To know or not to know

I know that Fig is going to die, almost certainly within the next 12 months, probably within the next few months. In a way that knowledge is a gift - it gives me time to prepare for his death, to make the most of the time I have left with him, to come to terms emotionally with losing him. I remember when my mother died, and it was very different. She had surgery for lung cancer and seemed to be recovering when she took a sudden turn for the worse and never made it out of ICU. She died within 2 months of her surgery, and I never saw it coming. Much of that time she was on a respirator, so she wasn't able to talk. And there were so many things I wanted to ask her, so many unfinished conversations between us.


To lose my mother was an awful, defining moment - the severing of a spiritual umbilical cord that left me alone, baptized in the realization that life is precious and too fleeting to not honor the gift of each moment, each connection with another. Just as light and dark together give visual form and texture to the world around us, life and death are bound in their own symbiotic dance of meaning. Knowledge of Fig's mortality forces me to wring as much as I can from each moment we have left together; priorities are clarified dramatically when impending death casts its shadow across the face of life. Fig's incontinence is relegated to the position of mere inconvenience, while the sight of him bounding up the stairs in the morning to greet me is an occasion for great joy and gratitude for another precious day.

And while I still catch myself getting caught up in petty grievances more often than I would like, I took from my mother's death the lesson that to spend time harboring grudges or indulging in unwarranted anger at perceived slights is to dishonor life, a foolish expense with no lasting reward. What lessons, I wonder, will I take from Fig's death?