“Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life” — Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

I intend to live each day as if it is my first and my last. I do not always fully achieve it; I do not always remember to do it, and sometimes I am just not in the mood. But I often do wake up in gratitude for the opportunity of this day—welcoming, accepting, loving and staying present with what arises and transpires—and I do my best to remain mindful with it until I drift off to sleep. When I manage it, it makes my days all the more vivid, and my moments more precious and deeply appreciated. Sometimes this dance with mortality makes my moments as bright and warm as a clear sky sun, and sometimes it makes them as dense and portentous as thunderstorm clouds.

For some years now, I have been on a mission. What started as a glimpse of a vision has become a clear direction in terms of how to best be of service. What started as an impossible dream has become a real possibility. What was defined as my life’s calling has become a nagging restlessness that has at times turned into some sort of unreasonable dissatisfaction with the current circumstances, tasks, and gratifications of my work life.

How is this possible? Well, regardless of how, it absolutely is possible, and factual.

I recently found myself saying out loud, exasperated as I paced about, waving my arms and pointing at nothing, “I am wasting my time. If I did not have children [not that I ever wanted to or tried], I better make a meaningful contribution to the world. I must prepare the soil and gather seeds and plant the seeds and tend the sprouts and grow the trees so other people’s children can rest under their shade!”

The impatient ultimatum did not mean anything less than a Magnum Opus: The Clear and Certain Evolution of our Loss, Grief, Death, and End-of-Life Culture.

How am I going to do that? Let us hope it is absolutely possible, and factual. I prepare soil and gather seeds and plant seeds and tend sprouts and grow trees, of course. With our team, of course. With other help, of course.

Yet, something about this did not feel quite right, and it was not just the fact that this would be an impossibly benevolent and tremendously lofty goal indeed. Somehow my state of dismay and discontent, leaving me both appalled at and frustrated with myself, my condition, and my response to the generalized totality of my life, made me think of two stories of grievance—because no word exists to truly capture what is sometimes felt—in the face of death.

I thought of someone I love and I am so inspired by, who gave his best as he was able, who dedicated his life and the fruit of his efforts to love and family, and who tragically lost both. Someone who came to think it must make no difference, despite human shortcomings, to love and to foster unity and wellbeing, because life responded with a series of painful, traumatic, premature, devastating, inevitable deaths and he lost those he cherished most in a relentlessly short period of time. His efforts to nurture life apparently made no difference.

I thought of what I have read and heard about Dr. Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in the last years of her life. During that time, Elisabeth found herself stuck between life and death, limited by the effects of multiple strokes, yet still possessed by a fighter’s spirit and with the dissatisfaction of a magnum opus yet unfinished, stuck in her body, unable to continue her work and unable to die. When faced with inhumane treatment at the hospital, the pioneer of the Hospice movement, revolutionary of our concepts of and experiences with death and dying, found that her work had apparently made no difference.

I then studied my own state, far from losing those I cherish most though fearful of it, far from being unable to work or tend to myself though fearful of not making a difference, and I projected myself onto my own story of grievance in the face of death. Today is the first and the last day of my life. If a devastating, disheartening, paralyzing loss, or my own death, comes a few minutes from now, how will I feel about my efforts to nurture life, about how much I have been able to learn to love and be loved, about the contributions of my life’s work, however big or small?

This brought to mind the darkest moments of shame and regret I have experienced and so often witnessed and contained for my clients and loved ones, those moments when we, in our human condition, question our behaviors, our words, our actions, and condemn ourselves as the culprit for all rememberable misfortunes. Those moments when we are sure we did not deserve anything more than the most devastating losses. Those moments when we are sure we only deserve rejection, abandonment, and the punishment of helplessness, disconnection, and a lifetime of disgrace.

The process eased me into observing, empathizing and more deeply understanding how we, in our human condition, during those darkest moments conclude that our love and our presence must not have made a difference because we could have expressed more, listened more, because we could have given more and taken less. We conclude that our efforts and our work must not have made a difference because we could have always done more, done better, because we could have somehow avoided what happened and somehow mobilized what did not happen. I saw myself alongside all the courageous people who have openly admitted to these darkest moments, all of us losing sight of the myriad invaluable gifts we have given, and all the endlessly meaningful, life- and love-giving seeds we inadvertently have planted throughout our lives.

It is quite astounding how easily we overlook our innocence and the serviceable gift that we are in simply existing, through everything that we are and do, even when what we do is so desperately, intolerably human.

It came time then to sit with the events of my life with a heart of gratitude for the opportunity of every moment of this life—welcoming, accepting, loving and staying present with what arose and transpired, human shortcomings especially—and do my best to remain mindful with it until I drift off to my death.

I intend to be in love with the life I have lived, the efforts I have made, the love and wellbeing I have shared, the wounds I have healed, the traumas I have survived, the hurt I have caused, the apparent mistakes I have made, the shame and guilt I have felt, and to acknowledge, recognize, honor that I have indeed already prepared soil and gathered seeds and planted seeds and tended sprouts and grown trees, of course. With the team of life, of course. With other help from life, of course.

The magnum opus is an evolutionary, collective effort.

The same way Elisabeth did her part, and some of us who are into this work of death and dying are picking up where she left off, we will do our part, whether big or small, human shortcomings and all, and others will pick up where we leave off.

“When you make your transition you are asked two things basically: How much love you have been able to give and receive, and how much service you have rendered. And you will know every consequence of every deed, every thought, and every word you have ever uttered. And that is, symbolically speaking, going through hell when you see how many chances you have missed. But you also see how a nice act of kindness has touched hundreds of lives that you’re totally unaware of. So concentrate on love while you’re still around.”

— Elisabeth Kübler-Ross