My Last Year to Live – An Experiment in Dying
If you had only one year to live, what would you do?
Imagine this was your last year to live. Would you change your work situation? Would you quit? Reduce work hours, change jobs, go to study long-admired skills which you haven’t done until yet because you thought they are not economically viable? Buy yourself the piano you always wanted? Get divorced? Change your surroundings? Search for what keeps you away from the life you want to live? Go on like before?
Tina
Can I die peacefully with no regrets, be fully prepared with technical, emotional and mental readiness? Can I be prepared so as I have no worries of unfinished business, no urgent thing to do and no fear of dropping away?
Doron
These questions and creating a living and dying retreat were our starting point for the one-year-to-live-as-if-it-were-your-last experience. In this blog we will share our questions, preparations, feelings, thoughts and ideas about our “last year”. (Hopefully we have this year left until we die – nobody knows.)
Last year to live
The book by Stephen Levine “A Year to Live” will be a basic guideline which we will adapt and expand to our needs and ideas of creating a “last year to live”. For preparing for dying or starting to prove where we don’t live fully or finding equanimity in living and dying or…..
Tina Preisler and myself will go through this experiment together, and share with you our process and findings.
Questions from Tina
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- When shall we start our last year? At what place we will be in one year? Do we want to die at the same place? Who is dying first? Are we dying together at the same time?
- Do you want to die first so that you don’t have to feel the grief about the death of the other?
- How can we tell death that we are only pretending to live our last year? 😉 (First superstition? When we talk about death and set a date for our death will it happen?)
- Would I really start building a house if this will be my last year to live? (Yes, I would – and at the DYZC!)
Answers from Doron
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- Any day is good – we can never plan this anyway, and it is almost never a good time to die. Makes no difference where we will be for dying, who dies first or any such planning. Since we could know any of these things in the true reality of death, trying to plan this defeats the purpose. We should just go as random as possible, same like death acts in reality.
- Learning to grieve is important and dealing with the death of others is as important as our own. Since hopefully no one will die this year, it makes no difference.
- Good one! I’ll call him up later tonight 🙂
- My first thought about this year is to quit everything I am working on and just rest and read the rest of it. However, I think evolution is smart, and made sure we do not know when we really die, so we keep producing and doing.
We need to create as if we have 20 more years to live, but live the moment as if we die tomorrow. The two seem like contradictions, but they compliment each other. I am still running the center, as if I have 20 years to go, but dancing, eating mindfully, smiling to friends, feeling love, sharing gratitude, as if this is my last day.
We would love you to join us on this last year to live experiment! Join in with comments – any thoughts about what we write, any experience you may have with death or dying. Maybe you have been told you have a specific amount of time left, maybe this is your last year to live? – would love to know what you are going through, and what you recommend.
Further reading
Tina Preisler is an amazing woman living in Berlin, an angel that worked with many people dying or those around them. She dives deep and asks the hard questions, and is not afraid to face reality as is. A generous soul, a psychologist and many other fancy titles, but trust me – what matters is her ability to look inside and share honestly.
Doron Hanoch has experienced a near death experience himself, contemplated living and dying since he joined the army, and is always willing to look deep inside into his own shadows and light.
Hi Tina & Doron
I thought of your experiment when a friend’s Mum sent this. I don’t know where she got it from, but he took his life a few short weeks ago and I know she is going through a tough time at the moment.
I thought I’d share, as it might help others in some way. I know reading it made me reflect on how important it is to live fully and be present as if it is our last year, or day. I am grateful to her for that.
Also thank you both for starting this conversation! I enjoyed reading your reflections.
Elizabeth
On the day I die a lot will happen.
A lot will change.
The world will be busy.
On the day I die, all the important appointments I made will be left unattended.
The many plans I had yet to complete will remain forever undone.
The calendar that ruled so many of my days will now be irrelevant to me.
All the material things I so chased and guarded and treasured will be left in the hands of others to care for or to discard.
The arguments I believed I’d won here will not serve me or bring me any satisfaction or solace.
My many nagging regrets will all be resigned to the past, where they should have always been anyway.
Every superficial worry about my body that I ever labored over; about my waistline or hairline or frown lines, will fade away.
All the small and large anxieties that stole sleep from me each night will be rendered powerless.
The deep and towering mysteries about life and death that so consumed my mind will finally be clarified in a way that they could never be before while I lived.
These things will certainly all be true on the day that I die.
Yet for as much as will happen on that day, one more thing that will happen.
On the day I die, the few people who really know and truly love me will grieve deeply.
They will feel a void.
They will feel cheated.
They will not feel ready.
They will feel as though a part of them has died as well.
And on that day, more than anything in the world they will want more time with me.
I know this from those I love and grieve over.
And so knowing this, while I am still alive I’ll try to remember that my time with them is finite and fleeting and so very precious—and I’ll do my best not to waste a second of it.
I’ll try not to squander a priceless moment worrying about all the other things that will happen on the day I die, because many of those things are either not my concern or beyond my control.
Don’t miss the chance to dance with them while you can.
It’s easy to waste so much daylight in the days before you die.
Don’t let your life be stolen every day, by all that you’ve been led to believe matters, because on the day you die—the fact is that much of it simply won’t.
Yes, you and I will die one day.
But before that day comes: let us live.
From Mavis, who just lost her son Andrew.
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