my thoughts as i am dying 89

I’m dying now
but lo, It really hurts.
I stand and my heart stops.
I seem to levitate in reverie,
twice removed from death

but lo, I’m dying now.
It really hurts.

Not body pain
but psychic pain
The pain of saying goodbye.
Of knowing this joyous feeling,
these memories end
with the flick of a light switch
My friend says,
"do not go gentle into that good night "
I fume I rage.

It really hurts,
“old age shall burn and rave at close of day."
All my memories will be no more than stardust.

I leave all the gifts
I have been bequeathed:
born fee,
in a land free of war,
free of catastrophic natural disasters:
of earthquakes fire, flood, and pestilence.
memories of family
Lost in reverie .
How blessed we have been.

"rage, rage, against the dying of the light"
( Thomas)

I hurt, I rage, I love ,
all these memories are mine
and they will vaporize--
one page of memories,
my history,
will be torn from the tree of life .

yet it is only these memories that buoy me now, against the hurt.
what a gift it is to teach
to raise a family
to travel the world
to leap joyously
into any new adventure.
I'll miss all that ...
it just ends,
and the book is closed,
that hurts.