Making Friends With Death
We’re all going to die, so we might as well come to better terms with it
The first thing I want to say is that although I’m not afraid to die, I’m also not quite ready to do so and am doing everything I can to stay alive. The same goes for my husband and son (as well as my polyamorous lovers and my friends). I don’t want to lose them quite yet. But I also have come to terms with the fact that every day is a gift for all of us in a new way in the past few weeks, and it’s altered my view of death significantly.
My elderly mom has just moved in with me. She’s about to turn 89 and her health is not great. She’s perked up quite a bit since coming to live here, but I’d say that her time on earth is probably about 6 months or so — perhaps significantly less. Who really can say? She is going to die, sooner rather than later, and there is nothing that I can do to stop that. I’m going to be sad and I’m going to grieve when that time comes, but I’m also already in acceptance of it in a way that I never thought possible in the past.
I’m grateful to get to spend this time with my mom, but having decline and death front and center in my own home has made me more peaceful with the fact that it is currently rampant in the world. This doesn’t mean that I don’t feel for those who are suffering or that grief isn’t a real and often painful thing. It just means that my own perspective on the inevitability of death has shifted in the last several months as these two situations (my mom’s decline and the Coronavirus) are in my face at the same time.
Westerners, and Americans, in particular, have a largely resistant relationship with death. We try to fend it off at all costs, sometimes at the expense of quality of life. We live in a culture that has disavowed death, and therefore doesn’t really know what to do with it when it invariably arrives. When it’s lurking in every corner, as it is right now, it tends to send a lot of people into a panic.
Even though there is some evidence of death anxiety in almost every society, cultures vary widely in the magnitude to which death anxiety is expressed. Some cultures appear to manage the idea of dying comparatively well that they are referred to as death affirming societies; in other cultures, the aversion to the idea of dying is so strong that they can be classified as death-denying or death-defying cultures. The United States, and probably most of the societies in the West, is a death-denying/defying society where even the idiom of expression is that of resistance.
People also conjure images of fighting illness, or fighting the enemy (death) (Kalish & Reynolds, 1981). On the other hand, other societies appear to be more accepting of death. Eastern cultural beliefs are said to largely conceive of death as a mere transition, and that the most effective way to defeat death is to accept it as a primary fact of life. In contrast, Western traditions incorporate materialistic views and also equate death of body with death of self, and thus should result in higher death anxiety.
There’s an old saying, “Life is sweet; even a beggar hesitates to cross a rotted bridge.” Even those who come from a culture that views death more as a transition than a cessation of existence still are not anxious to die. But even if death is the end, battling it tooth and nail and fearing it to the point of panic only erodes the life that you still have. In fact, the inability to die is considered by many to not be really living at all.
On a recent episode of Picard, the android Data asked that the quantum simulator that had preserved his consciousness be disconnected.
“I would be profoundly grateful if you terminated my consciousness,” Data tells Picard. “I want to live, however briefly, knowing that my life is finite. Mortality gives meaning to human life, Captain. Peace, love, friendship, these are precious, because we know they cannot endure.”
Sometimes after I help my mom to get ready for bed — give her her pills, and a clean pull-up, help her brush her teeth and put her into pajamas, set up her oxygen, and tuck her in — I feel a wave of bittersweet emotion. I’m profoundly grateful to have her here where I can do those things, and take care of her. She used to live 1,300 miles away and I worried about her every day. But it’s also really hard to see her so frail and in need of so much help. I have become the parent and she the child. But there’s also a beauty and a sweetness to it because she is so grateful for my care and attention and I am honored to do it. We both feel love really present between us as we go through these times together. In the face of impending death, we feel the sweetness of life and love.
Mom’s health hasn’t been good for the past 10 years or so, and she’s often spent time in the hospital. I used to really dread her death because she is the last remaining member of my very small family of origin. My dad and my brother both passed on years ago. Neither one of them lived as long as they might have, but they each had a full life in their own way. Should they have had more time?
Both times it was incredibly hard to lose them but in retrospect, they had the time that they had, and how can anyone truly know that it wasn’t the right amount of time. My dad never got to meet his grandson. My brother never got to do some of the things that I’m sure he imagined he would do. But if everyone knew that they were going to get to live to be 90, I think that would detract from some of the preciousness of life as well.
I don’t have a bucket list. There are thousands of things that I’d like to see or do, and I know that I won’t get to most of them, but I don’t want to put that out into the world as a failure or a loss. I try to live life out loud right now and make the most of what is available to me. Some days or weeks are better than others, but in general, I am happy with the life that I lead. I’m always learning, growing, and trying new things. My life is full of love and friendship and I don’t let fear or societal norms prevent me from doing things that I really want to do. For me, that’s a life well-lived, so although I want to do what I can to have a long life, the quality of it is more important than the quantity.
We have an acquaintance who just turned 100, although she spends most of her time in bed, with little quality of life.
“I really hope that I don’t live that long,” was what my mom had to say about it.
My heart goes out to those who are dying in fear or in pain. I really hope that my mom will just pass peacefully in her sleep one night and never have to spend even one more moment in a hospital, which is where the majority of Americans end their days. Mom has made it very clear that she doesn’t want to be hooked up to things that will keep her artificially alive.
“Some things are worse than death,” she says, remembering the years that my very independent and active grandmother spent on life support because my dad and his brothers were too afraid of death to have her unhooked and let nature take its course.
Part of our issue with death in the US is that we fight it with everything we’ve got, but when it finally comes, we have no process for allowing for grief, beyond the funeral. You’re supposed to just be OK after that as if living hasn’t profoundly changed because someone who used to be in your physical reality no longer exists there. Trying to contain death, both before and after it arrives, means that we don’t know how to allow it as a natural function of life, and I think this takes a difficult thing and makes it infinitely worse.
Death is stalking the streets these days and circling around my doorstep as well. I’m not going to invite it in, but when the time comes, I hope that I will receive it with grace — both as relates to me, as well as to the ones that I love. I hope that I will honor life by allowing and accepting death, not as a favorite friend, but as a necessary one.
© Copyright Elle Beau 2020 Elle Beau writes on Medium about sex, life, relationships, society, anthropology, spirituality, and love. If this story is appearing anywhere other than Medium.com, it appears without my consent and has been stolen.