To imagine death.

My whole body aches to remind me that I'm decidedly middle aged and I might like to slow down a little. I’m given cause to consider my mortality.

Imagined Death #1

The lights on this van have never felt bright enough. Sometimes I question whether they’re even on. Are you allowed to put brighter bulbs in? I’m tired. The darkness sweeps on toward Glen Moriston. The Isle of Skye is behind me and a long drive home still ahead. The heather either side of me imposes nature’s ragged edge. Distant tail lights suggest the road is clear. There's the hotel with the petrol pump where I met Jackie Chan's stunt double’s daughter, in the pouring rain, the morning I decided I'd propose to Kathleen.

I follow the curve of the road which follows the shore of Loch Cluanie, reflecting slivers of starlight, below on my right.

I pass into a moment of cell coverage - PING - and my phone lights up bright on its vent mounted cradle.

I glance away from the windscreen long enough not to see the headlamp lit eyes of a stag. The frozen beast lifts and rolls up the short bonnet shattering and scattering glass with flailing hooves. I process points of antler, try counting - are there sixteen on a Monarch? I see the unimportant name on the text message displayed on the phone as it sails past my head. Something is shockingly sharp. I think “bloody hell this is extreme”. I think about my son. The thick brown hair on the deer’s flank tinged with ochre, orange flecked, pushes into my face. Golden. Terror pushes past me slick with sweat - wet, red, tearing flesh. Gravity happens. The world inverts sharply. The van skids, slips, flips, rolls down toward the cold black water, heaving clods of dirt and gorse into the air. I am dead before we come to tangled, contorted rest amongst the heather.

The End.

I don't feel frightened or sickened or macabre painting myself into an imagined road traffic accident. It doesn't land particularly hard. The A87 is a familiar road and often busy with deer in the night time. I wouldn't be the first vehicle to tumble from the tarmac and come to rest in heather. When I’ve had my worst accidents or most painful experiences there’s been a sense of clarity and acceptance. I imagine the moments before death to be similar.

To imagine death.

In the Hagikure, Yamamoto Tsunetomo’s treatise on samurai philosophy he advised that we should meditate on the inevitability of death daily.

“Every day when one's body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears, and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one's master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead.”

Bushido, Japan’s old warrior code, is sometimes referred to as the "Way of Dying" or living as though already dead.

I read the Hagikure after watching the Jim Jarmusch film Ghost Dog. Forest Whitaker’s assassin enforcer, always near death, carries a copy. It might have been the first non-fiction book I read.

There’s order to be found in thinking about firsts and imagining how lasts might land.

Imagined Death #2

This exact track was impassable last time I walked up here. When was that? Ice rink slippery with frozen snow all the way up from the carpark. It's fine, dry, gravel now and the heather either side flowers resplendent regal purple. The sun is high in the sky, directly overhead and I'm aware I should have left earlier in the day. I've been slower getting started recently.

I pause for breath and swing the light rucksack off my shoulder to retrieve my water bottle. My brows have thinned over the years and sweat runs unfettered into my eyes. I unroll the thin cotton scarf from my bag, wipe my face and drape it over my head to protect against the noon sun. I re-sling my bag and continue up the track.

I used to walk these hills with friends. Up from Bonaly where the toilet block is finally open.

There was never a toilet block when Gus and his friends stomped up from this carpark with me. Little legs, short strides, loud laughs and laces needing constantly re-tied. Complaints about the climb. Damning the little burn by reservoir at the top. Not wanting to leave. All about the destinations.

I pause on my path. I think I should drink. Didn't I just have some water? My mind is cloudy these days. I'm tired so I lower myself into the soft heather at the side of the path. I can see Arthur's Seat and the city that's been my home my whole adult life. Everyone I love is contained in that view.

Alone on the hill. I am an old man with a foolish grin.

I peel a banana and eat half. You can't expect a banana, once peeled, to hold it's firmness for any length of time. Once peeled. You can’t zip a banana back up. They peel in one direction. I balance the uneaten half on my knee, so’s to have two hands free to roll the skin up tight. Banana skins can take up to two years to decompose. I place the neat roll in the mesh pocket of my rucksack where a water bottle should be. The uneaten half hasn't fallen from my knee. What to do with half a banana?

I used to walk these hills with friends who’d share snacks.

I should have brought a water bottle. It's not like me to forget. My father used to forget to drink water.

Heather is a more comfortable seat than anything man has ever made.

I recline back into its embrace and feel safe. The world is warm. “Warmer than 1995 maybe?”

I've asked that out loud but no-one is here to answer.

A small brown bird flies quickly overhead. “You don't know anything from ‘95”, I say. In all these years I've never held on to their names, all the little birds. It's not a robin.

I knew a Robin at school. What became of him? So many names to remember and forget and remember.

Robyn with a y has her own children now. Do they have children? All the little birds.

Cycles of life.

Losses and wins.

Old walking crew. Olly, Kev, Pete sometimes. I used to walk these hills with friends.

I close my eyes, ease back into the heather.

The End.

Two imagined deaths. I prefer the second but recognise humans don't often get to choose.

To leave from a place of peace, a favourite viewpoint encapsulating so many favourite memories.

Seneca wrote, to Lucilius, about the importance of reflecting on death to remove its sting and live more fully.

"Let us prepare our minds as if we’d come to the very end of life. Let us postpone nothing. Let us balance life’s books each day… The one who puts the finishing touches on their life each day is never short of time."

My whole body aches. I know I need to rest a little. I've booked time in a barometric chamber. Oxygen therapy to easy the stiffness and pain that feels like an unwelcome onesy, a floor length baddie oodie. A soiled, Dickensian, old man bed shirt that I can't just shrug off. I've booked time with an osteopath.

I've paused my membership to the Climbing Hangar.

I'm taking a break from weightlifting.

I'm terrified of being that fat lazy man I became in my thirties. I enjoyed shedding his weight in my forties. I'd like to take him with me into my fifties.

This latest identity I've built is the only one I've ever really loved. This is the best fit for me.

What if I lose myself?

Hold on.

“1 - I am subject to aging, have not gone beyond aging.

2 - I am subject to illness, have not gone beyond illness.

3 - I am subject to death, have not gone beyond death.

4 - I will grow different, separate from all that is dear and appealing to me.

5 - I am the owner of my actions, heir to my actions, born of my actions, related through my actions, and have my actions as my arbitrator.

Whatever I do, for good or for evil, to that will I fall heir.”

The Buddha’s Five Remembrances cut straight to the unembellished core of what it means to live with awareness of mortality.

Is the acceptance of death a requirement for a full life?

I don't have an answer to that. Except maybe to say that I feel more able to appreciate what is here, knowing this will not always be so.

Melancholia? I'm not sure it's a bad thing. I hope you don't feel glum. I don't feel glum. Reflective, peaceful, contentedly connected to my life.

Thanks for reading.

How are you feeling? Have you tried oxygen therapy? It’s new to me. New experiences. What's you're healing process?

Leave a comment

I hope you're aches and pains pass.

Mind how you go.

Paul.

Under what circumstances would you share a post like this? Is it a bit macabre for a monday.

Share