I have had a great life and a great run at it all.  My life seems like it has been so long yet at the same time incredible short.  Growing old is a pathetic and terrible thing, it is full of limitations and reductions.  

Now I am old and I am laying in my bed in my plastic disposable depends in a puddle of my own urine waiting for the nurse to come in. I have cataracts and am very frail with bad arthritis. The nurse will shoot me full of pain medication with steroids to reduce the swelling of my joints and to make me feel better.  Dear God, I love the Oxyconde, she is my silent lover.  However, physical loving went away a long time ago. Yes I do try to get up during the day and go for a walk behind the walker, but it is humiliating and degrading. My wife would probably keep me alive for as long as possible even with my body deteriorating and disintegrating and while I am capable of getting even older still, that is not the way I want to go out.

I do not look forward to the next stage: the cables, feeding tubes and IV just to be kept alive.  Quite honestly, they all need not have me around to worry about me anymore.

They all need to be free from the burdens of my needs and I need to let them ascend.  And I need to be free from the pain my body brings me now and to sail again on the open ocean where there are no bounds.  I look forward to setting a course and to go with the wind at my back and the ship healed over.

Everyone speaks of the will to live but few speak of the will to die.  Death is dark and unknown and is frightening.  But for me it is not the end for I will be reborn as an angel. They will miss me in some ways but at the same time they will be free to move forward and I will be born again as an angel that looks down on this life and will come and visit and bring them sweet dreams.  Like the last strong autumn wind that rattles the trees signaling the coming winter, now it is my time to leave and to make room for the new life that will begin again for me and for them.

Slowly, I consume the 100 milligrams of Secobarbital just to party one last time and them later on, I down another 500 milligrams with 100 milligrams of Oxycodone and then 400 milligrams of Tenormin a beta-blocker. I am little nervous, but I feel my world is all around me.  I see myself running through fields of flowers on the sides of the Mountains I have climbed and feel the wind softly caresses my face as it brings sweet music to my ears.  Wow, the sky is so perfectly blue and the sun so round, it is all so peaceful now.  The light, is guiding me across beautiful fields and the wind is taking me to the ship that is waiting to sail across the sea of tranquility. It feels good to feel the air and to smell the sweetness of the flowers again and to be set free.   I know they love me but I do not look back and into the vastness if the universe ahead I run.  I will see them again as golden clouds drifting on the wind. 

For the first time in a long time I am without pain and now I see the window behind the stars and it is calling me forward.  As I pass through that window behind the stars, I am surrounded by a kaleidoscopic array of brilliant colors and they are exploding in a magnificent display unlike I have ever seen.  Everything is so beautiful and all things come together in a beautiful all encompassing state of beauty, music and color, just everything is so indescribable.  I sail across the sea of tranquility and I watch silver horses plant down radiant moonbeams all around me and they explode on the lake and are refracted into a display unlike anything I can describe.  The sweet harmonic music carries me onward up to the land of eternity.  It is one with white sandy beaches, a dark green country and a swift sunrise.  This is land that lies through the window behind the stars.  All that live here,  live in eternities sunrise and it is here that we will all be united again,  in a sea of swirling love , one without end and all encompassing beauty