End-of-Life Care – Non-Religious – I feel as if I can already hear the evening bells!

Prayer and Meditation - Terminal Care

I have rested at all springs, rode there on all waves, and there is no road, no path that my feet did not stray upon. I've squandered some days and brought some to lamentation, some stayed up late with books and others with wine. I measured a lot, I gained a lot; I also sang a lot of songs, and this heart exhausted the joy of life, the pain of life. Now the cup is empty, my head has sunk on my breast, now I like to lie down and sleep, unwakable, dreamless, quiet and deep!

I feel as if I can already hear the evening bells beckoning from afar, and sweet, soft sadness blows around me: Come on, it's bedtime! Under blooming trees I lie in solitude, dreaming of old times, of old love. Yearning silence all around, only the hum of bees and far away in the valley the sound of a bell: whether it's a wedding bell or a funeral song, I don't want to interpret it. Lenten clouds pull with gentle flight. O youthful life long faded, O spring weaving, why do you tempt me? Golden sunny distances laugh. new hope, new deception! Lenz, the magic is enough!

End of Life Care

No, lull me to sweet rest and cover my dreaming head with blossoms! Rosy twilight envelops me: O blissful disappearance, sleeping and never waking! Now may you rest forever, my weary heart. The last illusion that I had always dreamed of disappeared. She faded. I feel hope now extinguished, even the desire for the sweet deceit's games.

Peace and quiet! You've hit enough now. Nothing is worthy of your throbbing, nor is this existence worth your sighs. Life only in disgust and bitterness, nothing else, and dirt the earth. Now rest. Despair for the last time. Fate gave people nothing but to die. Now despise you, nature, the power that dark weaving always thought only of harm to all of us, and the endless nothingness of life.