Why Death Is A Call to Life

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Episode 71- Podcast Transcript

Hi there, welcome back to Kelly Martin Speaks. I’m your host Kelly Martin and this is episode 71.

Today I am going to talk about how death is a call to life.

We are all dying. The moment we are born we start the journey back home. This isn’t meant to be a morbid podcast episode, but more a call to life, to choose life because we may die at any time.

My father died when he was 53. It came as a huge shock to everyone. He left behind my mum, my sister who was 13 and me who was 26 at the time. You never quite see the value of a life until suddenly it is gone from your world, but often we forget the greatest lesson death brings us all, we never know when we are departing, and we need to listen hard to this.

This week, someone I know on social media shared the shocking loss of her husband. He had many skills, was a youthful man and died in his early fifties like my father. This was a complete sudden shock, one we can never comprehend unless we have lost a close loved one.

Now many people die, we feel sad, we grieve, we move on with our lives and we intellectually get that our time may be long or short, so it’s important to truly live, but how many of us genuinely take this on board?

How many of us realise that we need to value what we have, to value who is in our lives and what we have in this here and now, because life is finite in this physical form.

We often get stuck in the physical thinking that because we are young or of a certain age or seemingly healthy, we have many years to go…but we just don’t know…we can never really know.

I think my dad had an inkling he was going, and I did too, because I dreamt several months before that we were walking along the beach throwing stones in the ocean and I woke up in tears. I knew he was preparing me and three months later he left this planet.

People die of all ages, babies, teenagers, young men and women with families, older men and women, very healthy individuals, sick people, death does not judge one age group or human body as more or less deserving of death than any other. It may seem cruel, but I truly believe that we as souls choose to live for a time and we receive windows of departure, when we can choose to go on or leave, depending on what we have learned and what those we leave behind will gain from our passing. Even though grief is incredibly hard.

Same Kind Of Different As Me

While watching a movie on Netflix called ‘Same Kind of Different as Me‘ the main character said something that really moved me to my core. He was homeless and he was befriended by a wealthy couple who helped the homeless centre he frequented for meals and food. He said:

“I used to spend a lotta time worryin that I was different from other people, even from other homeless folks. Then, after I met Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron, I worried that I was so different from them that we wadn’t ever gonna’ have no kind a’ future. But I found out everybody’s different – the same kind of different as me. We’re all just regular folks walkin down the road God done set in front of us. The truth about it is, whether we is rich or poor or somethin in between, this earth ain’t no final restin place. So in a way, we is all homeless – just workin our way toward home.”
― Denver Moore, Same Kind of Different as Me

Reading about my friend’s incredible loss, it was like someone punched me in chest. Before I had got the fact, intellectually, that we never know how long we have, so better make the most of it, but how many of us truly make the most of it? I think of most of us we are just getting by, waiting for improvements or change, hoping things get better and wanting the future to be different to what we have here.

I am no different.

In a morose kind of way, it had me thinking, thinking about people I may not have a high opinion of or who I think have things better than me and I can now see that they have it no different to me, they are no different to me. At any time those things I think they have, that I do not, could be taken away from them, their nice homes, their money, their loved ones their outer success…all of this could change in a split second.

Thinking about death and life really makes you look at who you are not valuing, how you behave around them, what you would do if they were gone tomorrow, would you be different? I know I would.

The Only Thing You Get To Keep Is What You Give Away

There is a song called The Only Thing You Get to Keep Is What You Give Away by Francis Dunnery and this is really something to consider about life.

We can’t take our ‘stuff’ with us.

We can’t take our money, our success…

But what we give to others, we get to keep, in our heart, in our soul.

On my walk after thinking about this, I started to ask myself what am I waiting for? Why am I putting off embracing what is in my life, simply because it doesn’t match conventional people’s worlds? Why am I worrying or focusing on a future that hasn’t happened in terms of how much money I have or don’t have?

Those we love could be gone tomorrow and absolutely everything can change.

This is my call to life for you.

Your life, no matter whether it is great or fucked up, is still your life. Your heart inside your chest it beats for you every single day, it is literally encouraging you into life and how many of us take this for granted?

My father’s heart gave out when the defibrillator in his chest did not work on the day he died. So now I feel extra grateful for my heart, it loves, it gives, it receives, and it beats for me.

Even if your body does not operate the way you wish it did, maybe you are housebound, but your body is still alive, your heart is still beating for you, what then are you going to choose to do with your life?

You don’t have to do anything fancy, you don’t have to scale Mount Everest or find the cure for cancer, but what you do have to do is live it. Simply or complex, whatever you choose.

Find the wisdom in your life, look for the beauty here and now and most importantly love those who are in your life and learn to value every little thing that you have.

You have a roof over your head? Great

You don’t, but you are breathing, you are alive? Great

You have a tonne of money? Don’t save it all for a rainy day. That rainy day may never come. Spend it joyfully.

You have hardly any money, but you are able to walk, enjoy nature, eat, connect with people…embrace that abundance life has given you.

You are alone, you feel lonely, then befriend the one you are with, You. Find something in you to accept, to nurture, to embrace, to like. And when the time comes to meet with others, open your arms and heart wide to let them in.

When you are faced with death, you can choose to ignore its wisdom and keep worrying and focusing on the future that has never happened or see it as a wake-up call to live here now.

I know people who have had near death experiences and have fully thrived since nearly dying. I have known others who have come close to death and have forgotten the wisdom that experience was there to show them and so continue to live their lives through the lens of the illusionary future.

Why not embrace this wisdom now, before inevitable and human loss takes place in your life.

I hope you keep on choosing life.

I sure will.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Kelly Martin Speaks

If you have a question or topic you are struggling with and would like me to answer on an upcoming podcast episode, please get in touch. Your name will be confidential. EMAIL me at kellymartinspeaks@gmail.com or message me on Facebook via my page Kelly Martin Speaks.

And don’t forget, if you feel that others are passing you by and ‘The Not Good Enough’ voice is screaming loudly, pop by kellymartin.uk to find out all about my books, including Book 1 ‘When Everyone Shines but You’

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Until next time…bye for now.

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