The Dying Man

DEATH, DISABILITY, FAILURE, ENDURANCE

Death doesn't always come quickly. It can be an incremental process which fills in the cracks of one's fractured hopes and dreams. Its harbingers are the inability to keep up as well as one used to, denial of the evidence of incompetence, and loss of motivation. Death is preceded by the decline into weariness, exhaustion, idleness, and sleep. There is no recuperative process for the dying man, just the prolonged exhibition of disappointment and inadequacy. It is not even the failure to recover a full life. He never had a full life to recover. He never even knew what it meant to be whole and to live fully in the world. Fullness eluded his comprehension. It is the failure to recover a life that seemed to have a fighting chance, a life that seemed to be worth fighting for, even with its apparent flaws. A life worth getting up in the morning to pursue. A life for which to be well. He reached a point where he could see his life slipping away, and he knew that he would let it go graciously. He did not want to fuss over the process of letting go of his life. He wanted to find the right way to do it. He wanted to find the right way to die. The ultimate failure, the final disappointment, done well.