Learn To Die While You Live

A Sunny PSA For Your Reflection

Writing has been taking a back seat to some other, more important responsibilities. My mother has developed some new and exciting health issues. Up until three weeks ago, she was an independent, active octogenarian who lived alone and drove herself everywhere she needed to go. Now, we’re looking for assisted living options. I know some of you have already had to face this transition with your loved ones and you are keenly aware that it’s neither fun nor easy.

My father died about ten years ago after a protracted bout with cancer. Mom was his caregiver, and she did an exceptional job for someone with no healthcare background whatsoever. In the course of that illness, she and I had a lot of serious conversations about death and dying. At the time, I was a full-time hospital chaplain and was used to having these conversations. Dad’s ordeal prompted mom to make some decisions about her own eventual demise and those conversations have made this current transition better by miles.

It also helps that my mother is arguably the most faithful human being to ever… faith. Her commitment to her faith has been foundational to everything she has ever done. My brother and I didn’t make it easy on her through our adolescence and young adulthood. But in talking to her about it now, the only reason she didn’t tie us up in a sack and toss us in the river is because she prayed. A lot.

She’s never been a bible thumper and she never used guilt to control us. Guilt was one of dad’s favorite parenting techniques, but mom took us to church, prayed for us, and whipped our asses when we needed it. As we face intractable health issues and lifestyle transitions, those many uncomfortable death conversations, in concert with her deep and mature faith contributed to a much easier transition than many other people.

This is my PSA for the few dozens of you reading here: Get comfortable with death. Learn to talk about it. Learn to face your own. It’s coming. There are good deaths and bad deaths. I have seen a lot of both. If you want a good death, prepare for it now.

“Hey Erik, what in the hell is a ‘good death?”

Well, it goes like this: Everyone pretty much dies the same way. It’s a solitary journey. You can have a room full of loved ones present, but you’ll pierce the veil all on your own. A good death, then, has more to do with how everyone else handles your passing.

Don’t take this to mean that death is ever easy. Cultures across the world have long held death (and aging) to be a bitterness we all taste. In our Western context, European folk traditions weigh heavily on our attitudes toward death. Poems from the Norse Edda deal a lot with death. In the Norse mythologies, even the gods age and die. Nothing is free from the great equalizer that is death. A poem from the Elder Edda (tr. by Patricia Terry) goes like this:

Cattle die, kinsmen die,

One day you die yourself.

I know the one thing that never dies –

The dead man’s reputation.

A good death, then, doesn’t happen by accident. It is something we prepare for throughout our lives. A good death begins with good Character. We prepare for death when we begin to meditate on what it is that outlives us. Some people believe that building an empire will be their eternal legacy. But empires fall and decay and the people who build them are forgotten.

The Ancient Near Eastern Wisdom tradition that encompasses Egyptian Wisdom and Israelite Wisdom are unequivocal in their insistence that a good reputation is a better legacy than great wealth. The Stoics love this idea of good character being the mark of a person’s virtue. The works of Marcus Aurelius and St. Paul embody this Stoic ideal and have helped to entrench it in our modern culture. Preparing for a good death, then, consists of building and curating good character and acting justly as you move through the world.

Dylan Thomas begs us to “rage against the dying of the light,” but even rage is hard to come by as we age. We lose the will to fight the inevitable. So, we fight for the things we can control. We struggle for peace in our families and communities. We value things that endure.

In this regard, my mother has been preparing for death her entire life and as we travel through her physical decline together, we tell (and re-tell) the stories that make us laugh and we talk about the people only she remembers and their legacies. She will become part of that legacy, a legacy that forged me, as she nears the end of her life.

Your own death may be an uncomfortable thing to think about but ignoring it does not make it any less imminent. Might as well give your legacy some attention. Be kind, be just, and be humble. That will almost ensure a good death.