Even with the pacemaker, my heart continually tries to stop. The other day, I was quite sick as the bionics struggled to keep me alive. It would be so much easier to just go. Before the operation, I told my spiritual counselor I really did not want the pacemaker. He convinced me to have it. It seems I need a little more time to reflect on my blessings and get square with the powers that be. Some days, that is harder than others.
On the other hand, I reflect on the times when I thought I was close to death - each time, I yelled out loud or in my brain, “NOT NOW!” Even when death seems like a warm blanket of release, it is mankind’s nature to claw for life.
Even people intent on suicide go through several levels of resolve. Most attempts are consciously - or subconsciously - not severe enough to actually take life. It takes far more will power than most people have to actually cut that final vital cord. A person must work hard to arrive at the last “suicidal trance” wherein the goal is so resolved it cannot be denied.
A preacher on a quiz show said he was “Too blessed to be stressed.” Man, that sounded good. I wrote it down. I have tried desperately to adhere to that admonition. Unfortunately, the contestant lost, and his demeanor became very sour - it was very clear he was not able to live his own philosophy. Can I?
I feel blessed to be able to play basketball. I feel blessed to be able to move at all - especially when I reflect on Christopher Reeve, who is a quadriplegic but who refuses to give up hope. Sean Elliot returned to professional basketball after a kidney transplant. Jason Kidd was back on the court just weeks after sustaining a broken ankle. My most immediate neighbor is confined to a wheelchair. A lady in Madagascar gave birth in a tree while waiting four days for rescue from the floods. What on earth do I have to complain about! Bobby Darin had a death sentence over him due to a heart ailment. He only lived about 35 years, but he made every one of those years count!
Of the poverty-stricken people in India, Shirley MacLaine said, “Some of them should have died, mercifully, for their own good - but they didn’t; they struck and fought and yelled and grabbed life in their balled-up fists and wouldn’t let go.”
My mother was like that - she had no intention of letting go. It was her goal to live to be 100, and she had seven years left when her medications messed things up. She was looking for a typewriter so she could write - perhaps about Borley? She very much wanted to keep on keeping on.
Perhaps the departed are also fighting furiously to stay alive? If mankind fights for life so intensely, surely that same fierce desire remains beyond the grave. It has been suggested that ghosts remain because they have not been told or shown how to progress to the next level. Or, having been shown the path, refuse to take it. Sometimes, we are blind to the very trees in front of us.
This ignorance or refusal to “see the light” may be why some spirits of the departed have not moved on. Their stubbornness reminds me of the poem by Dylan Thomas, “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night.”
Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
If a dying person is caught up with this rage to live and refusal to accept the dying of the light, then it makes sense that this same spirit would continue the fight against moving on in the world to come. You hang on to life for all its worth - even after it is taken away from you.
Hamlet often pondered if death wouldn’t be better than the crazy earth-life to which he had been relegated:
To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
Just when it seemed he had found a better life in dying, Hamlet stopped short. His next reflection made the dagger seem less attractive after all.
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
The “undiscovered country” brought Hamlet’s musings up short, and he decided to “bear those ills we have,” rather “Than fly to others that we know not of.” Once again, mankind hangs tenaciously to life. However, once having “crossed over,” most spirits accept their fate and search for the next level. Most spirits - but perhaps not all.
More than likely, any supposed ghost at Borley has moved on. There just has to be something better to do than lurking around the bushes and the trees, waiting for the next unsuspecting tourist to wander by. If they departed this life violently -as the supposed nun and her cohorts - time has a way of working on us and prying our cold, dead, fingers from off the last sweet branch of life. They lingered - they raged against the dying light - until a friendly spirit with more experience showed them a better way.