Imagine walking through a dark corridor, feeling your way as you go dreading what you might bump into. Then your hands feel a wall. Then a door, then a door knob. You grasp the knob, turn and push. Crack of light. You open all the way, behold, you find yourself in lush meadow teeming with vitality and light. That is death.
Tuesday afternoon at about 2:15pm, my phone rings. I do not recognize the caller ID but I answer any way, which is something I rarely do. “Hello.” “Is this Michael?”. “Yes, speaking.” “Who is this?” “Oh,…ahh…” comes the voice from the other side, and I could hear that she has been crying. “This is Jeane. Dannielle said I can talk to you. Hope you don’t mind?” “Oh no, not at all”, I replied. “What’s wrong?” Sniffles amidst tears at the other end. Then finally she said, “I just lost my sister. Covid. I don’t know what to do.” And she just cried. A few days later, on my way back from the gym at about 7:15pm, I was called back a classmate who’s call I missed earlier in the day. After the usual banter, he told me he’d be next week for a funeral. My heart skipped a beat. I asked who it was, concerned it was someone I knew. He said it was a family he knew from work. Then he said that the father and son both died on the same day. “What do you mean?” I asked, a bit perplexed. He said, yes, they both died on the same day, a few hours apart. I asked, “How?!” He replied, “Covid.”
Between last year and now, we have heard numerous stories similar to the ones shared above. Covid has taken a toll, shaking the fabric of our reality, causing many of our businesses to re-evaluate how they operate, employers and employees how they work. It has disrupted families, relationships and caused unspoken grief. And if you work in healthcare, you have seen more dead bodies in the past year than you have seen in your life. We have become familiar with death and the process of dying. The death toll currently is at over 4million with the US recording more than .6million. Though Covid 1 has terraformed how we function in society and conduct business, but it does not seem to have impacted how we live and relate to one another, besides encouraging isolation in our already isolating and segregating society. Jeane, the family that lost father and son on the same day, imagine their grief? Imagine the questions they’d be asking, knowing full well, there’ll be no answers. I do not have a silver bullet to the answers. But death and dying are integral to what it means to be human, hence we need talk about them. At death and through the process of dying, we seem to focus on what we’ve lost and on what are about to lose. But what if we begin to do what is counter intuitive and focus more on what we can give? If, as we say, that giving is better than receiving, maybe at the time of death and through the process of dying we, the living need focus more on what we should be giving.
A conversation on death and dying is one that many of us would rather not have, because it reminds us of the inevitability of our mortality of pain and loss. And rightly so. The ancient Romans, however, had a contrary perspective. They made efforts to remind themselves of death. History has it that when generals returned victorious from battles, while on their victory parade through the city, amid the adulations of the cheering crowds, their servants would continually whisper to them, Memento mori-Remember death. This was so that they would not be overcome by hubris, but will tame confidence and strength with humility. Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations also reflects this depth of living. “You could leave life right now. Let that determine what you do and say and think”. Then the Holy book teaches “It is better to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house of feasting; for this is the end of all men, and the living will lay it to heart.” All of which implies that there is instruction in death for the living.
I however, understand the difficulty that surrounds the subject matter. I have experienced the disillusionment, confusion and pain that besieges one at these times. I lost my mother in 2012 after not having seen her for 6 years. Then my father followed 4 years later in 2016. Prior to these, I lost my cousin and best friend, our first year of college. And I have been privileged to have presided over many a funeral, and those of my parents. Through it all, what kept me going and what I started to understand through these, is this; If God loves us as much as I know He does, then there is no way death is it. There is no way death is the final stop. There has got to be more. I have contemplated death, even my own death, and it usually brings me to a place of calm and clarity. Before we discuss what the possible merits are of contemplating and
discussing death, let us make an effort to understand something of it.
