Death

I think a lot about death. And I think a fair amount about my own impending death. When I say I think about death and my own impending death a lot, I mean I think about both almost every day, sometimes several times a day. It’s not that I plan on thinking about death as much as I do. I don’t, for example, schedule time for it. I simply find that both the rather emotionally distant and philosophized thoughts about death and also the very deeply personal and non-philosophized thoughts about death just seem to find their way into my consciousness with frequent regularity. This does not feel unusual, macabre, strange, depressing, morose, nor unhealthy to me. It feels very normal to me given how I define normal. I am comforted by the fact that I am so in fact comfortable with death. And I am especially comforted by the fact that I am comfortable with thoughts of my own ever increasingly approaching proof of inescapable mortality.

I don’t believe I am obsessed with death. I do believe I think about death more than most people do although I do not know this for certain. If that is indeed true, I believe it is more a case where other people are in denial and I simply am not. All of us are going to die. So it is one of the very basic aspects of the Samsaric circle or wheel of life. On one level it just makes sense to me that I think about something pretty regularly that is such a normal and inescapable aspect of life. I am neither afraid of death, nor of dying, nor am I fascinated with either.

There however, was a time when I was afraid of death. I can’t remember exactly when that ceased to be true. It seems so long ago now. Perhaps it was while I was working for hospice. That would make sense even if that is not the time when my fear of death itself died. I know for certain that after working at hospice for a short time, I no longer was afraid of death whatsoever.

I worked as a grief and bereavement coordinator for hospice. Death greeted me my very first day at work and it stayed with me until the very second I walked out of the building for the last time.

I remember that very first day as a hospice employee. I could scarcely forget it. As soon as I walked in the door I was turned right back around and instantly whisked right back out that same door by Jenny, who was the other bereavement coordinator and who had been assigned to train me. I also remember her words: “We’ve got to go the hospital. One of our AIDS patients is actively dying. Grief and bereavement people don’t usually go to patient deaths. But we’re going to this one because there may be complications. This is a family man. He had hidden his sexuality from all of them until he became very ill. So they found out that their father and husband was gay, had been living a secret life for decades, and also had advanced AIDS, all on the same day. So this might be a difficult case. The whole family is at the hospital.”

We arrived about twenty minutes before this man died. His wife and two children were around the bed. They had worked everything out in extremely quick fashion, as I would learn is typically the case when there were all kinds of unresolved issues present. People intuitively understand that when the angel of death is in the room, there is absolutely no time for bullshit nor unnecessary drama. One either deals with and begins to heal sometimes many decades of hurt, misery, pain, feelings of betrayal, anger, and murderous rage in very short increasingly fleeting and disappearing chunks of time or the bus is simply missed—forever. Boom! Bye Bye. Missed opportunity.

When I worked at hospice I witnessed people come together in unrestrained, unconstrained, and sincere mutual tenderness. People who had not spoken to one other, in some cases, in more than fifty years or more sometimes did this as well. One does not witness reunions like this on a regular basis without being significantly transformed in some very serious ways even if that transformation is extremely subtle. Once, while working at hospice, I visited a good friend and her newborn baby, attended the funeral of a very well-loved hospice patient, and attended another good friend’s wedding, all in the same day. There is one day I experienced and participated in three of the main spokes on the wheel of life. I drank all the similar and very dissimilar emotions from the three cups--three different wines, three different vineyards. I am at a loss to describe that experience in words nor how it impacted me emotionally. Suffice it to say that the impact was palpable and remains so even to this day, almost twenty years later.

There are many reasons why I think so much about death. Naturally one obvious reason is that I am getting older. I didn’t think about death much when I was younger, even while I was working at hospice. Most young people tend to think we are going to live forever.
 

I have also had what feels like an unusually high number of close friends and acquaintances die in the last couple of years. And so perhaps because of this, I had been thinking about one of my good friends from high school. David and I were pretty close—close using the high school definition of that word, of course. He had been a year behind me. I completely lost touch with him after I graduated a year earlier and had gone directly onto the seminary. So last week I decided to look him up on the internet. I still somehow remembered a number of details about him and his family. I didn’t have any thoughts of contacting him after all these years. I simply wanted to find out what he had done in life. He was exceptionally bright, fun loving, and had a great, quick, and acid-tongued sense of humor. I imagined him doing quite well and was excited at the prospect of discovering that he was doing something quite fabulous these days. It probably took me less than five minutes to find him—well, his obituary notice that is. He had died five years earlier in 2010. He was 48 years old when he left this world. If there was any doubt (which there wasn’t) that this was the correct David I was searching for, there was a picture attached to the notice that completely erased any potential doubt. I have no idea when the photo had been taken. However, in the photo he looked exactly like he had looked in high school. It was uncanny in fact.

