A moment of panic

Wow - I'm at an even 100 days left to live...

I had an interesting drive the other day while pondering my approaching death. I looked up into the sky and was touched by the beauty of the clouds, and in particular, an open spot that went through the clouds and seemed to go off into infinity.

Suddenly I became aware that my feelings had shifted from a place of beauty and openness to sadness.  

When I looked more deeply inside, I realized that the sadness was around the idea of no longer being here - of no longer being a part of all the physical beauty here. I was thrown backwards into an old question that used to plague my mind: "What happens after we die? Where will I go? Will I be aware of any of this? Connected to any of it? How sad that I won't be able to feel things the way I do now."

I tried to calm my emotions and my mind by connecting to that sense of Oneness, interconnectedness and bliss that I've touched beyond this physical life, yet I was unable to. I could not find the feeling state in my body; I could not remember it or connect with it in that moment. I tried recalling an experience when I felt it strongly, but I struggled to hold on to it. My mind panicked then, almost shouting at me: "Oh no! You can't remember! You've lost it! And what if it's all just a lie? What then? You'll be nothing! You won't be able to feel anything, do anything, experience any of this! What if it's nothingness after death? And just what IS nothingness??"

I haven't gotten stuck in such a state in years, so the feeling of it was uncomfortable. I held it, knowing that it might surely be possible; that such an ending might be true because I don't know what the truth is. And then I went back to holding open the possibility that it's more than that; that there is something after  death, but I just don't know what.

Then I was able to drop out of the panic I had generated and return to the present moment of enjoying the beautiful clouds and the sky. I thought about all the things I love in my life - the people, the places, the work I do, my home and pets, so many things about my life that I love these days - and I felt deeply for the first time in a while how empty I might feel without access to them in the physical way that I have now. And I wondered if I will miss them when I die as much as I imagine that I will while I'm alive...