What is it about death that we find so hard to confront? The easy answer is the unknown, right? All of us will die, and yet very few will catch a glimpse of what that means before the day comes. Very few will know the hour and the day. Perhaps, for all our religions and certainties, we actually are afraid because we aren’t really sure what it will be like not to be here in this way anymore. However, I can say sincerely that I do not worry in the slightest about the afterlife, and I still find myself afraid.
Some say, we’re afraid as a society because we tuck death away; we don’t engage. We don’t handle our dead, don’t sit with them, don’t live beside it. Yet, as someone volunteering to enter into death care, I have it front and center, and I still find myself afraid.
I think the most daunting thing about death is the questions it demands of our lives. Did we do enough? What is enough? How were our relationships? What will our legacy be? It’s not so much about where we’re going but who and what we’re leaving behind.
Many might say that the secularization of this world has led to a host of future dead with no compass to guide them toward a good life. I wouldn’t. In fact, most of the atheists I know are quite determined to fill this finite life with meaning. I would, on the other hand, say that for the religious and non-religious alike, a glut of distractions has served to comfort us all the way out of considering life’s most essential questions most of the time. When they do crop up, they take us by surprise.
Perhaps the concept of “memento mori” was wasted on antiquity, invoked by generations who faced constant threats of fatal illness and injury and not a single app to soothe them. Perhaps it’s those of us here today who can entertain, argue, study, or even serve our way through life without the interruption of mortal self-reflection who need the reminder.
We are surrounded by people and messages that would sooner see us live forever than make peace with mortality. We “fight” like hell. We make survival – the one thing none of us will actually have in the end – our telos. We try to write stories that go on forever, even as they become dull, filled with endless moments of passive consuming. I often imagine seeing my own life repeated before my eyes and imagine I’ll beg to fast-forward trough all the hours of shameful scrolling and screens.
But how do we reconnect? How do we balance our desire for purpose with the reality of the world we really do live in? I often catch myself in moments of mental absence with my children and chide myself for wasting even a second of their fleeting childhood.
But this, too, seems like a symptom of modernity, of capitalism. It’s a conviction that we must maximize our meaning, to literally “get the most” out of everything like a private equity firm hell-bent on extracting profits from resources. As if the Universe herself is concerned with revenue per headcount.
No, we have to take it as more of a gestalt situation, both individually and as a species. You have to believe that the precious instance of transcendence or connection in a moment of eye contact is weightier than hours spent inside the algorithm. You have to believe that “Starry Night” or an open mic or a gorgeous skyline are at least as much our legacy as landfills and genocides. I hope.
It isn’t a novel thought, that my fear of death is a worry about my life. However obvious it may be, it’s speaking the fear, letting it be held by the world outside, that helps.
I am trained in this work. I would come to your home and sit with you as you face it, and still, I am afraid of dying. I get superstitious that talking about it and planning for it so young will draw it closer. I worry that it will come before I accomplish my dreams. I worry that, like my father, it will come in a way that fucks up my kids profoundly. I worry that, like my great-grandmothers, it will come late, long after my mind has been lost to the world. I’m worried that when it comes, it will be “my fault.” I’m worried someone will still need me. I’m worried it will hurt.
And that’s all ok. That’s normal. That’s good to say out loud and even better to act on. I plan. I write. I take good care of myself. I love deeply and loudly, try to forgive quickly, and apologize often. The hardest part, I try to surrender what I can’t control.
If you’re reading this, maybe you would also find it helpful to write down your fears or tell someone about them. You may lessen the pressure they put on you. You may find that speaking them does not bring the grim reaper to your door. They may even show you a path toward living a better life, point you toward wounds that need to heal, fences that need mending, actions waiting to be taken. In the end, our death is really just our life completed.
Christina Lengyel 