Real Living Forestalls Death

....Through the Kaddish we have defiance at death and its fiendish conspiracy against man. When the mourner recites: “Glorified and sanctified be the great name…” he declares: No matter how powerful death is, notwithstanding the ugly end of man, however terrifying the grave is, however nonsensical and absurd everything appears, no matter how black one’s despair is and how nauseating an affair life is, we declare and profess publicly and solemnly that we are not giving up, that we are not surrendering, that we will carry on the work of our ancestors as though nothing has happened, that we will not be satisfied with less than the full realization of the ultimate goal — the establishment of God’s kingdom, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal life for man. — Joseph B. Soloveitchik, “The Halakhah of the First Day,” in Jewish Reflections on Death, Jack Riemer (ed.), p. 82.

….Everything thus depends on the point of departure — whether life can be measured in purely hedonistic terms. One may conceive of life as an enterprise, as a going concern, compare the credit and debit columns, and in a certain condition of sickness and pain logically conclude that the business is bankrupt and should be liquidated. On that basis, one may preach suicide and mercy killing, and from this point of view, be absolutely right.
     But one may also conceive of life as a mission: I was sent here. I may not know why, wherefore, nor for how long. But my mission (or exile, as some Buddhists would say) has sense, the sense. This is a conception of living even against one’s will, and a bookkeeper’s approach is out of place in it.
     According to such a conception the span of one’s life, whether it comes as a gift or punishment, is predetermined. Every individual life thus assumes an absolute and imperative character which neither the bearer of that life nor his enemy or friend may disrupt until it reaches its appointed epilogue. An echo of that approach one hears in an old Talmudic aphorism: “He who closes the eyes of a person in the agony of death may be compared to a murderer.”
— Hayim Greenberg, “The Right to Kill?,” in Ibid., p. 115.

     In 1899 Oliver Wendell Holmes’s brother John lay dying in Cambridge, Massachusetts, his family gathered about his bedside. There was some question as to whether John still lived, which was resolved by a nurse who reached under the bedclothes and felt his feet. “Nobody ever died with their feet warm,” she whispered. John Holmes looked up suddenly and said, “John Rogers did.” These were his last words.
     John Rogers had been burned at the stake for the crime of heresy in 1855.
— Scott Slater and Alec Solomita (eds.), Exits: Stories of Dying Moments & Parting Words, p. 116.

     I did write a poem, so it was not a wholly wasted day, after all. And it occurs to me that there is a proper balance between not asking enough of oneself and asking or expecting too much. It may be that I set my sights too high and so repeatedly end a day in depression. Not easy to find the balance, for if one does not have wild dreams of achievement, there is no spur even to get the dishes washed. One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being.
     But there is another reason for a dark mood. I thought I was approaching the publication of the new poems, A Grain of Mustard Seed, in perfect calm, accepting that there will be no review of consequence, glad simply to be able to give it to my friends. I have waited three weeks for paperbacks to send out, so few friends have seen it, and even friends find it hard to respond to poetry.
     Jung says, “The serious problems in life are never fully solved. If ever they should appear to be so it is a sure sign that something has been lost. The meaning and purpose of a problem seem to lie not in its solution but in our working at it incessantly. This alone preserves us from stultification and petrifaction.” And so, no doubt, with the problems of a solitary life.
     After I had looked a while at that daffodil before I got up, I asked myself the question, “What do you want of your life?” and I realized with a start of recognition and terror, “Exactly what I have — but to be commensurate, to handle it all better.”
     Yet it is not those fits of weeping that are destructive. They clear the air, as Herbert says so beautifully:

     Poets have wronged poor storms: such days are best;
     They purge the air without, within the breast.

What is destructive is impatience, haste, expecting too much too fast.
— May Sarton, Journal of a Solitude, pp.100-101.

                         The Poet

Each instant of his life, a task, he never rests,
And works most when he appears to be doing nothing.
The least of it is putting down the words
What usually remains unwritten and unspoken,
And would so often be much better left
Unsaid, for it is really the unspeakable
That he must try to give an ordinary tongue to.

And if, by art and accident,
He utters the unutterable, then
It must appear as natural as a breath,
Yet be an inspiration. And he must go,
The lonelier for his unwanted miracle,
His singular way, a gentle lunatic at large
In the societies of cross and reasonable men.
— James Kirkup, in Ibid., p. 160.