“Alexander the Great and his mule driver both died and the same thing happened to both. They were absorbed alike into the life force of the world, or dissolved alike into atoms.” — Marcus Aurelius
We have all heard that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Taxes we can take, like it or not, and every year just as nature is coming alive in the spring we say goodbye to what Caesar is due. We accept it. We understand that we must each pay our pound of flesh. The part that many of us get stuck on, though, is the death part.
What is it about death that causes many of us to feel we can ultimately escape its grip? It’s for everyone else, yes, but not us. And it is mostly for the elderly, right? Those who have had a good long life and are ready for their final rest – death is okay for “them.” But we are enraged and confused when death visits a child, or a young person in their prime, as if it has no place in life until we ourselves are ready to summon it. And most importantly, death is under no circumstance whatsoever, for us.
Each of us carries all of the elements, processes, and instructions for our deaths from the moment we are conceived. Not necessarily the cause of our death, be it illness or accident, but certainly the cellular knowledge of how to loose the grip on breath and heartbeat and brainwaves. Our bodies know how to die, and come equipped with everything needed to let go of life when our time comes.
And our time will come. We will each have a death – our death. We don’t know when or how, or where or why it will occur, but we cannot escape that it will occur. So, what is the benefit of spending time with this – are we just focusing on the negative? Shouldn’t we stay positive and make the most of life?
Here is my point – in case you were wondering when I would get to it – the whole death is the ultimate negative thing is exactly what fuels our avoidance, our fears, and our denial that death will actually find us, in particular, instead of just everyone else. Death isn’t a mistake, a failure, or a punishment. Our own deaths are just as unique as our own births and are a part of us, in fact, from the moment we were born.
When we talk about death, we tend to whisper, as if simply saying the word will evoke the Grim Reaper. We talk about people “losing their battles” with illness as if death were a challenge that we are meant to overcome if we have the right tactics and tools. We talk about how unfair it is for death to separate us from our loved ones, as if that were its gratuitous intent. We fear death as if it were our executioner, here to punish us for our wrongdoings instead of simply a biological mechanism by which we, as everything else in nature, come to an end in the exact form in which we have lived.
Understanding and accepting that our deaths will be as much a part of our lives as our births can free us from the torment of spending time and energy running away from this truth. Facing the inevitability of our deaths enables us to find an openness to the full experience of life. Talking with our loved ones about how we hope to leave this world enables us, and them, to find some peace with that reality and to share the time we have left focusing on what matters most to us.
There is a Latin phrase, memento mori, which essentially translates as “remember you will die.” Remembering this, knowing this, and carrying this with us throughout our lives enables us to stay even more focused on this very moment – the here and now. When we assume the infinity of our time, we lose our appreciation of the finiteness of this very moment, and therefore how special this moment truly is.
There is a book that I highly recommend with that title: Memento Mori, by Joanna Ebenstein, that explores the reality, presence, and meaning of death in multiple cultures, and helps us to look within our own lives and narratives around death as well. It is hard to accept that we will all die, but with or without our acceptance it will happen, and coming to terms with, even making friends with the reality of our deaths can help us to live more fully, meaningfully, and even joyfully.
