death and dying

the forbidden subject

“In this world, nothing is said to be certain. Except death and taxes.”

You might have heard this Benjamin Franklin quote before.

And usually, it is used when people talk about the latter. No one likes taxes.

But what about the former? What about death?

It seems that as a society, we have collectively decided to just not talk about it. Zip. Nothing.

That is not to say, we do not obsess over people dying.

I am sure you have seen the news stories. “Woman dead after car crash.” “More than 20 000 feared dead in catastrophic earthquake.” It seems to be the media’s favorite thing to report on.

And yeah, we talk about famous people leaving our world all the time. We memorialize them, discuss their legacies, and increasingly, have political debates about whether or not they were a good person.

But while we love to talk about dying, we do not truly talk about death. Neither as a concept, nor an experience. What is it like? What happens when we die? How should we think about our own deaths? What about the deaths of others?

We dress it up in euphemisms. If you notice, two lines back, I "said “leaving our world.” That is a popular one. “Deceased” is another. So is “no longer with us,” or “passed away.” No one wants to say the word “dead.”

And maybe, that is understandable. After all, death is terrifying. As philosopher Stephen Cave put it,

“We have to live in the knowledge that the worst thing that can possibly happen one day surely will, the end of all our projects, our hopes, our dreams, of our individual world. We each live in the shadow of a personal apocalypse.”

---

A few weeks ago, my Grandma died. We saw it coming - a few months before that, she had been diagnosed with a fast-moving, largely incurable cancer.

At her memorial service, my mom said lovely things about my Grandma. But in her words, she repeatedly spoke as if death was not the finale.

“We will meet again.” “This is not goodbye, just see you soon.”

And in a way, I think this encapsulates how we struggle to come to terms with the finality of death. Most people, myself included, can not comprehend a world with nothingness.

Maybe, as some will be quick to point out, it is not nothing. And perhaps they are right. Many (but not all) religions have teachings that tell us, death is not the end. Some believe in heaven/hell. Others, reincarnation.

But even if that is the case, I think that most people still cannot imagine such a different world. As hard as it is to understand total darkness, it is equally as tricky to imagine pure bliss. Or, being reborn as a butterfly.

The point is, whatever we believe happens after death is so different from the world we live in now, it is virtually impossible to envision.

What makes it even scarier, is most of us are not completely sure about whether the next world we think exists, even exists at all. After all, nobody truly knows what happens after we die (if you find out, please do let me know). And what we humans fear more than anything, is uncertainty.

So, most of us just choose to pretend it does not exist.

But here is the problem. Ignoring something does not make it go away. Not talking about death can not make us immortal.

As a result, when neither individuals nor society wants to talk about it, when the inevitable happens, it becomes that much worse.

But this was not always the case. In fact, up until a few hundred years ago, death was a topic discussed rather openly. Religions provided great teachings on why it exists, what it means, and how we should view it. Many people took comfort in such ideas.

When death actually came, religious and cultural communities were there to provide support; to help family members process what had happened. Oftentimes, this would be accompanied by elaborate rituals and traditions, infused with hope and blessing.

Yet today, in a west that has become increasingly secularized (largely due to extraneous, non-death related factors), such things are becoming increasingly rare. Organized religion is on the decline, and although many new-age movements have arisen, none have been able to fill the void. And for those who still embrace religious practices, it tends to happen privately. We have cast religion, and with it, much of the discourse surrounding death, out of the public sphere.

To be clear, I am not an advocate for organized religion, nor do I mourn over its declining influence in western society. But I think that if we want to understand how we can find new ways to help us deal with death, we must first understand the role it has played for most of human history.

With all this said then, what have we devised to replace it?

Well, a pseudo-network of support groups and therapy networks, both online and in-person, have popped up. A new trend seen in some places are “death cafes,” where people go to talk about, well, death. Yet none of these band-aid solutions have taken off.

Some would argue that it is because no matter how much you talk about it, it does not make the problem go away. Nothing can make the problem go away.

And that is true.

But I think there are a lot of problems in our lives we can not make disappear. But we still find new ways to talk and think about them.

One such approach was proposed by Cave, in his Ted Talk “the 4 stories we tell ourselves about death.” He put it better than I could ever paraphrase, so I will let his words speak for themselves.

