death is certain, and the timing of death is uncertain, so what is the most important?

Thursday was a very bad day. That "no" post (previous) came out of a slide back into a very difficult place, paranoia, despair, nothing good. But I took my evening meds a few hours early and after a half hour or so I was fine.

I am grateful for the meds and more resigned to my diagnosis.

Last night too was bad. Black despairing loneliness. Up most of the night crying. That turned out to be largely PMS.

Maybe the meds aren't catching everything but most of the time I feel so much better. Not to be depressed after years of being depressed is such a gift.

Anyway, the title of the post refers to two things... the second of the four reminders that I was going to be meditating upon these weeks, and the fact that my aunt's health is failing.

It may seem morbid, but the phrase puts a lot of things in perspective.

And as my aunt gets ready to enter Hospice, I feel that feeling coming over me, the hospice feeling... the end of life, the slowing down, the rasping breath that stops.
Familiar. Very familiar by this time. Makes life seem more awake, more piquant, to know that you will walk on and this person who has come with you this far, they will stop. You'll walk on without them.

When death comes near to someone, it fills me with an odd peace. Death is just so real. It's the real-est thing in the world. It's inescapable and absolute. Everything else is relative, depends on how you look at it, shifting and confused. Death - well you can think different things about it, say different things about it - but it ultimately is incontrovertible, un-interpretable, it's just the end. And it comes to everyone. It could come to me before my aunt.

And... that's the way it is.