thoughts on Death 1

I would prefer an anonymous death myself.  Just sort of "go out," as it were, quiet, no fanfare, no ceremony afterward.  Organ donation and body to a medical school, as I've already arranged.  I guess folks will do what they need to do for themselves regarding the formalities, and that's all right with me.  But the last three verses of Benet's "The Ballad of William Sycamore" sums it up as I see it:

"Now I lie in the heart of the fat, black soil,
Like the seed of the prairie-thistle;
It has washed my bones with honey and oil
And picked them clean as a whistle.

And my youth returns, like the rains of Spring,
And my sons, like the wild-geese flying;
And I lie and hear the meadow-lark sing
And have much content in my dying.

Go play with the towns you have built of blocks,
The towns where you would have bound me!
I sleep in my earth like a tired fox,
And my buffalo have found me."