Sunday, August 16, 2009

Death Anxiety Finale

I was preaching and theorizing here two days ago about how the health care anger and uproar was coming in part out of the fear of death.

Turns out I was projecting: it was me. (And maybe those raging demonstrators as well)

The day after that post (yesterday), I worried here about the recession and money.

The Underlying Fear

So then last night, as I watched a raw and astonishingly moving funeral of I-won't-say-who on Six Feet Under on DVD, money fear dissolved into a serious case of: Oh shit, I'm aging, time is going faster and faster, and all the people I love are going to die. (Not me, of course, my thinking is not that advanced.)

The recognition was very relieving.

Hitting a Wall

I'd had the same experience more wrenchingly 31 years ago, a couple of weeks after my father died. For no apparent reason, I panicked over money, though I was a self-supporting adult by then. I also managed that day to let my car battery die twice and to then drive that car over a small wall that I'd thought was a speed bump. A wrecker had to lift me off.

So maybe I should have known to look deeper. And maybe there's something else under death anxiety. What that might be I don't know. I'll be watching to see what else erupts.



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