Edward Hoagland, the writer and naturalist, died at 93. At 76, he wrote about death and how he imagined he’d go about dying. The gist of it is that if you believe in life, as naturalists do, you also believe in death.
Without wishing to hasten it, in other words, I don’t dread the event.
He often expressed a preference for natural burial, rather than cremation. He liked the idea of being recycled. He also noted that it seems to be a human trait to dream and daydream.
For my deathbed, I anticipate a slide show of benign imagery, like my boyhood’s Connecticut woods, and a collage of people I have loved.
My friend Melvyn, an admirer of Hoagland’s essays, marked this line:
The dead hold no opinions; and I quite look forward to that.
• Source: Edward Hoagland’s essay “Curtain Calls” is in Sex and the River Styx; White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2011. The quotations are on pp. 103, 109 and 116.
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