Let’s talk about death
My friend C always tells me she is not scared of death. She does not want to die, and she hopes to live a long and prosperous life, but she is not scared to die. Hearing C say these words makes me inexplicably uncomfortable, but I always half-heartedly tell her “I understand.” Ultimately, neither of us will be able to dodge death, but I am scared and she is not, and I wish I could understand my own fear.
My angst about death again challenged me as the Brittany Maynard story garnered national attention. I was both amazed and perplexed by this woman standing utterly fearless in the face of a tragically early death. Maynard, who ended her life under Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act on Saturday, was only 29 years old when she learned she had terminal brain cancer. Maynard decided to live her final months knocking items off of her “bucket list” and surrounding herself with loved ones. On Saturday, Maynard peacefully ended her own life before the terminal cancer could take away whatever comfort she had left. I imagined Maynard gradually coming to terms with the situation and ultimately being at peace with her end, and I again wished I could understand my own inexplicable fear.
The obvious yet somewhat eluded truth is death is everywhere. It’s one of the very few certainties of life. Other than birth, death is one of the only common experiences every single human shares. Death is not some anxiety-invoking, open-ended question mark; it is a powerful and definitive and bold period conclusively signaling the end of our stories. Someday, somehow, every single one of us will slip into the oblivion of death, as that period punctuates the final notes of our lives. There is nothing I can do, there is nothing anyone can do, yet I am still scared, as if planting some angst in death will somehow help me avoid the supremacy of the circle of life.
I have always felt this irrational sense of angst, which is why I was so surprised to feel an unexpected sense of comfort and peace of mind while following Maynard’s story. As I read about Maynard’s death on Saturday, I was again overcome with this odd sense of peace. Sorting through my thoughts, I realized maybe I am not truly fearful of death after all. Struck by the power of Maynard’s willingness to openly share and discuss her decision to utilize Death with Dignity, I realized perhaps death simply makes me uncomfortable because of the societal frame in which it’s been cast. Death has become just another messy and difficult topic that’s easier to eschew. Maybe Maynard’s story eased my angst because she used her story to invite a more open dialogue about death. Maybe this is exactly what I needed.
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If death is so natural and imminent, why do we as a society skirt around the topic so delicately? Death is natural; thus, thinking about death must also be natural. Yes, I hope to live a long and prosperous life, but yes, I think about death. I wonder how the end will come; I wonder how it will feel. I ask myself if it will be in 2 days or 80 years. I question what my final thoughts will be; I question what will be going on in my mind as I irretrievably slip into the oblivion. I imagine how my family will bid me goodbye. I picture how my body will look with an inactive mind and a still heart and a vacant soul. I picture my soul floating around in some extra dimension, effortlessly and boundlessly drifting along gently oscillating airwaves, and it seems so natural, and suddenly I am no longer scared.
We all think about death, yet we treat it as if discussing it is daring it to loom closer. We tiptoe around death as though the more we talk about it, the more we are tempting the end to come greet us and wrap its arms around us once and for all. We consider the act of verbalizing our blatant thoughts of death to be too morbid, or too discomforting, or too daunting. We use a thousand words and phrases in place of the word “died,” instead relying on safer terminology like “passed,” “moved on,” or “departed.” We talk about sex, another integral component of nature, nonstop, yet we skate around death as though we’re trying to convince ourselves it’s not one of the most basic parts of the circle of life.
Maynard’s story has helped me realize the more I feel as though I can openly and honestly discuss death, the more comfortable I feel with the idea of such a demise. As Maynard proved, perhaps there really isn’t anything to fear about death; perhaps the anxiety is instead rooted in the social norms that seem to discourage the outward, explicit conversations surrounding death. Perhaps my friend C is right, and there is no logical reason to be scared of death. Perhaps the only reason C is not scared of death, and I have feared death, is because she has learned to blatantly and overtly grapple with the topic, while my own thoughts of death have been forcibly suppressed into the back, cobweb-stricken corners of my mind for 21 years.
I again heard these fearless sentiments toward death while I was studying abroad this past spring. One night, as some of my new friends and I relaxed at a local bar for karaoke night, “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen came on. A friend whom I barely knew yet, Joe, randomly commented on the lyrics, again making me toy with the topic of death. As lead singer Freddie Mercury belted out the line “I don’t want to die, sometimes I wish I’d never been born at all,” Joe fluidly changed the direction of our conversation and nonchalantly remarked, “that’s pretty powerful, how he doesn’t want to die but he’s bold enough to admit he’s thought of death. Why fear death?”
As Joe so casually pointed out, it’s powerful to open up the dialogue surrounding death despite society’s perpetuation of the “inappropriate” stigma surrounding the subject. While we may take many lessons from Maynard’s story and the choices she made in her final months of life, let us not forget one of her most important and courageous decisions of all- her choice to open the public conversation surrounding death and break the stigma typically associated with discussing death so openly and honestly.
Last month, I received word my friend Joe tragically died in a car accident. In the days following, I had some of my first completely open and uncensored conversations about death. I know Joe did not fear death, so while I cried for Joe, I did not fear for him. I described to my friends how I picture his soul floating around in some extra dimension, effortlessly and boundlessly drifting along gently oscillating airwaves, and it seems so natural, and suddenly I am no longer scared. I am not scared for Joe, nor am I scared for C, nor am I scared for Brittany Maynard. And suddenly I am no longer scared for me.
