death. introduction.

Introduction

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When I pause to think about it, the only thing I can truly predict is that I and everyone and everything will one day die and pass away.

 

Like any good story, my life has a beginning, a middle, and, one day, it will have its end.

 

And yet, rather than meditating on this one single truth, and orienting my life toward its eventual end, I spend enormous amounts of energy ignoring, avoiding, and fearing it. The surest way to ruin a conversation is by mentioning death.

 

In the face of death, I grow scared, awkward, quiet. I freeze up.

 

I find it incredible that after 12 years of primary school, 4 years of college, and 2 years in graduate school, I have yet to take a course on death. I haven't even seen any offered. And I studied philosophy!

 

Why do we refuse to prepare ourselves for death? Why do we insist so strongly on our own ignorance?

 

Some time ago, I tried to imagine one of my parents dying. What would I do when I heard the news? How would I cope? The answer: I’d grow frozen and lifeless as a corpse; as if I, rather than my parent, had departed.

 

Again: death is the most important event in my life, and yet I refuse to prepare for it. I’ve refused to even acknowledge it’s presence.

 

Instead I’ve treated it most unfairly, heaping upon it every abuse, blame, and terror known to man.

 

I suspect that a healthy and honest orientation toward death could serve as a great asset as I continue through life. It can add color and joy to the everyday, and relieve the quiet torments that accompany my denial, fear, and misunderstanding.

 

I believe that death can be healthy.

 

I believe that death can be loving.

I believe that death can bring life.

 

Here are some questions that I’ve written to guide me as I explore my darkness:

 

What does death feel like?

 

How have I been handling death as it occurs in my own life? How would I like to handle it?

 

How do other people, cultures and communities handle death?

 

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"To begin depriving death of its greatest advantage over us,

let us deprive death of its strangeness,

let us frequent it, let us get used to it;

let us have nothing more often in mind than death."

-- Michel de Montaigne

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