“Just as a book is bounded by its covers, by beginning and end, so our lives are bounded by birth and death. And even though a book is limited by beginning and end, it can encompass distant landscapes, exotic figures, fantastic adventures. And even though a book is limited by beginning and end, the characters within it know no horizons. They only know the moments that make up their story, even when the book is closed. And so the characters of a book are not afraid of reaching the last page.”

I think that in some ways, this is incredibly helpful.

Yet it also still encapsulates the mindset that death is something we do not think about; that we cast aside and push away. Yet I am pretty sure if you told Harry Potter after the end of the last book, his character would simply cease to exist, that he probably would not be too pleased.

Another way that we have tried to fill the void left by religion is science. No, not the traditional “let’s do brain scans on people” science. Instead, people are turning to things like freezing their bodies in the hopes that one day, geniuses will be able to unfreeze and “resurrect” them. Others say that within our lifetimes, we will be able to upload our minds to a computer server and continue to exist there.

Now I am not a scientist, and in the same way I did not make a comment on the veracity of religious claims, I am not going to do so for these beliefs either.

But up to this point, I still feel as if we are not coming to terms with death. We are still trying to find ways to tiptoe around it, to deny its finality.

What then, hypothetically speaking, does not tiptoeing around it look like?

Well, it probably means changing the way we talk about death. That as a society, we begin to view it for what it is - a permanent, irreversible, and drastic moment that upends everything we have ever known or experienced since the beginning of our existence. It means acknowledging its finality, and its mystery.

Or maybe, it just means we just start talking about it again. Even that would be better.

---

My mom, she flew out to Seattle (where my Grandma lived), one week before she died. And in those seven days, she saw a remarkable change in the way my Grandma acted.

Previously, she had been rather gloomy. Not depressed, but definitely not cheerful either. She would frequently remark about how she was not sure why she was alive. Yet in that week, my mom told me about how Grandma, for the first time in a long time, wanted to be alive. When faced with the reality that her time was limited, she began to cherish her last moments. She wanted to do, well, life-things, because she realized that it was the last time she would be able to do them.

“We don’t realize what we have, until it’s gone.”

And research tells us, this is how it often goes. I am sure you have seen the quotes, about how on their deathbeds, people’s greatest regret is that they did not live life more.

So perhaps, this is why we should normalize truthful discourse about death. If this final moment that is always creeping up on us, if living with this over our heads can inspire us to live better lives, maybe it is something we should talk about more. If we were all reminded, constantly, that our time in this world is limited, we would indeed probably bicker less about little things. We would spend more time with loved ones. And we would cherish the moments that matter most.

People love to talk about the wisdom of the elders. But maybe, this is the greatest piece of wisdom of all. And now, there would be something to back it up.

Would this make the actual notion of death less scary?

I think so.

In a society where ideas of death were frequently discussed, people would be better equipped to handle the death of those around them. Although the grief would not go away, it would be less of a surprise. Death would no longer be this far off, abstract concept that caught you off guard. Rather, it would be something that you had seen coming, and had almost, in a sense, prepared for. There would be less regrets, less “I wish I had done that while I still had the time.”

Most importantly though, I think that everyone, in some way, shape, or form, has struggled with death anxiety. Maybe it was when you were confronted with your own mortality, or perhaps when a loved one passed away. Death is a common experience for us all. But in a society where no one wants to talk about it, it feels wrong to bring it up. No one wants to be reminded of it, so we all stay silent.

What do we do instead? Well, we stash it away in the darkest corners of our brains, trying to cope with it on our own. But as any mental health expert will tell you, this is not healthy. Especially for something as difficult to comprehend and as irreversible as death. In a world where we talked about it more, people would be more willing to share their struggles, their stress, and their anxiety. And we would have far more supports to help them cope.

In fact, I could argue that death would become the one thing that truly brings everyone together.

But hang on.

Let us take a step back, and think about this again.

Is this mindset not just holding the threat of death over people’s heads to force them to live a good life? Blackmail, almost. “Live a good life, or you will regret it.”

Could you live a good life under those circumstances? Would you truly feel “alive?”

I mean, 99% of people would say no. Being constantly reminded of your ultimate demise is not a great life philosophy, even if that demise is used to motivate you.

