Who dies?

"Who dies?" Inquiring Grey's Anatomy fans want to know.

The last of a three-part series this Thursday is expected to have two deaths, with one of them "sticking." The ABC and fan club bulletin boards are full of speculation about who it will be, some of them featuring odds on the different characters. The leading contender seems to be Ellis, Meredith's mother.

In the site meter data for this blog, there is a place for the entry page, and if it is a search engine, what the search terms are. Because I've mentioned Grey's Anatomy in previous posts, sometimes they show up in previous posts. Sorry, folks. I don't know either.

But what a question: who dies?

My uncle Tom used to say "None of are going to get out of this alive," meaning that life is short and we should live it fully, each and every day. The first anniversary of his death is approaching, hard as that is to believe. He certainly lived his conviction -- he died helping Katrina victims, yet another of the many mission trips he'd led over the years.

"Who dies?"

We want to know that -- or do we? How would it change my day-to-day living if I could answer that question about me, about Tony, about the girls, about my brother? How would I cherish those last hours? Who would I talk to and what would I say? Would I have regrets?

I don't really want to know who dies....

Long ago as an English major I studied the works of John Donne, a metaphysical poet and essayist of the late 1500s-early 1600s. Most will recognize this passage: "No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee." -- from Meditation XVII.

We are all connected. We have a collective energy, a collective higher source, from which we draw for our life's journeys. When we die, I believe, our energy goes back to that source -- Emerson called it The Oversoul -- and our love feeds it, strengthens its presence within us. We borrow a bit of it on our way through life. It is our task to nurture it, to share it with others, to touch and teach and learn and love. To become involved with the people whose paths cross ours.

It is my job to cherish each day, to feed that energy, to move along my path so that I make a difference somehow. Even though there are so many days that are filled with what seem like mundane tasks and endless duties, I need to look for the spiritual energy in those tasks and nurture it, and to be grateful as I find the nugget of joy in the day, for every day has at least one, even if it's finally snuggling down in bed, safe and fed and warm.

We all die. The question is not "who dies." It is "what we are going to do" with this day, this moment, to make a difference as we move through our days and weeks and months and years.