Live each day as if it’s your last

Jan 10, 2023 Letters

Dear Editor,

I hate to be so negative at this time of the year, but I have to bring this important topic to your attention because it’s a subject that people don’t like to discuss. I am talking about preparing for your death. Don’t live your life denying you’re going to die. Rather, live everyday like this is going to be your last day alive. When you live your life this way then you would have prepared for death.

Most of us believe that we’ll live a long time or forever so we don’t prepare when death comes. We’re caught off guard. We are shocked. We didn’t think it would happen to us, not now and not so soon. But death always comes sooner than we expected. Death always sneaks up on us, when we least expect it. This is why I am encouraging people to prepare ahead of time for death because it’s so much easier for your loved ones when you have prepared to die.

Editor, I’ll share with you one example of my cousin who just died, but he didn’t prepare to die.
Five years ago, my cousin received horrific and horrifying news: Stage four prostate cancer! Even though he had access to the best Doctors, there wasn’t anything the Doctors could do. He was told he was going to die.

However, my cousin never accepted that he was going to die even though he knew the chances for him to live were almost impossible. Because he didn’t accept his prognosis, he continued to live his normal life. One example of this was a few months before he died, he came to visit me in Guyana. We talked about everything except, that he was going to die. He talked about getting more medical treatments. He talked about returning to live in Guyana and rebuilding the house he grew up in. Even though he was less than six months away from dying, he was planning for the future. He was denying that he was going to die.

He died! He didn’t make it to the end of the year. All his plans to return to Guyana and build a house, he took to the grave with him. Editor, I couldn’t understand how a dying man whose death was imminent could be planning to build a house knowing death was just around the corner. The only thing that I could think of would make a dead man walking still planning to build a house when death was knocking at his door is that denial is such a powerful thing that it would make people believe that they are going to live and not die.

Looking back, I saw a man who refused to believe that he was going to die. After attending the funeral, it was one of the saddest funerals I attended because I saw a man who refused to give up. I saw a man who didn’t want to die, a man who didn’t prepare ahead of time for death even though he knew death was inevitable. Simply put, two things we can’t escape are death and taxes. Therefore, Editor, I’m encouraging you to prepare ahead of time for death by living everyday like it’s your last on earth. This is how I try to live my life.

Regards,
Anthony Pantlitz