All I could think about was dying as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep last night. Does that sound morbid? Yes, of course it does. But such was the case. I'm not sure why, but I don't feel like I'll live much longer. I turn 59 in February. In Medieval England, life expectancy was 64; the world average in 2010 was 69; so, historically speaking, I suppose it could be said that I've already lived a fair amount of my expected years. I've known so many that did not make it this long, so many that should still be here, so many that were so much better than me; yet, they are gone and I remain.
Please don't assume I want to die. I think in many ways, I've only just begun to live. I've only just recently stopped flogging myself for my failures, and decided to accept what I am and who I am.
But there's no doubt that some will assume that I want to die. My friends know that I have struggled with suicidal tendencies. But perhaps they don't know that my struggle was because I had failed to live up to my own expectations. People have often told me that they'd give anything if they could drum or write like me. I suppose I can certainly drum, maybe even better than most, but I was never able to really make a living at it, never able to pay my bills by only drumming. I always had to subsidize my income with some other form of employment, or depend on my wife, which was humiliating. And yes I've been known to string a sentence or two together. I have a degree in journalism and worked as a reporter for two years; but in my mind, I failed as a journalist.
I've suffered from hearing loss all my life, working in my family's welding shop and drumming only added to that loss. The struggle to hear what people were saying slowed me down as a reporter. It was very hard for me to meet the daily deadlines, although I did do it. But while I was at the newspaper, I started struggling with other health issues. I had two back surgeries and a series of eye surgeries to slow the progression of blindness in my eyes due to low-tension glaucoma. Other reporters were having to work extra to cover my time off. This weighed on me heavily so I resigned from the newspaper. That decision still haunts me. I should've hung in there; I should've kept fighting. For years, I thought it was one of the worst decisions of my life.
But it is what it is. And in recent days, I've found myself glad that I resigned, especially now that so much of the media has become a bastion of Right Wing lunatic politics. I became a journalist because I believe in fair and balanced reporting, but I see very little of that anymore.
So although I failed at being a drummer and a journalist, I have succeeded in being a moralist. And that's really all that ever mattered to me. I'm not saying that I'm without sin, or that I don't make a mistake, but I am saying that I try to do what is right, or at least what I think is right. I think that's all we have when we close our eyes for the last time. We all wonder what is on the other side, where we're going, what we're going to leave behind or what we're going to take with us, but those things don't really matter. But what does matter is that you lay your head down in peace, and that peace can only be found by doing what is right and what is true, and the only way we can know truth is by doing unto others as you'd have others do unto you.
So now I have no more regrets in life. Now I know I can die in peace. Maybe that's why I could not stop thinking about death last night. It's only when we accept death that we begin to live.
And so I live.
