...I've been thinking a lot about mortality.

(It's a joke about my family: We spend our whole lives planning to die, and our planning always gets executed.)

Speaking only for myself, I am grateful for my mortality, since it kind of pushes me to do things I might not do if I could put them off for eternity.

When I was 22, I had a very serious bicycle accident and while I was in a coma, they checked my EEG to see if I was brain dead and could donate my organs.

I failed the test but they let me live anyway.

When I came out of my coma, life suddenly became more beautiful. I started back on my way to psychological recovery from my sense of being a failure. I was a failure as a son and frankly to myself.

Having spent the last several weeks thinking I had serious, possibly fatal health issues, I suddenly feel so much better, not about my health, which is still problematic, but not as bad as I thought, but about the fact that I have lived at all.

I'm an atheist who is nonetheless astounded that I have existed, that life exists, that when "I shuffle off this mortal coil" all over the universe, things will be born into the miraculous and confusing state of being. It fills me with wonder, ineffable wonder, but wonder all the same.

Your friend who is passing lived so well as to be admired by your wife, who must have good taste in men as she married you. That in itself is a life well lived. While I will have sympathy for your loss of a friend, I will be happy that you had a friend about whom you cared so much as to grieve.

Be well my friend, and take a deep, deep breath to think how wonderful it is that air exists. Why it exists we cannot know, but that it does so is beautiful enough.

moved to tears by music. Of course where one is matters, but not always.

Music (in general) is one thing most can agree on.

IMO

My volumes of his waltzes and nocturnes are sitting next to the piano waiting to be played.

Ty...did my own reflecting today. Your post came at a good time

Maybe I'm in shock because so many are gone, because I don't cry much when I lose another loved one. One of my friends recently had a loss. Their friend's dog died. My friend loved the dog like it was their own. When they told me that the dog had lost its battle, I sent a condolence card the next day. We talked yesterday. They wanted to thank me for the card, for understanding what the loss meant. We talked about what's to come, not just for our beloved pet friends, but ourselves. We both believe that the temple that encloses our spirit isn't the important thing about us. Our spirits are, and we both believe our spirits will live on after we shake loose from these oh so vulnerable bodies.

Carl Sagan said we are made of star-stuff. All of the atoms that make up are bodies come from the universe. And when our physical body dies, all of those bits and pieces return to the universe. Our spirits will live on and so will our physical forms. But we are free of pain and sorrow that the death of the physical body brings us and our loved ones.

In the meantime, we try to find ways of coping with the heartache of saying goodbye. One of the things that has gotten me through recent deaths is realizing that people around me loved the departed as much as I did, in a relationship that was the center of a universe they shared. We need to comfort each other and affirm the love we each feel and the loss we each feel. Helping each other in times of loss helps each of us find a way to get through to bottomless sorrow loss generates.

This little bit of obscure Greek mythology gave me a lot of comfort as I thought about all of the many souls who are traveling on: Asphodel Meadows-in Greek mythology, the afterworld reserved for people who did no great harm or or great good. The souls would live there for 1000 years, and then would have their memories erased by drinking from the River Lethe, and then returned to the world to live again.

There is no easy way through, and most of us seel endlessly for ways to get away from feeling the darkness of grief. But if we didn't feel the grief, how could we feel the joy?

Very thought provoking!

Along with the Chopin, it was a wonderful post.

It really can be startling when someone younger than you is staring their own mortality in the face. Anyone doing that is a reminder for us, but there's often something tragic about a person dying young - or younger than you think they should. Early 60's is still young indeed. It's very sad he's had to suffer.

Often we can't find the tears in the grief we're feeling. If music can help you along with that, that's fabulous. It's a beautiful piece.

I had a friend, a little less than a decade younger than me, in her mid-40's. She went into emergency with a concern just before covid hit and never came out. It turns out the concern she had, which was unknown to her at the time, was a symptom of leukemia. She died in the hospital 2 weeks after that ER visit. Her and her partner had just bought a house, they had planned to start a family - given her age, one child - and grow old together. He was devastated, and as far as I know, has still not fully recovered from the loss. It shook me to the core; we all theoretically know something can happen at any time, but when it happens to someone you know, it's far more REAL.

I do hope your friend makes a surprise recovery - my sister did, after a massive blood clot had her in ICU and on life support for 6 weeks - but if it's not to be, I hope it's a peaceful death.