I Don't Know About You...But I'm Afraid to Die

By Ronald DiFabbio

Unbeknownst to everyone I have ever come across; I have been living a double life. My public persona has been the normal person everyone sees and most like to be around. The guy, who teaches high school math, was a baseball star in college and has been a songwriter for the last thirty years. Yet in private, behind the mask Ive so meticulously molded, Ive been living with a deep and sometimes paralyzing fear. That fear is. Im afraid to die.

.This book is about my journey into that world and my efforts to face that fear, a fear that I believe hides deep within the silent recesses of everyones soul, and to see if theres a way out.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 21, 2012
• ISBN: 9781469783246

Ronald DiFabbio

In my first book “The Baseball Gods”, I examined and wrote about the new metaphysics, in the context of baseball, and showed that by looking at life through this different perspective one can have a better understanding of it and live it more successfully on and off the field. Now, here in my second book, I use this same metaphysical perspective to delve into and face head on, a subject that ultimately awaits us all, death. Like many people, I have had both direct and indirect experiences with death, but unlike most I have not run from or lived in denial of its existence. Instead, my thoughts and feelings have been consumed by it everyday of my life. What follows are my thoughts and feelings from this improbable journey deep within the subject “no one wants to talk about”. It was a solitary trip I feel I was destined to make… down the road less traveled. I am a math teacher, songwriter, musician, writer, and former college baseball pitcher. I currently live in Connecticut and am working on my third book as well as a new CD of original music.

Book preview

I don’t know about you…

BUT I’M AFRAID

TO DIE

Ronald DiFabbio

iUniverse, Inc.

Bloomington

I don’t know about you… BUT I’M AFRAID TO DIE

Copyright © 2012 by Ronald DiFabbio.

Author Credits: Author of "The Baseball Gods

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ISBN: 978-1-4697-8320-8 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4697-8324-6 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 02/15/2012

I don’t really know how to write about death because I don’t believe there has ever been any format laid down, any blueprint to follow when writing about it. So I’m going to jot down the many thoughts that pop randomly into my head throughout the course of my life, as it unfolds this year, and hopefully it will turn into something coherent and universal.

One cannot tackle the subject of death head on. One has to act like a matador; sidestepping and dodging death’s deadly horns in order to properly express the weight and depth of their many implications. To challenge it to a fair fight is to suffer inexorably at its hands. I’ve tried to do that in the past and have come out bloodied and bruised. I believe it’s time for a different approach. Einstein said: We don’t need to think more, we need to think differently, and when thinking about the subject of death a different approach is definitely needed… .

On a historical note, as I write this, I’m not on my deathbed. In fact, I’m a healthy forty-eight year old man. This book is not about revelations I’ve had because I have six months to live. No, this is about living with death while living life . . . .

There is only one place to begin this journey and that is with the truth. I am afraid to die. I don’t ever want to die. I want to live forever because I love life so much, all of it. I love the pleasure and the pain. It’s real. It’s life… . But death just lurks out there like this perpetual shade of gray that blots out all the color. It’s the inevitable end to a journey that no one has control over or can change, and that I don’t want . . .

Every book ever written has sprouted from a seed planted at some fertile point in a writer’s life and cultivated by his experiences and observations. The seed for this book was planted when I was 11 years old and I watched, with paralyzing fear, my grandmother die a brutally painful death at the hands of Breast Cancer. And now, that seed planted a long time ago has broken through and has begun to flower. It broke ground on December 14th 2005… the night I watched my father die…

What will follow will be my thoughts on the inexpressible subject, death. It’s now December 14th 2009 and I plan on doing this exclusively for the next year. I hope at this time next year I’ll understand a little more about myself and be more at peace with my inevitable fate than I am at this moment, which is considerably less than what I had hoped for at this point in my life…

*

We stood around his bed and watched as the nurse removed his respirator. She said there was no telling how long he would go on living after it was out. He lasted all of about thirty seconds. We watched as his body exhaled one final time and that was it. He was gone. The man, who hugged me with great joy just days earlier, was no longer there. Just the shell of his body remained.

*

My father died four years ago today. I don’t understand how a person can be here one minute and then gone the next… talking to you, hugging you and then gone… How can a person’s energy, their being, just disappear?

*

Physics says that energy never disappears; it just changes form. Maybe we all just change form when we die. Sounds good intellectually… but it doesn’t penetrate my heart.

*

What if there is nothing? What if awareness disappears at death? If so, then what’s the point of anything?

*

But what if there is something? Then that changes everything . . . It makes me think about how well I’ve lived my life, how honest I’ve been and how good I’ve been. I guess if nothing else comes of this, just the fact that I’m questioning my worth as a person is a good thing.

*

So it seems like it’s all or nothing. If it’s nothing, then I