Still life with a Skull -Musée de Tessé
I will admit it. I’m just like the rest of you. I’m afraid of dying.
I have had two very real points in my life where I was close to death and knew it. The first experience happened was when I was 18. My intestine had perforated and I hadn’t known it. After eight months an abscess developed outside the perforation that got so big and so painful I couldn’t stand up anymore. I booked myself into the hospital but on Christmas night the abscess burst and I was immediately thrown into a severe toxic shock – only emergency surgery and the fact I was at the height of my recuperative powers saved me.
The second time I came close to The Big Sleep was about ten years ago when I was overcome by the nasty flu virus I wrote about here.
Add to these experiences the death of loved ones. Over the past ten years I have watched as my grandparents, aunts, uncles and even my parents passed away. With the exception of my grandparents they all seemed to go way too early. Was it fate? Genetics? A generation that lived on a poor diet with too much access to tobacco and alcohol? A little bit of each I imagine if you look at the group as a whole.
After all of these experiences I have thought a lot about death and why so many of us fear it.
I think one of the problems we have in a technological, urban society is the fact that we have removed ourselves so far from nature that we forget that death is a commonplace and expected event.
I, like many of you, grew up comfortably in the suburbs where much of my food came in a plastic wrapped package. My wife on the other hand grew up on a farm where she raised chickens then killed them to eat. They also raised many other animals. Some would inevitably get sick and die, while others would become Sunday dinner.
My own grandfather was a hunter and fisher He and his family ate what he killed. During hunting and fishing season he knew exactly where his meat came from and followed it through its natural course from the bush or the stream to the dinner table.
Many of us suburban folks think we know nature. But even when we take a cursory stroll in the park or go off to the woods to camp we very rarely see the death that happens regularly there. Animals starve, get sick or injured, and are usually quickly eaten, leaving little trace of their violent death behind. Does that previous sentence make you feel uncomfortable? It does for a lot of people. Yet this is the natural world that we are all a part of.
Our grandparents and their grandparents had other reminders of death. Childhood illnesses, for which we now have vaccinations (and which many forget have saved hundreds of thousands of lives) claimed many of their siblings, while world wars devastated their families. There were also fewer hospitals and ill relatives often died at home. Our ancestors may not have liked death any more than we do but they were used to it and accepted it.
I’m not saying that being surrounded by death is a good thing but it does give people much needed perspective in their lives. It gives them the strength to cope with things they can not change. It’s one thing to know you’re not going to live forever. It’s another thing to KNOW you’re not going to live forever.
I have seen many parents refuse to talk to their children about death. If they come across a dead animal it’s “sleeping”, or if a good friend or neighbor dies they have just “gone away”. It often seems as if the parents wish to skirt the issue because it’s an uncomfortable for them to talk about. However, I believe having realistic views about death give us mechanisms to cope with and enjoy life.
The harsh reality of death that I came face to face with when I was 18 gave me a maturity and perspective that many people I know still do not carry. Thankfully though, people don’t always have to learn the hard way to learn.
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