Interesting to read this short piece by Jenny McCartney about the way we try to hide from the reality of death in our Western culture. She doesn’t give any real spiritual perspective, and she doesn’t speculate about how this lack of a spiritual perspective might be the very cause of the problem she highlights – but her comments about how death has almost become taboo are worth reflecting on.
It is the fashion, in modern times, to emphasise the need for tastefulness in talking of death, of a certain concealing decorum. We used to be like this about sex, but that’s gone now: the media is saturated with sexual imagery and advice, and everywhere you turn, public figures are kissing each other lasciviously on the lips – particularly if they are glamorous women – and telling you more about their bedroom antics than anyone ever asked to know.
The taboo has simply shifted, however. As the door to the bedroom has been thrown open, access to the deathbed has been barred. No one seems to linger long there, conversationally or otherwise: too often, a death is treated like an embarrassing fact, a regrettable failure of life that is best hushed up.
We are built to cling to life, unless that instinct is withered in us through long suffering, extreme altruism or despair, and so when we read about the deaths of other people, we are moved partly because we start imagining our own: the pain of leaving the people we love, and their confusion at our departure. Or we think of the helplessness of watching someone we love slipping beyond our reach. The notion of death is so mysterious and enormous that, in many cases, it seems easier just to lock it away, although it has a way of escaping and sneaking up on our peripheral vision.
The rapid expansion of the “anti-ageing” industry in the West peddles an airbrushed vision of a world in which ageing or mortality can be almost indefinitely deferred by the dutiful ingestion of supplements and restless application of pseudo-scientific skin treatments. What it can’t offer, of course, is any guaranteed change to the final outcome.
Still, the option of pretending to ignore death (for a period of our lives, at least) has not been available to the bulk of humanity throughout history. In the 15th century, when the Ars moriendi, or “Art of Dying”, was written, the book desperately sought to popularise the concept of a “good death”, partly because – in the aftermath of the Black Death – an early demise was so frequent and lurid that some kind of etiquette guide was required. Both real-life accounts and novels were later preoccupied with the deathbed scene, which was, in many ways, the dramatic high point of a person’s life. It was their moment in which to forgive, regret, recant or curse, the final deal, the instant at which they revealed their essential self, and onlookers were unashamedly interested in it.
I can never think of the deaths of those I knew and loved, even those who were very old, without some small recurrent aftershock, some fresh sense of the overwhelming strangeness of their disappearance. The ritual of mourning and the ceremony of the funeral or memorial provides shapes for grief to stumble into, yet even those are designed primarily to comfort the living. What our society presently lacks – save for a few enlightened homes and hospices – is much structured means of comforting the dying, who are too often abandoned in hospital wards surprised by fear and pain.
There was a BBC4 programme on Sunday about being a registrar in Belfast Town Hall. At first I was concerned about the way death was dealt with but then I realised how sensitive the staff were and one man spoke touchingly of his wife having a good death. We saw a widow say farewell to her husband lying in an open coffin in the front room of the house. Was this intrusive? In a way it was but on the other hand the family must have agreed and death became part of life. Cemetery Sunday was also touching in its simplicity with the priests blessing graves. One thing I always want to do at a funeral is to actually DO something – even sprinkling holy water or dropping soil onto the coffin mean I have tried to express my feelings. The Church has a rich liturgy for funerals but many priests do not use it – why? I have played the organ for some funerals and I do try to comfort and give hope as well – “I know that my redeemer liveth” some sold Bach, the end of Gerontius, Faure’s Pie Jesu and In paradisum. At a recent funeral I could use manuals only and so I played Handel and the Trumpet voluntary. One dear friend asked for Ode to Joy at the end bless him!
That was a very good article and it touched me where I live. I just spent a year being treated for breast cancer that was far enough evolved to be scary and to require intensive treatment (surgery, chemo, radiation and now drugs). Today I am in remission but there is a good chance that I will die in the next 5 years. I don’t want to die but the reality is that it may happen. I think about and pray over it a lot. What I don’t necessarily have are people to talk to about it. As the article say there is a certain taboo to openly discussing dying. Instead there is encouragement – “you’ll be fine” and “just keep a positive mental attitude” and “wear pink to show you are a survivor.” I do appreciate the pep talks and I try to do just that. However, I’m not sure that those cancer cells are listening and, quite frankly, pink really isn’t my color.
