Our Dying Territory (Windrum’s Matrix of Dying Terms™)

When we speak of dying and death we usually reference a pair of situations that, over time, have become iconic scenes: the intensive care unit, likely attached to a breathing machine and a range of intravenous drips, and at home, where somehow all our needs are amply met. As if these two outcomes are the only possibilities.

In fact a range of distinctly different dying situations exists—I’ve identified seventeen. I’ve named them. And charted their relationship to one another. Together they equal a place I call our Dying Territory. It’s a place each and all of us will traverse—no exceptions.

Situations for which we have no names do not enter our thinking, our conversations, and certainly not our planning and resolve. So we get taken by surprise when, invariably, we stumble into them. Yet to die in peace requires that we successfully navigate our dying territory and mitigate the obstacles that arise there. To help us do so I developed a tool, Windrum’s Matrix of Dying Terms™.

The Promised Landing: A Gateway to Peaceful Dying, is devoted to presenting, explaining, and guiding us through a virtual experience of our Dying Territory. Preview it here*…the page includes a visual sampler, a gallery of spreads from the book that offer a sequential snippet of building blocks, definition, example, and recitation that, once engaged in, leave an indelible understanding of an aspect of living and dying that we’ve previously failed to account for. That understanding expands our worldview. That expansion will deepen our resolve to learn what is required of us to die in peace, and to die at peace.

*several sequential explanatory graphics of Windrum’s Matrix appear in the preview. I no longer display the final Matrix on this page because without proper explanation it can be tough to understand, or be misunderstood. The Promised Landing explicates our Dying Territory (aka Windrum’s Matrix) step by step over several chapters.