Death

*Chip’s Note: To be a modern elder means you’re as curious as you are wise and Sue shows here curiosity (and offers some great reflective questions) in this guest post. *

“As much as I no longer cling so hard to the good things of life, when I begin to lose the use and pleasure of them, I come to view death with much less frightened eyes. When we are led by Nature’s hand down a gentle and virtually imperceptible slope, bit by bit, one step at a time, she rolls us into this wretched state and makes us familiar with it.” - Michel de Montaigne, sixteenth-century essayist

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life’s change agent.” – Steve Jobs

Chip: Rocky may be our most prolific guest poster and his essays always fill me with inspiration.

Chip's editorial comment: Jill is one of the first people I met in Baja more than a dozen years ago as she’d packed up in midlife and moved down as an artist and soon-to-be gallery owner. This experience she writes about is just a reminder that life is precious.

Most people say they would prefer to just get death over with quickly. I suppose they hate to imagine the alternative: a long, slow death march to decrepitude that isn’t just painful but a burden to others. Does that describe you?