So, what would work instead?

Maybe we could normalize discourse about death, without using it as a threat. A more moderate version of the above, if you will.

One such change that has arisen out of this is the rise of hospice. Increasingly, in someone’s final stretch, healthcare has become less about prolonging their life by a few more days, but rather, more so about making those last moments as comfortable as possible.

Consider my Grandma’s case. She and both her children all agreed that there was no point in pursuing the aggressive chemotherapy treatment for her cancer. All the pain and suffering it brought was simply not worth it, even if it did mean she would have a chance to live several weeks longer. Instead, the nurses spent her last days giving her lavender baths, painkillers, and lots of plushy pillows.

“Dying with dignity,” as it is known, represents a mindset shift, away from continually trying to avoid death at all costs and towards making every last moment of life count. In this field, death is not an absolute evil, but rather, a part of the circle of life.

Another, perhaps more controversial way of thinking that has been proposed is in the concept of “we are all dying.” The reasoning goes, from the moment we are born, we are all on a slow march towards death. Every second of our lives, we are undergoing the process known as dying. So even though death is the finale, it is not a one act play. It is simply the culmination of our lives.

The logic then asks, what is there to worry about? Death is a part of our lives, a conclusion of the saga we have been preparing for our whole lives. It is our one common experience that unites all living things on this earth.

Does that make you feel better?

Maybe we could try even harder to erase it from our minds.

As a child, I had a crippling fear of death. And for a while, it consumed me. I could not do anything, go anywhere, meet anyone, without thinking about death. And then my psychologist asked me, “what does worrying about it do? Will it change anything.”

“No, it won’t.” I responded.

“So then stop worrying about it.”

And perhaps surprisingly enough, this mindset worked. Whenever I started thinking about death, I would repeat this line in my head. Over, and over, and over. And maybe I was denying reality in its most extreme form. But it made me feel better.

Or maybe, we could turn back to religion.

Research has shown that one of the big reasons people become religious is to find comfort from the fear of death. And although that is usually framed as a bad thing, I do not think that that is necessarily the case.

If religious beliefs genuinely make people feel better, if they are able to provide that level of comfort, then we should embrace them with open arms. Maybe they are true, maybe they are not. But here is the thing - it does not matter.

As much as some people like to claim religion is an unproven framework, so is every other way of thinking about the world. The lives of the most devout theists and the most ardent atheists are both filled with untested assumptions that form the foundation of their beliefs. In this way, it becomes about picking the most convenient assumption for our lives. And I would say, being able to deal with death is pretty damn convenient.

(That is not to say, religion and/or atheism have no evidence for them. Just because people turn to religion to help them cope with death does not render religion true/false. And although I am not religious, I think that the case for theism is stronger than most people assume. But that is a topic for another day.)

---

As a little child, I always thought about death. Then, I stopped. But now, what has happened over the past few weeks has really made me think once again about what it means to die.

Not so much in a “what is out there” sense (because I think I have accepted that I will not figure it out until it is too late), but more so in a “how does this affect our lives while we are still here” way.

And in seeing how my family has gone through this, one thing is clear.

We need to change the way that as a society, we talk about death.

Stashing it away until it confronts us head on, then not knowing how to react, that simply does not work.

So, what do we do? How do we, as a society, confront the inevitable darkness that is our ultimate demise, without terrifying people in the process? Well that, I do not know.

If I had the answer to this question, I would have been famous by now.

After all, for thousands of years, we have tried (and largely failed) to figure it out. Different cultures and thinkers have put forth different ideas, but thus far, none have been a slam dunk.

What I do know though, is that at the very minimum, we need to be ready to have a conversation about how we are going to have a conversation about death.

And as unpleasant as this topic is, that means beginning to actually talk about death in the public realm.

Not just in a superficial, “oh this celebrity died” way, but at a much deeper level. If we want to find ways to help people cope with their own mortality and the mortality of those around them, we need to be willing to at least acknowledge that this mortality exists.

The gap between our private experiences with death and what we as a society are willing to talk about, that has got to be closed.

After all, death is the one thing that every single one of us will face.

Having to find a better way to cope with it, that should be something we can all agree upon.