I used to think the best one could hope for from dying was a gentle fading away. I believed this to be true in my late forties, when I was diagnosed with breast cancer, placed myself in God’s tender care, and survived. Somehow, I managed to get past making deals and beyond offering up sacrifices and when healing came about, I did not take credit.
But now, more than twenty years later, with death no longer untimely but inevitable, I find myself face to face with yet another paradox of age. While I am even more at peace with my mortality, I heartily reject the notion of a slow fade.
There is little about me in how I live my life that is about fading away into anything and I now hope to be fully, fiercely me to the very end. If you are poking at me and it makes me mad, I hope to not be forcing myself to tell jokes. If making demands and resisting arbitrary orders makes me difficult, so be it. I plan, too, to save some of my choicest words for God. But in all honesty, if at the moment of my passing I am feeling blessedly serene, that would have to be alright, too.
Whatever it is I am to have become at the very end, I hope to be feeling as honest, curious, adventurous and passionate about life through my last exhale as I do today. Being fully alive means being open to surprises—and when it comes right down to it, what choice do we really have? And so it is I hope that at the end, I am reluctant to let go, having learned at long last to love every bit of this whole crazy, challenging, wonderful, fierce experience that has comprised my unique and particular life. But then, when it is absolutely clear there’s to be no turning back, that for which I hope most fiercely is not a slipping away but rather a spectacular dive head-first at the last possible second, eyes and heart wide open.
To Continue Reading, CLICK HERE
This excerpt provides a preview of the complete Older, Wiser, Fiercer: The Wisdom Collection, available now in paperback and Kindle eBook editions. To purchase, click HERE.
____________________________________
Join the conversation about Carol Orsborn’s Older, Wiser, Fiercer: The Wisdom Collection in the comment section below this entry. To comment on the Collection as a whole, click HERE and scroll to the comment section below the Prologue.
Copyright © 2019 by Carol Orsborn. Permission granted by the author to share this excerpt for non-commercial purposes with proper credit given to Carol Orsborn, Older:Wiser, Fiercer: The Wisdom Collection at CarolOrsborn.com. For longer or multiple excerpts, contact the author at Carol@FierceWithAge.com for written permission.
