3 years ago today my mom died. She was 70. She had 2 types of cancer. I was 34. It was 2022, the tail end of the pandemic kept us isolated. The devastation of her death still haunts me. She was so sick, yet I was wildly unprepared for the reality. Nothing in me could accept the truth that she would die. She couldn’t accept it either. My mom was a college professor and her semester had just begun. Two days before she died she sat in her hospital bed begging us to bring her a laptop so she could email her chair to let him know that she would have to miss class…this week. She wanted to tell him that she was sick with a bug. Terrified to type anything else into existence. Something in me knew how ludicrous her plan was, even if I couldn’t quite acknowledge the truth myself. She lay immobile in a hospital bed, unable to sit up, eat, or toilet. Exchanges with her doctor revealed a sadness that could only mean she would leave us very soon. I begged her to give me the email address so that I could take care of it. It took a few hours of convincing before she gave in. This was my mom clinging to her life. She was not ready to relinquish control nor ready to stop surviving.
Death as a subject is shrouded in hushed voices, saddened eyes, and constricted breath. It is something we as humans tend to shut out of our minds. Death comes in many forms. The tragic and untimely which leave the bereaved in agony and shock. But for most, death happens with slightly more predictability as the body ages and sickness takes hold. While an inevitable part of life, it is still avoided like a shameful secret. Superstitious energy surrounds it, as though speaking about death somehow conjures it into existence. As a human who has witnessed death and as a human who will eventually face death, the truth is I barely, if ever, REALLY think about the arc of my life as one that includes death. There is the abstract notion that one day I will no longer be here, but there is no practical consideration for my life’s complete experience as one that ends with me dying.
I’ve been reading a book. It is called Staring At The Sun: Overcoming the Dread of Death by Dr. Irvin Yalom, a foremost thinker, author, and psychiatrist in the realm of existential psychology. This is the branch of psychology that considers our existence and thus our eventual non-existence. It infuses the reality of death deep into psychological treatment, understanding that when you strip away our defenses, the underpinning for all anxiety is that we are terrified to die. The book reads beautifully (as all of his books do) but it talks about death so honestly and so obviously that it has really left me wondering. What if our life were described to us with openness and awe, as the rising and setting of a sun? That we pop into existence from a dark void. We live, we shine, we nurture, we warm others, maybe even burn others, and then a time comes to vanish back into that same void. What if, without fear or avoidance, death could be folded into the human psyche as a normal and healthy part of a life? The only way to actually complete it. This reality is wholly omitted from our life map (i.e., kid, school, teenager, college, job, marriage, kids, house, retirement, etc.) It is tucked away in a dark corner to “be dealt with” when the time comes. We avoid death because death makes us DEEPLY uncomfortable.
You see, everything inside of us is wired to survive. As a species we have adapted to survive our lives for as long as we possibly can. This data point might suggest that humans REALLY enjoy living (I mean, I only intentionally prolong the things I love doing, right?!) However, when I look around it’s not the case. People are not waltzing through their existence with carefree nonchalance begging the DJ to play one more song. Most people are coping, surviving as best they can. Our survival energy is STRONG. It has blown out enjoyment energy on the leaderboard of priorities. To be fair this isn’t a conscious decision. Blame it on evolution. We are wired to survive at all costs. It is how a species propagates, and BOY have the humans prop-a-gated (8.2 billion and counting…) This wiring has allowed us to have long expansive lives, but it also has made way for this teeny tiny companion we’ve dubbed anxiety to accompany us through our time here. The emotional havoc-wreaker that causes us panic, worry, stress, dread, fear, and sickness just so we can survive our lives a little longer, while simultaneously shattering our immune systems and leading us further from health. Picture this… a video game where we struggle to outrun the clock on our own ETA to heaven, unaware of our surroundings or the potential for momentary bliss so long as we outrun that clock. That’s kind of what survival energy has us doing out here!
But my friends…in this dance for survival we have lost the thread. We’ve forgotten there is more to life than simply surviving it. Presence, enjoyment, depth of experience. Death will appear on our timelines whether we like it or not. Orienting to this reality is not morose or depressed, it is truth and as far as I know truth is liberating (albeit sometimes terrifying.) Yes, our wiring commands us to survive but can’t we get a little more creative? Just surviving is passé! Can’t we look under the hood and figure out what it would look like to have a completely different type of experience? While we’re here…while we’re still in the game – what do we have to lose? Doesn’t the finality of death put things into ultimate perspective? In our finite time how do we paint the most beautiful, fulfilling, purposeful, connected, inspiring canvas one has ever seen? Wouldn’t envisioning the full arc of our lives to incorporate our death be an immensely useful tool in doing so? The ending, while sad and hard and painful, creates a container that make the drops of life we have to live that much sweeter.
I wonder what it would’ve been like if death were talked about in my family in this way. “Dying is natural. It is ok. We all must do it and when our time comes, we’ll figure out how to face it. Dying does not mean you are a failure or have given up. It is just a thing that happens when our bodies stop working. Your wiring may convince you that it’s your job to keep surviving, but there will come a time when your job will be the opposite – to accept your ending with the same integrity and openness as the life you’ve lived. Let’s talk about dying as much as we need to. Let’s talk about living as much as we can. It is all part of life.” Would my mom have faced her death with more acceptance, more readiness? Instead of clinging to anxious terror and stubborn insistence to prolong her life, even as her body was so clearly shutting down, would this knowing of death have allowed her to see the significance of the moment she was in? Would she have been able to let go and witness the beauty of the life she lived in her grand finale? And if I had been taught this very thing as well? Perhaps, we could have snuggled up and watched the sunset together, saying a proper goodbye before she vanished.
(R.I.P. mom. I love and miss you always ❤️)
