Thinking about Mortality doesn’t need to be Scary, so Why don’t we Speak about it More Often?

what I’ve learned from seeing my grandmother dying

‘Momento Mori’, said the Stoic philosophers. They argued that remembering our mortality gives us fuel for life and it ensures that we do not postpone anything. I think this is very wise advise, since I believe that we all know we’re going to die, but we don’t remember and remind ourselves of it enough. Death is this one and only certainty we have in life and still it’s far away from our every day lives. Why?

As being the most certain thing in life, death is also the most unpredicatble thing in life. The moment one often starts remembering death is when it gets closer, when it becomes less unpredictable, either in their own lives but often in the lives of their loved ones.

“In death, as so often in life, truth is stranger than fiction. Why is life more unpredictable than a football game? “ — Author: Joanna Eliot

Transformations in our understanding of life

Anthropologist Andrew Irving describes in his book The art of Life and Death, radical Aesthetics and Ethnographic Practice how terminal illness creates transformations in people’s knowledge and understanding of life. We can learn so much from these new perspectives and about what is truly important in life.

“(…) transformations in self identity and body image; transformations in long-standing religious and moral commitments; transformations in social roles and relations; transformations in the perception of time, existence and nature; and last but not least, transformations in the type of imaginative and emotional lifeworlds people inhabit when confronting death or attempting to negotiate a new life.” (Irving 2017: 2)

Not everyone gets terminally ill, but everyone does experience the loss of a loved one at least once in their lives. Everyone goes through the process of grieving, but grieving and our perspective on life and death are not so much spoken about, at least in Western Europe where I grew up. However, these experiences of loved ones passing away also transform our lived experience of life. These might not be the same transformations as Irving speaks about, but are still valuable lessons that are worth sharing with others. That is why I am sharing mine.

My grandmother

My grandmother was terminally ill and I was with her during the last weeks of her life. We spoke a lot, when she could still go outside in her wheelchair I took her outside, we laughed and cried, and on her last few days I fed her little pieces of bread with cheese. “Delicious!’, she said with a smile on her face. On january 11th, I was with her when she passed away. She opened her eyes when she took her last breath. It was almost like I saw life leaving her through her eyes. The pain I felt in that moment is indescribable. I cried. I cried and screamed. But at the same time, this moment I had just witnessed was magical. It caught my attention how life can leave us just like that from one second to another. I realized that by seeing her dying, I saw life. I saw what the end of life looks like. Which is something I am very grateful for now.

After the loss of my grandmother I have shifted between 2 different mindsets. I started feeling pessimistic and down. ‘What is the point of life when it just ends like that so quickly?’, I sometimes think. This thought combined with being locked in my little studio during lockdown makes me experience very intense feelings of sadness. I am often confused about if I feel completely empty or full of too many feelings. There are days spend in bed watching youtube videos just to pass the time.. But sometimes, including today, another mindset also enters my mind, which I try to really hold on to. It goes like this: ‘Life might be pointless, and it ends just like that, but that is the reason to enjoy this day and make the best of it. It would be a waste not to enjoy this moment’. I keep reminding myself of this.