What I pray will be on my lips at the moment I die…

I understand as his life seeped from his wounds Robert Kennedy whispered to his wife Ethel, “Is everyone else all right?” They would be his last words.

The forty-second anniversary of the senator’s death slipped by me some five days ago.

A life-time has passed. And as significant as that moment was in our American lives, time passes, and memory fades…

Right now, however, it is dying that is in the front of my mind.

For the past five or so days I’ve spent a part of every day at the hospital visiting with the oldest active member of the First Unitarian’s congregation. Ninety-seven. She suffered a massive heart attack. When she came to consciousness she asked what happened and was told. She replied, “I had hoped to be hit by a bus.”

Since then her life, too, is seeping away…

We don’t get to choose how or when. That’s for sure.

Sometimes it’s a blessing.

Often it’s not.

We all die.

Everything made of parts comes apart.

Those who say you can escape this, are lying.

The response, the only response to our mortality is full on.

Fortunately no one falls out of the great Tao…
 
I know that Gandhi wanted very much to have God’s name on his tongue when he died. And whatever else may be said, that happened for him.

A blessing, no doubt.

Kennedy was blessed in that terrible moment with thoughts that I can only wish I would have held…

Those who are familiar with this blog know I return with some regularity to Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, posting his own version as well as many covers.

This is the reason…

It is how I want to live.

It is how I want to die.

Before the dark universe, before it all, horrific and lovely.

Just as it is.

Hallelujah!