What does help is reading about it and I personally prefer those authors who talk about the spiritual dimension. I would recommend this very well known essay by the poet, Christian Wiman called My Bright Abyss
http://theamericanscholar.org/my-bright-abyss/#.UZ3aBbuXSW4
He has a book out as well: http://www.amazon.co.uk/My-Bright-Abyss-Meditation-Believer/dp/0374216789
I hope the cancer stays in remission and if it doesn’t then I hope you find one or two people to walk alongside you who know just what to say and what to do. In the meantime do keep blogging!
Thank you, Tonia. The blogging kept me sane during chemo. No matter how sick I was or will be I can always pray and write. :-)
I like the idea of Victorian mourning jewellery. Black broaches and similar that people used to wear when they were grieving. I don’t know what the custom was, but the idea of wearing something that reminds people you’re a bit vulnerable seems like a good idea to me.
‘No one seems to linger long there, conversationally or otherwise:’.
We are not as a culture very good at sharing fullstop. Talking about many things, including illness, pain, hurting, and Love in personal conversations are often taboo. . . not just death, but especially death is often addressed politely and moderately, in the shallows. There is so much standing back, reading between the lines, not understanding anothers perspective, skirting around the circumference of everything, avoiding the point, observing and not participating or gently raising the uncomfortable, putting on a brave face instead of letting the tears fall, closing suppressing and blocking instead of being open, and honest. Not sharing. Dodging awkwardnesses instead of allowing ourselves to be uncomfortable and meet grace, else to be a vehicle to receive someone else’s grace or pain. Just to share in-person, even in silence when words fail, just by sharing together is a grace.
In our home, which is possibly more open than most, death is shared and openly discussed, and so is life beyond death, even with little children who bring much simplicity and frankness to the discussion. Grief for anyone (especially for the first time) will still blow somebody into oblivion regardless of the sharing, because of the cultural way we present death as loss and because we are human, despite our faith. To be able to share is key. To keep turning towards the Love is key. Living and sharing our Love whilst we are alive diffuses death of its power.
The priest bent over Lord Marchmain and blessed him. Julia and Cara knelt at the foot of the bed. The doctor, the nurse and I stood behind them.
“Now,” said the priest, “I know you are sorry for all the sins of your life, aren’t you? Make a sign, if you can. You’re sorry, aren’t you?” But there was no sign. “Try and remember your sins; tell God you are sorry. I am going to give you absolution. While I am giving it, tell God you are sorry you have offended Him.” He began to speak in Latin. I recognized the words Ego te absolvo in nomine Patris . . . and saw the priest make the sign of the cross. Then I knelt, too, and prayed: “O God, if there is a God, forgive him his sins, if there is such a thing as sin,” and the man on the bed opened his eyes and gave a sigh, the sort of sigh I had imagined people made at the moment of death, but his eyes moved so that we knew there was still life in him.
I suddenly felt the longing for a sign, if only of courtesy, if only for the sake of the woman I loved, who knelt in front of me, praying, I knew, for a sign. It seemed so small a thing that was asked, the bare acknowledgment of a present, a nod in the crowd. All over the world people were on their knees before innumerable crosses, and here the drama was being played again by two men—by one man, rather, and he nearer death than life; the universal drama in which there is only one actor.
The priest took the little silver box from his pocket and spoke again in Latin, touching the dying man with an oily wad; he finished what he had to do, put away the box and gave the final blessing. Suddenly Lord Marchmain moved his hand to his forehead; I thought he had felt the touch of the chrism and was wiping it away. “O God,” I prayed, “don’t let him do that.” But there was no need for fear; the hand moved slowly down his breast, then to his shoulder, and Lord Marchmain made the sign of the cross. Then I knew that the sign I had asked for was not a little thing, not a passing nod of recognition, and a phrase came back to me from my childhood of the veil of the temple being rent from top to bottom.
I’ve no idea if this long link will work, but this is a beautiful story worth sharing of a Graced young 17 year old man who died so beautifully well a few days ago, and left Love as his legacy. The video is 25 minutes of your time well spent.
http://www.upworthy.com/this-kid-just-died-what-he-left-behind-is-wondtacular-rip?g=2
St Francis of Assisi called Death “Sister Death”
Rumi, the founder of the Whirling Dervishes called Death “The Wedding Night”
Jesus: bless us and save us.
Bless us and save us, thank you
We live . We die. That’s it. Get over it.
We are born – we die – we are resurrected – Death – Get over it.
:O)