The internet in an unbelievable tool. It was sort of weird how much information I was able to find out about David almost six years after his death. I was able to discover where David had gone to college and what his major had been. I was able to discover that he had also earned an MBA. I discovered he had worked for the same company for over twenty five years—from graduate school graduation to shortly before his death. He had owned a house valued at several hundred thousand dollars and had left a sizable estate. I clicked on one link and there before my eyes was a copy of a letter his sister had written to the attorney who had settled his estate. That letter included personal family details it didn’t seem right that I was able to read about so easily. I was able to locate the church community he had belonged to. I was able to discover through the church’s website that he had been extremely active in that church and had contributed quite a bit—financially and in many other ways. Though the internet I was able to piece together almost every major aspect of his 48 year long life. I was not however, able to discover precisely how he had died. The obituary notice had simply said he had died “after a long illness.” I could find out no other information about this. I thought about this and thought it was extremely odd that I could find out how much money David was earning at the time of his death and how much his house had been appraised at but I couldn’t find out exactly what had caused his death. Somehow this seemed to be a clear indication of how we in The West approach death or I should say, distance ourselves from it.

I have also experienced a lot of non-death related losses in the last couple of years as well. I allow myself to ponder and deeply explore, often with great intensity, many things I believe many people don’t allow themselves to think about. I am very aware and attuned to the death that is constantly all around me. I am aware, since it is winter here in the Pacific Northwest, of fallen dead leaves from the non-evergreen trees. I’m aware of other vegetation that has also died. I’m aware of communities of insects that are dead or have otherwise vanished during this time of year. I live one and a half blocks from a large, old, Catholic Church. And like perhaps many old, Catholic churches these days, the parish has a very rapidly aging population. I know, I’ve gone to services there a few times. So when I walk around the neighborhood, as I often do, there is fairly often a hearse parked out in front of the church, indicating that a funeral mass is in process or is about to be.

As a spiritual seeker I am also very aware of all the little deaths I experience every single day. I am conscious of the various "deaths by a thousand cuts" I experience by having to coexist in this life with many people for whom my personal welfare is of no or little concern. I am also aware of the deaths that occur when I am occasionally able to rid myself of a particular attachment and how that is experienced as both death an ascension.

But back to the body and its physical death.

I’ve given some thought to how I want my body treated after I die. Of all the religions and cultures I’ve read somewhat about (and there are many I haven’t read much about), the way the Jewish people traditionally approach death, mourning, and the physical body of the deceased, is very attractive to me and feels appropriately sacred. I like how the body is lovingly washed and I like the idea of the opportunity to “sit shiva.” I also like a few of the attendant customs around sitting shiva. Much of this feels so, well...holy to me, and appropriately honoring of the process of death as well as the process of grieving. I appreciate the custom of visiting the mourners; the custom known as known as Nichum Aveilim in the Jewish tradition. I also like how things happen very quickly in Jewish tradition.

If it were possible, my clear preference for what to do with my corpse after some ritual bathing and prayers of and around my body would be to have a traditional sky burial in the charnal grounds as observed in various regions of China, Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, and other areas. This practice is also observed in some expressions of Vajrayana schools of Buddhism. For those unfamiliar with this practice I’ll give a brief description here. In sky burial the corpse is placed preferably on a mountaintop where it is to decompose. It is placed there to be exposed to the elements and to be eaten by scavenging animals, specifically, carrion birds such as vultures. This is the way to go!

My second choice would be cremation the way it is done in the cremation ghats of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges River in India although it wouldn’t have to be on the banks of the Ganges though that would be wonderful. Here the body is placed on a pyre and set ablaze until the body is completely or nearly completely reduced to ashes. I should say that I do not have an overly romanticized impression of either sky burial nor the Ganges based funeral ghats. I am aware of the collision that has occurred with each of these methods of bodily disposal between tradition and this modern world. For instance, I am aware of the great amounts of wood that is required and used in India to fuel those pyres and all the economic and environmental concerns and problems that come as a result. My guess is that if I am lucky I’ll simply get the standard cremation that takes place here in America. But I can dream, right? Good Lord. That’s a little bit of a strange image even for me—dreaming about how I want my body disposed after I die. Maybe I just simply need to get out more.