For a while now I’ve been wondering if the Western perception of death is a really a healthy one?
My recent experiences.
Recently, my 96 year old Anutie passed away. She had mild dementia and was in a home. She would often state that she wanted to die to be with her baby brother (my dad). Hearing my aunt say these words was distressing for all the family. We didn’t want her to be feeling this way in her end days. We were terrified of the eventuality of her no longer being with us.
During the last few years of her life, my Aunt was so desperate to pass over to the other side she would often cry out to ‘The Lord’ to ‘take her’.
Regardless of what the family wanted, this was what SHE really wanted for herself. So shouldn’t we all have been happy for her when she finally got what she wished for?
She passed peacefully surrounded by loved ones – I would call that a good passing – but it still hurt like hell, even though there was a part of me that was happy for her.
But why the feelings of misery? We all know that death is a certainty – it’s going to happen to all of us eventually. We all know this from a very young age, so again, why the big time misery? It all seems a bit ‘wrong’ to me but I can’t quite put my finger on exactly why this is. It might have something to do with death being the great unknown?
Terror and confusion.
Quite a few years ago I started having these disturbing night terrors. I knew they meant something but couldn’t figure out what. The message wasn’t revealed to me until the last and most terrifying dream episode. Someone close to me was going to die.
Now, as you can imagine, this wasn’t something I felt comfortable sharing with anyone in the family but I was desperate to speak to someone about it so I blurted everything out to a work colleague on my lunch break one day. She was of Caribbean decent so was familiar with the phenomena. Even though she didn’t really know what to say in response, I felt better for getting it off my chest.
About two months after the ‘dream reveal’ to my work colleague, I got a phone call from my dad telling me that he had cancer. My head went into this weird dislocated space – I think it might have been shock – now I knew who I was dreaming about all this time. I wanted to believe that he would get better but around 6 months after this ugly disclosure I soon started having a different set of dreams. According to Jamaican interpretation these dreams indicated imminent death. I tried my best to stay positive and see this as an opportunity to mentally prepare myself for the inevitable instead of getting all panicky and unravelled.
The joke of it is, that after all my mental preparing which I was feeling quite confident about, my dad’s passing still managed to hit me like a ton of bricks. Why?
A bit of history.
Let’s go back in time to 399 BCE when Socrates was sentenced to death by poison for impious conduct. According to Plato, when Socrates finally voluntarily drank the deadly hemlock, the people who were with him in this final stage started weeping and wailing. Apparently, this greatly annoyed Socrates who wanted to die surrounded by good peaceful vibes. He shouted at his followers to be quite and exercise some control. He voiced that he thought their carrying on was selfish and was directed more at their own avoidance of emotional pain and desire to experience only what is ‘good’ rather than living in reality; they were not crying for him, they were crying for their own sense of loss (mind blowing!).
Is this why I don’t feel comfortable with the Western take on death? Because it is underpinned by self-centeredness rather than wisdom and logic?
An attempted conclusion.
In my opinion ‘contentment in solitude’ sums up a big part of living in wisdom. Whether we realise it or not, we are complete as individuals, meaning we all possess the ability to emotionally and mentally support ourselves.
There’s no denying that humans are social animals. I have a vague memory of reading articles in the past showing that social people live longer and healthier. However, I believe a person who has no problem being with their own company to be more resilient to life’s problems and more resourceful and effective in finding solutions.
When someone close to us passes away we feel this crippling grief, why? What is actually happening here?
For a start, we feel a big sense of loss, a gaping hole that was being filled by the passing individual. They will no longer be there for us and we now feel less complete. Is this emotional reaction self-centred?
There could also be feelings of sadness for the pre-death experience of our loved one and sadness for all the things they will be missing out on. Is this a logical reaction when you take into account that no one is immortal and there is no set age to die?
I feel as though I’ve always known this.
For as long as I can remember I’ve had a belief that we all ‘have our time’. Meaning that from the day we are born we all have a predestined day and time of death. This is regardless of whether the passing was at the hands of someone else or an accident. There is no ‘they went before their time’. The time was then.
Is my issue with the western perception of death is that it is based on selfishness and lack of wisdom?
I might be giving this subject more thought in the future. For now, my brain has run dry so I’ll end this here.
If you are affected by anything you’ve read, here are some organisations you could contact for support if you are in the UK: Mind, The Good Grief Trust, GOV.UK, Marie Curie and Much Loved.
I wish you all the very best. x
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