At which point in our lives do we take that step that sets the rest of our lives in motion? Is it before we’re born? Is it when we are trying to figure out what we want to be when we grow up? Do we really have the power to decide when we stop the direction in which we are going and decide to go another way? Or, is that part of the direction, our thought that we’ve stopped and chose differently? It can all get quite confounded if we think on it too hard.  But, there does come a moment in time when we just know, when we are absolutely certain, of what our next step should be.  Our lives are intertwined with those around us, near to us or not.  In one way or another we have connected to anyone within our circle of influence.  Maybe it’s something we said, maybe it’s something we did, a look, a motion, or the fact that we did nothing at all.  Inaction effects us as well.  The moment currently under scrutiny is the decision to, clearly and without any doubt, choose death.  How do we know that this is what comes next in our chain of events? Beyond the not wanting to feel crappy anymore because we’re ill, or being tired because we’re too old for this or that, what clarity enters our mind that indicates to us that death is the next logical step in our individual life? Do we just “know”? Is it this clear understanding that no one else beyond ourself can possibly know until they get to experience it?  Why is it that no one else matters once we decide? It seems so simple to “choose” that destination with such fervency.  Or is this just too simplistic? I have not had enough friends, and I don’t have family beyond my off-spring and their’s, to say that I’ve personally experienced “enough death”, if you will, to have gathered data or surveyed those that have died.  But the deaths I have experienced it seems to me that there has been this crossing over of acceptance that the next likely step is death.  Those that have reached that crossroad have expressed a desire for the rest of us to simply understand and be happy for them or accepting of their decision to allow the reaper to come and do its bidding.  It’s been my stance that we can’t make someone do something they don’t want to do, in any situation.  And when someone has decided that to die, with dignity and of their own free will, that is what must be honored.  How do you let someone die with the potential for guilt in their heart and spirit for the pain of the ones that can’t let go?  So, thy will be done.  And may their soul go where they expect it to go, be it heaven or nowhere at all, back to the cosmos and the universe or to be reborn.