OK. More death talk.

Not that I've lost anyone else, I just felt the need to vent about it.

I HATE DEATH!

I'm sure almost everyone would agree with that. However, I'm scared stupid by
it. The mystery about the moment of death. What happens afterwards. Whatever
leads up to it. Everything afterwards here in the physical world. EVERYTING.

It started when I was very young and I know exactly who to blame. Garner Ted
Armstrong. If you've never heard the name before, he was a televangelist who was
popular in the 60's and 70's. I did see that his "ministry" still headlines a
television program sandwiched in some horrendous hour in the middle of the night
between infomercials. Which is actually where he belongs.

Armstrong had a radio program on my favorite station back in the early 70's. I
listened to the radio all the time. There was a stretch, during my junior high
school years, when I had been listening so much I went almost 10 days without
sleep. Each night I was listening to and participating in a talk show/trivia
game. It's a little hard to describe, but it was fun and I drove my parents to
distraction by making phone calls to be on the radio in the middle of the night
while they tried to sleep.

At this time my maternal grandmother was dying a slow and ugly death. All I knew
about it was how decrepit she had become and how I hated going to the nursing
home to visit. Not only was she very sick but I also had to deal with seeing
other elderly in all stages of illness and dementia. Not an easy thing for a
child. I persevered because she was my Nanna.

One night I happened upon Armstrong's program and he was spouting some horrible
bile of fire and brimstone. He pained a death in hell, separated from God,
suffering for eternity. It scared the hell out of me. I can recall sitting there
crying as I imagined my Nanna dying and having to go through the same things
this pinhead was describing. I was too young to be able to separate Biblical
mythology from reality. I might not have slept for another 10 days just from the
impact it had on me.

The impact of that on me emotionally lingers to this day. I have tried to take
lessons from my own mothers death and how she faced it with courage and faith
but I still tremble deep inside trying to imagine my own moment of death. All of
the worst case scenarios play out in my head. I don't like pain; so I imagine
all the painful ways to die. I wonder how that final moment feels. I read the
stories about near death experiences and hold on to the hope that those stories
are true. Then I read cynics who debunk them as a shared illusion, which our
brains sift together, all of the Judeo-Christian images for us to soften the
blow of death.

I'm hoping that, as I have seemed to have seen, a certain resignation and
acceptance will settle in long before I say that "big goodbye". That somewhere
along the line I will have the same courage my mother had. Until then I guess
I'll have to live with this dark cloud which haunts the back of my mind ready to
pounce out at me the same way Garner Ted Armstrong's viscous words attacked me
35 years ago.

I know it's not the "Christian" thing to say.....but if there is a painful part
of death, I hope Mr. Armstrong feels a little of what he gave a young boy
listening to the radio in the dark.