I developed the habit of driving through graveyards and reminding myself these many people have lost their opportunities.

Some lost the opportunity to accomplish some great thing for God. Others lost the opportunity to know Christ in eternity. It is our job to give these opportunities to the living.

[Alton Gansky]

Thanks for those additional comments, Pastor Chip. The graveyard image got my attention.

[Pat Crepeau]

A super article! I think every day about what I want my contribution to be, so that when I look back, at the end of my life, I will know that I am leaving behind, as a legacy, something good for God.

From an embroidery: "What we are is God's gift to us; what we become is our gift to God."

Sometimes opportunities aren't acted upon because they are being kept as possibilities, a bright future in front of us - safer than trying and failing. This, from Alexander Lowen: "...not simply the transforming of the world but the transforming of the person...rather than live his ongoing self-transformation as the joyful, vital overcoming of obstacles...will tend to experience the anaesthetic body of lumbering possibilities rather than the aesthetic body of creative freedom."

Now I'm getting help from the people around me to put my "lumbering possibilities" to God's test: if I do everything I can, and if this is in His will for me, He will help.