Life’s Fragility
When we’re young, we rarely think about dying, but there are times in everyone’s life when the shadow of mortality looms over us. Perhaps we almost ski off a mountain or barely survive a car crash. A friend our age might get sick and die. For a moment, we are shocked into remembering: Oh, yes, our bodies are fragile. Anything could happen.
Soon enough, though, we dismiss that worry, for who can continually walk along that fence? We must jump off, run around on solid ground, raise chickens, repair engines, fight tyranny. There is so much to do, to see, to say, to dream. We haven’t time to let go of this life.
Even so, a day will come when the body in the bed is us, when lightning strikes us down rather than our neighbor. One day, we will be no more.
We Die a Little Every Day
It’s not as if we aren’t dying every day, anyway. Our skin and hair slough off, our cells wither, our telomeres shorten. There’s a certain amount of fixing our bodies do, but eventually, we can no longer be repaired. It’s a gradual process, but every day, we edge that much closer to death.
Not that this is new information. We know it, even if we prefer not to think about it. Some of us, though, dwell on the macabre. I, for instance, have thought about death most of my life. My fascination with this mysterious realm might have started when I was three and my grandmother was felled by a stroke. According to legend, that is when I told my mother I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want to go away as my grandmother had, ending up cold and lifeless, maybe thought-less. There’s so much about dying that didn’t appeal to me.
My mother told me not to worry, that I would live a long time yet, which seems to me to be a risky thing to promise, since none of us know the future, but as it happens, she was right, and I believed her, and my fear of death no longer kept me awake at night.
Tending the Dying
Even so, I never lost my interest in this idea of death. I read about it and wrote about it. In my twenties, I worked as a nurse’s aid, tending to the sick, the aged, and the terminally ill. Now, as a chaplain, I again work with people at the end of their lives. Over and over, I watch death change the faces of the living into something unfathomable and unreachable.
Most of the time, when I’m present for a death, family is at the bedside, so my job is not just to comfort the dying, but also to offer succor to those left behind. One day, I went to see a patient I’d known from many previous visits. I knew he close to death. From chart notes, I realized he was unlikely to open his eyes or speak if I went to see him, but I hoped I might have a moment before he left this world to sit and hold his hand. I was too late.
You Simply Stop
When I entered his room, I felt his stillness. His body had been laid out, his head propped on a pillow. His features seemed relaxed; he’d clearly died in peace. But peaceful or not, he was clearly not living.
When we die, something comes over our body, or something leaves it. Unlike a person whose lungs still move and fill with breath, whose flesh is soft with the final moments of a life, this man seemed stiff. When I touched his shoulder, his head lolled. Looking down on him and stroking his hair, I prayed for his soul because I knew he cared about such things, but nothing more showed on his face, in his eyes. His body was empty. Something changes in us at the end.
Some years ago, religion writer, Kate Bowler, wrote about her cancer diagnosis and treatment. So far, she is still alive, though she doesn’t know for how long, for her cancer isn’t gone. Even if it were, she wouldn’t know how long she had left to live, since none of us do. But we pretend we will be here tomorrow, for how else do we live a life? There are those moments we already talked about, times when we are brought up short with the truth that we will die. A cancer diagnosis is one of them.
So Bowler understood that all of us are terminal. The brain can take things in that the heart can’t, however. Bowler still had a hard time imagining what it meant to cease to be. How does one die? How do we let go and become something other than alive?
Her doctor told her that when you come “to the end of yourself,” you stop. That’s it. You simply stop. [1]
Where Do We Go When We Die?
Every day that we live, we die a little more. The changes are subtle enough that, one at a time, they mean little. Compiled together over years, they finally lead to something. Our heart stops or our organs shut down. In any event, our bodies give up. That’s when something disappears from within this mortal casing. But where does it go?
I don’t pretend to know. We create myths to comfort ourselves for being human and for having to die, and that’s fine. After all, terror isn’t particularly useful when facing something we can’t control, so why fight it? One day we will lose everything we know and love, including ourselves. If it brings us peace, why not believe in something grand that makes our death worthwhile?
So Bowler wondered if there really was an afterlife and what that would be like if there were. When her body decayed, who would she be? As a Christian, she could look to a loving god to catch her soul as it slipped from her earthly form, but all gods are unpredictable, so who knows what the deity has in store for us? That’s where faith comes in. Death will find us. Most of us pray that death is kind.
In the meantime, though, we live. As I age, I feel my body wearing away. I have numerous aches and pains. My balance is not what it was. My eyelashes have all but disappeared, yet there’s plenty of hair on my chin. No matter how hard we try, we cannot stay young forever. But even the life of centenarian is a life.
For Now, Choose Life
We might be powerless to stop time and entropy, but we do get to choose how we respond. We can slip gracefully into elderhood, that prelude to death, or we can fight against gravity and the wearing away of joints and muscles. Fighting might keep us going for a while, but we’ll lose in the end.
As long as we breathe, though, the end is not yet here for us. That means we have purpose, value, things to do, lives to touch. Or we can have such purpose, if we desire it. So many patients tell me, “I’m not ready to die. I have this to do or that.” I’m sure I’ll be saying the same thing when my time comes.
Not that death cares. It can wait as long as it needs to, but it won’t go away. Every day, we die a bit.
That’s the gift, though. All those losses, all little deaths we face, are opportunities to practice letting go. By entering into that practice, by acknowledging our mortality, we might make our dying easier. But whether or not it works that way with death, facing the losses along the way does make our living easier, which is what really matters.
As long as we’re alive, living is what we need to be about. Revel in being human, being born of this earth, with blood pulsing through our veins, our lungs expanding and contracting. Life is magnificent, but it would be less so if we didn’t die a little every day. So let’s celebrate that mysterious end. Perhaps it will help us make this life a little better.
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Credits
- Bowler, Kate, Everything Happens for a Reason and Other Lies I’ve Loved, OverDrive ebook, New York: Random House, 2018, 198.
Photo by Aleksandra Khoroshykh on Unsplash
Copyright © 2022 Barbara E. Stevens. All Rights Reserved.