Have you noticed that death alone awakens our feelings? How we love the friends who have just left us? How we admire those of our teachers who have ceased to speak, their mouths filled with earth! Then the expression of admiration springs forth naturally, that admiration they were perhaps expecting from us all their lives. But do you know why we are always more just and more generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them, there is no obligation. ~Albert Camus
Many and I’d suggest most of us, have a profound fear of dying. Death, no problem. It’s over and done then. But, the process of dying, suffering or just the thought we might suffer, is too much to handle. Ask most people on the street and they’ll say it isn’t death that scares them, it’s the process of dying.
But that belies a certain ignorance - the thought that dying only begins when one gets ill or poses a threat to one’s life or when one is frail and very old. But that’s not what happens and how dying starts. Dying begins long before we are aware of it. It starts in force when our youth begins to wane and the curve of growth bends downward. Dying is a kind of “less” - your endurance is less, your strength is less, your faculties less keen, your eyesight less acute. And bit by bit, you keep moving towards that great disappearing trick which is death.
I’ve been selling all my worldly goods these days. And giving away a lot. It’s part of what I believe is "the cycle of life”. I’m unburdening my life. I’ll leave this house in the mountains of Nicaragua with a simple bag and my books and notebooks in some bins for another day. It’s revealing and at the same time, disturbing, this “letting go” of all the cargo that cocoons us away from death. But in a profound sense, this process is an acceptance of the natural thing that is dying. That things and possessions are illusory. They give us a sense we aren’t dying but they are just holding a finger in a dyke. They can’t hold back the water.
“To avoid the unliveable is not to flee life but to throw oneself into it, totally, irrevocably.” - Andre Breton, Inaugural Break
Dying is such a natural thing. Even if it is by accident or when young. Dying happens to all-natural, living things but we avoid any mention or discussion of it in our daily lives. We try not to think about it. I believe this “blindness” towards death/dying in our culture is truly dispiriting and harmful. We suppress and bottle up our fears and questions. Our doctors treat dying like it is something we got to beat. And if death gets you, it is because you didn’t try enough! What hubris. Our attitude towards death is like the guy at the casino believing he’s got the skill to beat the roulette wheel.
We shouldn’t see dying as a bad thing. Something we daily need to “beat”. Cosmetic surgery, creams, vital oils, designer drugs, weights, steroids, and accumulating possessions (that make us believe in our immortality). Sure, I do wish I could live forever, but I also recognize that this isn’t in the rules of the game. No matter how hard I struggle in my chains.
For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
So how should I presume?
- T.S. Eliot. The Love Song Of J Alfred Prufrock
Safetyism is tied to our ill-formed relationship with death. We see dying and “harm” through a dim light, as something we must defeat at all costs. You see it in all policies, especially those of the recent pandemic. We protect but at what cost? What cost to our life, our living, our health and “live”liness?
Where I live, people live differently and primarily because experience teaches them something different about death and dying. Life is hard here. People don’t live long. People wake up not believing they will live forever. There is no safetyism. Not many motorcycle helmets. Most living for today, for tomorrow may not come. I see this cultural trait informing almost all actions here in Central America.
Growing up on a farm, in the cold north of Canada, I was intimately close to death. All the time, animals froze to death, killed each other. Dogs got hit by cars. Stillborns. We butchered and ate our beloved animals, so we could live. I think everyone should have to kill and eat an animal, once in their life. Or for that matter - dig a grave.
I wrote this years ago and found it in one of my notebooks as I’m putting together a collection of them for publication. It speaks to and of death and dying.
"The foundation, the fountain, the force and purpose of life is found in death. Death is life's taskmaker and soil.
Our body, our minds unceasingly seek out death despite our protests and imaginations. The body wastes away on the stem of a mind programmed by death. Our cells, every cell divides and produces death dust championing our own demise.
Each breath we take, we kill billions of microrganisms. Trillions of types of bacteria dance and dream us into being beyond our microscopes and machinations.
If you want to look for the answer of being -- look littler, look to the infinitesimal, look down not up. Down into death, that place deeper and deeper where death resides. Deep and deeper I say, not higher and higher to a clown god of everything and thus, nothing.
So, enfin, our life, our brief time here on this planet is to be a host of death. To cater to death's every whim and wish. We are death's dasein. We make death visible, beautifully visible and enlarged. Do not be afraid - death will use you in any and all cases.
This lady says some powerful things in her last letter, to be read when she died. Brain cancer did get her and here are some of her last words. I’ll leave you with Kerri Grote’s courageous words. It’s a call for a different attitude and mindset towards death.
"If you’re reading this, this fu$king brain cancer probably got me.
But let me be crystal clear while I’m able: I did not ”lose a battle” against cancer. This is a ridiculous, steamy pile of horse shit that society has dumped on cancer patients. Western medicine, and Western culture, especially, is so uncomfortable talking about death that instead it created this “battle” analogy that basically shames people who die from cancer.
News flash: None of us gets out alive from this rodeo called life.
There is no shame in dying from cancer – or any serious illness. And it doesn’t need to be a battle. It’s a transition that each of us will go through. I was asked by a shaman, whom I spoke to after my second brain surgery, “Are you running towards life or running away from death?”
Whoa! That got my attention.”
There’s a BIG difference. I got it wrong more often than not.
Don’t let fear fuel your choices. Live fearlessly. Run TOWARDS life. Don’t worry about what people will think. Trust me, it doesn’t matter.
Focus on you. Be true to yourself. Be your own best friend. People who tell you you’re selfish are not your people. If the voice in your head says these unkind things, get a new voice. Honor your mental health and seek out a good therapist with the same vigor you’d search for a romantic partner.
Speaking of, be intentional about cultivating friendships that lift you up. As those friendships grow and change, don’t overlook them while you search for that “great love of your life.” (No, I’m not suggesting you sleep with your bestie. But you do you!)
Another unhelpful message that we get from society is that we need a “love of our life,” as a romantic partner.
Single and childless when I was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, I looked around my life and came up sputtering and sobbing from the wave of grief washed over me. I thought I’d be doing this alone… no husband, no kids, no “great love.”
How wrong I was. At the first appointment with my neuro oncologists, one of the nurses diligently hauled in chair after chair for the great loves of my life who came with me that horrible day and many days after that.
I sat and listened while the doctor explained the 12-month treatment plan, focusing on my breathing, then looked around the room…. filled with great loves of my life: incredible women friends whom I had met at various stages of my life.
Surround yourself with people who contradict that unkind voice, people who see your light, and remind you who you are: an amazing soul.
Learn how to receive these reflections from your people. Because they are speaking the Truth.
Love yourself, no matter how weird and silly it might feel. Every morning, give yourself a hug before your feet hit the floor. Look deeply into your eyes in a mirror. Say to yourself, out loud, “I trust you.” That voice in your head might say you’re a dork. Ignore it.
As I prepare to leave this body and embark on this mysterious journey of my soul, I hope these observations from my deathbed are somehow useful.
What I know, deep in my bones, is that learning to love myself has led me to be able to say this: I’m so proud of how I lived.
May you, dear reader, feel the same when you head out on your soul journey, too. Until then, enjoy the ride. And always eat dessert first, especially if there’s pie!"
- Kerri Grote. RIP. September 14th, 2021.