Hw # 21

• Most men don’t get medical attention right away because are in denial at first.
• Wanting to seem invincible: that death will never “catch” us and to continue to be positive until the end.
• Movies don’t show the reality of how a disease or cancer can affect the patient
• Remember to do nice things to people even those who you’ve never met because you will never be able to once you die and can sometimes regret leaving unfinished business with those close to you.
• The best times of the 26 years of marriage were weirdly the ones spent when he was sick because did not have to focus on anything but her husband.
• Was to be paralyzed all he said was “ If I can still move my hands and paint than I’ll be alright.” (Art was his passion, this was his way to me of leaving an imprint in the world)
• TIME; something one shouldn’t waste especially on silly things (when one is a teenager we can do this) and spend it more on the important and fulfilling moments in life.
• Keeping it “human” as possible was important; making sure people saw him as a real person, a husband, and a father not as cancer.
• Went to Buddhist monk and he told her the signs to know when it was coming; one was pushing his hands out as if he were pushing away death and he did! (During the final weeks)
• Stillness that was felt in the room and in his body was indescribable when he died.

The second insight I got from our guest speaker, the one about wanting to seem invincible; that death will never catch us I can connect with because I agree that most people just shove the thought right out of their head and let anything else that is on their mind distract them from reality. That we, humans are not invincible, much less immortal and that we will one day have to face our fate, death. This for me and I’m sure for most people is true, we avoid it like death isn’t going to happen, or we even joke about it when it is a serious topic that exhausts us. When I was younger I would read books about men who were immortal and while reading these books I would forget everything around me. Reading was an escape for me especially from the thought of dying because during these minutes I believed it was possible to live for centuries. But even this had a cost, because you would have to watch again and again those who you’ve come to care for and love (who aren’t immortal) die before your eyes.

The insight about time was definitely the one that impacted me the most and I believe it is something many can relate to. Without realizing it we spend too much time on things we shouldn’t, like spending extra hours at work or in the digital world instead of enjoying time with other humans, like our friends and family. And we don’t realize this until we are about to die. Our guest speaker mentioned that in our final moments we don’t go, “Oh, I wish I could’ve spent an hour more at work.” We really just say, “ Oh, I wish could’ve spent more time with my family.” A lot of time it feels like there isn't ever enough time to get everything we want done much less the energy because we all need at least 8 hours of sleep . I believe we should make this realization now instead of when we are about to die by looking at our lives and making a list of the number of things we can drop that are really not needed like 4 hours of watching TV and change it for something that we will feel more accomplished and even happy about afterwards.

A question that sparked while listening to our guest speaker was are there some common things we all do before we die? For example he began to push his hands out as if pushing away death. Or does everyone do something different? An idea that sparked after hearing our speaker was about TIME that I mentioned about before in the previous paragraph. It also sparked the idea of us all wanting to leave some kind of imprint in the world before we die whether it is our art, a book, being a celebrity or for simply making a difference. To not just fade away and to never have your name spoken ever again. For me the huge thing that scares me about dying (which might seem weird) is to never think again, at times in my life I enjoy letting myself be swallowed by my own thoughts and visions and not being able to do this terrifies me.