Mary Oliver: a bride married to amazement

It must be true that the whole second half of a man’s life is most often made up only of habits accumulated during the first half.

                                                                  Dostoevsky

Death came for Mary Oliver on January 17, 2019.  Simply reading her poem below is a fitting Eulogy for her.  Her poetic words "all my life I was a bride married to amazement" describe her attitude toward life. Her enthusiasm for living is certainly the template for those who would otherwise live their lives through "habits accumulated" in the first half of life.

This link has information about her:

https://www.thecut.com/2019/01/selected-mary-oliver-poems.html

When Death Comes 

      by Mary Oliver

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox

when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.