I however, understand the difficulty that surrounds the subject matter. I have experienced the disillusionment, confusion and pain that besieges one at these times. I lost my mother in 2012 after not having seen her for 6 years. Then my father followed 4 years later in 2016. Prior to these, I lost my cousin and best friend, our first year of college. And I have been privileged to have presided over many a funeral, and those of my parents. Through it all, what kept me going and what I started to understand through these, is this; If God loves us as much as I know He does, then there is no way death is it. There is no way death is the final stop. There has got to be more. I have contemplated death, even my own death, and it usually brings me to a place of calm and clarity. Before we discuss what the possible merits are of contemplating and discussing death, let us make an effort to understand something of it.
What is death?
It is a biological and physiological happening that ends all life related activities in all corporeal things. The body separates from the soul, because the body, due to age, illness or injury can no longer support the soul, returning the body to its original inorganic constituent elements. Which begs the question: what happens to the soul? A question not easy to address. Some believe in the finality of death. An end into oblivion. Jean-Paul Sartre and Rilke speak of death as tumbling into nothingness. That is, death is the definitive cessation of something that was. Absolute nihilism. A view if considered, entails that life as we know it has no meaning or purpose other than what you subjectively ascribe to it, which will make each individual a deity onto him or herself. Morality as a notion is of no consequence, implying that rule of law is an arbitrary construct with no objective justification, making us all puppets to the whims of the law makers and enforcers. And the concept of hope is fallacious, since the object of hope is that which is good, which is not yet attained, but since nothing matter, then nothing can be objectively said to be good. Then even when we feel pain and regret when someone dies, it really doesn’t matter, because their existence in our lives was random and their passing away, also is nothing.
On the contrary, Martin Heidegger, identifies death as the veil of existence, “a covered
way of being, something though unknown is positive…. Death is a manner of existence as soon as it takes it for itself” . That is to say, death is the mystery of life since it is part of the process of life, yet an aspect unknown and incomprehensible in itself to us. It is however, a positive thing. Positive in as much as it continues the process of life in a manner yet unknown to our intelligence. This thinking raises questions of the possibility of an after life, and the existence of a soul.
Religious traditions and different philosophical frame works have tried to bridge the divide to go beyond Heidegger to peer as it were, beyond the veil, to explain to us what is positive in death. Christianity, for instance teaches that at death, body and soul return to their primordial substances. The body to prime matter and the soul to its spiritual state in an everlasting hereafter the quality of which is dependent on how morally sound one lived in the here and now. In line with this thought, Jesus makes a cryptic remark in the Gospels. While being quizzed on the veracity of the claim in the resurrection, he says, “… have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God said to him, `I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living” . Which implies that these patriarchs of Judaism are indeed alive and well in an other existence. Islamic traditions
propose a similar tenet with the added value of the Houri for men who were martyred. ‘ Not a critique, but I wonder if martyred women would also get hung studs in paradise? I’d really like to know.
Now Judaism, their forebear, seem to differ slightly from this. It concedes to the separation of body and soul but does not seem to go beyond the here and now, for Yahweh, God, does not bother himself with what happens in Sheol. Then in the eastern traditions, Hinduism and Buddhism, death is a path which leads ultimately to moksha or nivarna, if one is able to liberate the atman/soul from the perpetual cycle of death and birth by meditation, good thoughts and good deeds. If these are plausible, then there is a reason for time and creation. There is a reason why you are born in this time. Let death remind you of what you have yet in yourself to
give. Live in hope. At death, questioning God may come naturally. After all, who do turn to for answers to mysterious things, if not someone who is in himself Mystery. But our time may be better spent questioning ourselves. “The terrible thing about Death,” said Malraux, “is that it transforms life into Destiny.” At death, whatever we were unable to reconcile becomes our legacy.
What does this therefore mean? In our post-truth era of Instagram, Facebook likes, and moral relativism, we need to remind ourselves, memento mori. Maybe it will help us reevaluate and re-prioritize our lives as we live it.
Michael.