Death - more thoughts on it

 I found a journal of mine from 30 years ago while looking for something else yesterday. It was very interesting to hear my own voice from half way back across my life. The me then had two young children and was struggling with the business of work and making ends meet and everything. But I was quite pleased to hear that I could still recognise my own thoughts now in the younger me. I had got to thinking that the younger me was a bit of a dullard who should have dealt with his problems a bit more promptly than he did. But now I feel better towards him. 

One of the things I was surprised by was that I wrote what I thought then about death and dying and it was very much like what I think now. So the whole last three years of Cro's illness, Cro's death and my own diagnosis don't seem to have produced my current view, rather strengthened something that was already there. I was certainly very sure that you should embrace the whole process and not try to avoid, disinfect or trained-counsellor it away. Death is a normal part of life. 

And this has linked with something I have been thinking of a lot recently: that we unbalance the truth of life/death by making Death into something of its own which it doesn't deserve. Bear with me on this one.

We have a huge iconography of Death, in Western culture at least. The hooded scythesman, the Dance of Death, the hymns and songs (Oh Death where is thy sting?). And I had a bet with Cro that all truly great poems were either about Death or Mortality. I still think that assertion has legs. And great plays and books have often had Death as one of their themes, or at least as part of their climax.

But the thing is, what if we are giving 'Death' too much importance here? What if we instead said 'What do I know of here on Earth?' I know of Life. I feel the Sun, I feel my breath going in and out, I feel joy when I see my friends, my relatives, my lover. I know nothing of Death, nor can I, because Death is simply the word we give to when we stop living. Life is what I know and Death is no more than the end of life. It literally has no existence or meaning. All we are talking about is when Life stops. Imagine if we did this aggrandising capitalisation for other ends. I was on holiday. But now I have to deal with the dread End Of The Holiday. Or "It was a lovely dinner, but I now need to face the grisly 'End of a Nice Evening Out'. Why do we give such importance to the end or ceasing to be of something that we know (and hopefully enjoy)?

Well to answer my own question, we do have some reasons to do this, though I still think they do not justify our obsession. Firstly, for social beings we know that when we stop existing, our friends, family, love-of-our-life do not. And we have enough empathy to realise that it will be hard for them that we are no longer alive. So we fear or dislike how we know they are likely to feel, and we regret that they will have to. But I still don't think that justifies our personification of a mere full stop. Secondly, we have this irritating organ between our ears that keeps doing that horrible thinking business. And because we have got into the habit of wanting to know things and fix things we are left with questions such as "What will the world be like when I am not there to see it?" (spoiler, it won't matter to you) or "How can it be that life is finite? Why am I cursed with this mortality when I feel I have an immortal soul?" (spoiler, you are a good old stick, but that soul business is, IMHO, BS)

But just because our itchy cerebellums have this urge to understand and categorise and name, that doesn't mean that we are right. I am going to start wearing a T-shirt with the slogan 'The other Victory over Death is just to ignore it'. Or some such. 

Also, let me be very clear here that Death is way different from Dying. The thing we call Dying is still part of life, and if we are thoughtful about it, often one of the most important parts of our life. But still part of life. You can very well dismiss Death with a shrug of the shoulders, but Dying is something you should acknowledge and value. It is the last part of a full life and it has huge value to our walk along this road of being human.