Dylan Thomas was not a Daoist. 

This thought comes to mind today as I mourn my aunt's passing.  She was 77 and in chronically bad health for some time.  She had to go to the emergency room at about one this morning and I sat with her there for a couple of hours.  I thought she had stabilized and would be admitted and would be there when I awoke at daybreak.  But no, the call came while the dark still hung in the air, the call that no one ever wants to answer, the call from my sister to say that Aunt Pat had died.

As I sat with her in those last hours she did not relax, she did not sigh and give over to mortality.  She fidgeted and tried to talk, even though only about half of the words were audible.  Her rage came through.  She wanted to be in a more comfortable bed, she wanted to be rid of the IVs, she wanted to be home.  It brought Dylan Thomas to mind:

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

This runs in my family.  My father (my aunt Pat was my mother's sister, unrelated to him) loved Thomas as did my mother.  She had me read that poem at my father's graveside eighteen years ago – fitting, since the poem itself is a son speaking to a father.  So even though my aunt was from the other side of the family, she was true to this form: she would not simply accept death, she would press back against it as long as she could, she would not go gentle into that good night.

And this marks my divergence from the family pattern.  Although I have yet to confront my own demise, in recent years as I have faced the loss of my mother and my son I have found solace in Chuang Tzu and his acceptance all that comes.  He counsels us not to rage, rage against the dying of the light, but to embrace each transformation, even the physical transformation of death, as a marvel.   When one of his characters is facing  his end and is asked if he resented it, he replies:

This life we're given comes in its own season, and then follows its vanishing away.  If you're at ease in your season, if you can dwell in its vanishing, joy and sorrow never touch you.  This is what the ancients called getting free.  If you can't get free, you're tangled in things. And things have never overcome heaven.  So what is there to resent. (92)

My aunt did not have it wrong.  She expressed her inner Integrity, her De.  Raging against death was a part of who she was, just as it was for my father and mother and Dylan Thomas.  Indeed, there was much that was good in her life, much that she did not want to relinquish: she was a gifted teacher who helped countless children learn how to read; she was a generous neighbor; a lover of animals; and she shared with me her love for her family and her hometown, Washington DC.  I may have a different orientation to death (at least I think I do) but she followed Way where it led her.

Catherine Patricia Lane, July 24, 1931 – January 30, 2009

Rest in Peace