Death

A new book:

No other period of life has such a feared and mysterious ending. Childhood ends with the budding of puberty and the new challenges of adolescence. Adolescence passes away in the excitement of pulsating hormones, shedding its awkward, uncertain skin in the journey into young adulthood. The subsequent stages of adulthood bring undiscovered treasures of love, children, work, and spirit. Even in the face of failure or lost opportunities, there is always hope for something new. But aging seems to bring this process to a halt. The horizon is unknown except for the single fact that a true ending will come ...   Excerpted from How We Age: A Doctor's Journey into the Heart of Growing Old, by Marc E. Agronin, M.D. Available from Da Capo Press, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright © 2011.                              

 From Salon.com[http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/02/05/how_we_age_excerpt/index.html]

When a student in my class died from an alcohol overdose one semester,  I spent some time looking for an appropriate passage to read to the class.  I couldn't just let him disappear from the class with no acknowledgment, especially since it had been obvious to me that he was in trouble.  I chose to read the following:

50.  Death
Men flow into life, and ebb into death.
Some are filled with life;
Some are empty with death;
Some hold fast to life, and thereby perish,
For life is an abstraction.
Those who are filled with life
Need not fear tigers and rhinos in the wilds,
Nor wear armour and shields in battle;
The rhinoceros finds no place in them for its horn,
The tiger no place for its claw,
The soldier no place for a weapon,
For death finds no place in them.
Tao Te Ching, excerpts
http://www.alamo.edu/nvc/programs/humanities/huma/pages/divine_taoTeChing.htm#50Death