Tag: Death & Dying

Counting the Days

On By Mary KochIn Uncategorized4 Comments

Happy Birth Day to me. Thirty thousand of them, in fact. As of today, June 30, 2026, I have been alive for thirty thousand days.

I turned eighty-two on May 12. Eighty-two is not a milestone birthday. Yet when we hit eighty, every doggone day is a milestone. With not a lot else to do on my birthday, I counted the days — including the extra ones in leap years. I realized that I was just a few weeks short of thirty thousand. There’s something numerically harmonious about hitting 30,000 on 6/30.

Statistically speaking, I shouldn’t even be here. The day I was born, in 1944, data at the time set my life expectancy at 66.8 years. Of course, I recall no expectations on the day of my birth other than to be fed and kept comfortable. 

“Life expectancy” is just a nice euphemism so we can avoid saying the word “death” or “die.” According to a study by the National Institutes of Health, children don’t begin to understand mortality — the reality of death — until somewhere between age five and seven. Perhaps that’s when death denial enters our psyche. Or, as the oft-quoted comedian said, “I’m not afraid of death. I just don’t want to be there when it happens.”

Turns out, life expectancy has been a moving target all my life. At some point, Social Security determined that a woman born in 1944 would live to age seventy-two. Then, when I made it that far, I was given another 12.9 years. They’re going fast. 

My financial advisor’s computerized analysis is measured, of course, in dollars. The analysis goes only as far as age ninety-two, which happens to be the age at which my mother died. The good news is, there’ll still be money in the bank, er, modest investment account that, as it happens, I inherited from her.

AI was willing to get specific about my life expectancy if I divulged personal information. I decided not to go there. Instead, I stumbled onto a website, my30K.com. The site claims that “A person only gets an average of 30,000 days on this earth and you’ve used more than you think.” (It gives no source for that seemingly arbitrary number. The Centers for Disease Control puts the average life expectancy for people in the U.S. at seventy-nine, though that varies widely depending on gender and other demographics. Still seventy-nine adds up to way less than 30,000 days.)

The website asks for your birth date and immediately tells you how many days you’ve used up. I was pleased that my count matched theirs. I was invited to enter my email address so that every day I’d receive a notification counting down (or up?) my days. Again, I think not. 

I don’t need or even want to know how much longer I can expect to live. When I do think about death I recall a spiritual my high school choir sang: “I wanna die easy when I die.” The older I get, the more often I hum it.

When I was on the staff of Holden Village, a retreat center in Washington’s North Cascade Mountains, we participated in a morning prayer liturgy. One of the prayers gave thanks that “today is not our last day.” I — and other staff members — would raise our eyebrows and ask each other later, “How do we know so early in the morning that it’s not our last day?”

All I know is that today, like the 29,999 days that came before, is a blessing and a bonus. As soon as I hit the “send” button on this bit of musing, I plan to walk the three blocks to Sugar Bakery on Madison Avenue. I shall have my cake and eat it, too.

Leaf-Taking: It’s hard to let go

On By Mary KochIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

We were walking through downtown Seattle’s paradoxical Freeway Park. When you stroll among the park’s lush trees, flowering shrubs and patches of green grass, you’re actually on a lid covering a concrete parking lot and the hectic traffic of Interstate 5.

Two friends and I had just toured the collection of Northwest art at the Arch Convention Center. We were savoring the experience when one of my companions picked up a leaf that had been lying on top of a concrete barrier, as if someone or some spirit had carefully placed it there.

“Look at this!” she exclaimed. “How beautiful!”

Moments earlier we’d been engaging with larger-than-life abstract paintings representing scenes of the Northwest. Now here was nature’s own abstract: exquisitely colored patterns on a six-inch leaf. Nature imitating art imitating nature. 

The design reminded me of antique maps. When they were produced centuries ago, the maps were more products of speculation than settled geography. I recall standing in a British museum, staring at a supposed map of the world, drawn around 1100 CE. It was wildly different from global maps of today but suggested a planet I’d like to visit. Imagined continents were colored in nature’s hues and sharply outlined, surrounded by pale blue seas.

I held the leaf in the palm of my hand, and considered its rust-hued archipelago floating on a multi-shaded green sea. The islands were outlined in thick black, as if one of nature’s elves had laboriously drawn their ragged shorelines with a Sharpie.

Our other companion observed that if I wanted to keep the leaf, I’d have to coat it in wax. I couldn’t imagine struggling with melted wax in my compact kitchen. Maybe, I thought, I could laminate it. I shook my head at the irony. I’m earnestly trying to reduce my use of plastics, yet here I was, considering shrouding nature’s art in that toxic substance?! Yes, I’d like to keep the leaf, but … but … but

Oh, how we battle to not let go — until we have no choice. 

I was pretty sure it was a laurel leaf, but I checked it out with the “Picture This” app on my phone. The app informed me it’s a species of magnolias, also known as “Big laurel,” and declared an alarm in bright-red letters: THIS PLANT IS SICK!

I looked around at the grove of tall, graceful magnolias. I’m no arborist, but they appear healthy. New green foliage seems to be pushing the old brown leaves onto the ground. Or maybe the old leaves are voluntarily making space for the next generation. Are the beautiful images on the dying leaves a last-gasp aria?

As captives of a death-denying culture, it’s difficult for us to see any beauty in dying. Yet much great art through the centuries has depicted exactly that. J.S. Bach’s compelling chorale, “Komm, süsser Tod,” pleads: Come, sweet death, come, blessed rest! Come lead me to peace for I am weary of the world, O come! 

Even though I recently turned eighty, I’m not ready to embrace Bach’s sentiments just yet. I’m more in league with Robert Frost whose poem “Birches” celebrates his boyhood delight in swinging on tree branches, up, up towards heaven. But, he cautions, “May no fate willfully misunderstand me … and snatch me away/ Not to return. Earth’s the right place for love …”

At least for now. 

The colored leaf lay on my table for several days, a temporary totem. Then I gently, reverently put it to rest in the compost bin. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.