Before We Say Goodbye: Preparing for a Good Death. Ray Simpson
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The artist Rex Whistler, who was killed in World War II, wrote this:
I suppose it is really the exquisite taste and economy of the Genius who draws our lives which makes life so infinitely lovely and moving, stirring and glorious. It is as though we presumed to stand by the side of a great painter imploring him not to use the dark tones and shadows, but only to put light and more light. How can we know what the great mind has conceived the finished work to be? 5
The Jewish Talmud also sees a link between embracing death and discovering blessed fire:
When Adam saw for the first time the sun go down and an ever deepening gloom enfold creation, his mind was filled with terror. God then took pity on him, and endowed him with the divine intuition to take two stones – the name of one was ‘Darkness’ and the name of the other ‘Shadow of Death’ – and rub them against each other, and so discover fire. Thereupon Adam exclaimed with grateful joy: ‘Blessed be the Creator of light!’
Fire burns surface material and rubbish, but it purifies really precious things such as gold. If, before I die, I dispense with the flotsam, and let gold develop within me, I need not fear.
The primal fear of extinction haunts us. Yet, as Franklin D. Roosevelt said, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’
A man comes to learn from a Japanese swordsmaster, who tells him, ‘You already seem to be a master.’
‘The only thing I have mastered is the fear of death,’ the man replies.
‘Then you are already a master,’ the swordsmaster says.
The Japanese arts recognize that you have to meet the fear of death in order to do anything – landscape painting, flower arranging, and so on. If you take the fear of humiliation, or of exposing yourself, and you ask what is frightening about that and try to trace it, you realize that you have a whole series of linkages in your mind which ultimately go back to the fear of death. That is actually the stuff that is controlling you, and if you were not connected up to all that, you would not be afraid to do anything.
The fear of death takes many different disguises. That is why I say it has to be faced over and over again by every society and by every individual.6
The faces of death leer at us through life. The face of fear may lurk in the background, and then suddenly loom large. It is likely to do this when we face the unknown, danger, pain, loss of security or mobility, and ultimately extinction. Such fear mars our lives. D.H. Lawrence wrote, ‘The English … are paralysed by fear … That is what thwarts and distorts the Anglo-Saxon existence … Shakespeare is morbid with fear, fear of consequences.’
This condition is not limited to the English, of course. What is the answer? If we name the fear and bring it out into the light of day, it recedes. So name the fear, then drag it into the centre of an imaginary circle of love. ‘Perfect love casts out fear,’ writes Saint John. Watch it diminish. Only by journeying to the places of greatest fear will we discover the source of strength that is stronger even than death.
Another face of death is loneliness. This is not the same as solitude, which contains no loss of wellbeing. Some cope by clinging to a person, place or project, but all these will come to an end. Where will we be then?
Others disguise this inner loneliness by whizzing around, getting hooked on virtual reality, or by being glued to chat sites on the web. All these will come to an end. Where will we be then?
Only by journeying into the place of greatest loneliness will we rise above a life of subterfuges. Bring your loneliness into that same circle of love.
A third face of death is anger due to loss of ego control. Abusive, pushy or defensive behaviour is a sign of this. Racism is another sign. Some cope by forming addictive habits, or by making success their god. But these things have feet of clay. When these crumble, where will we be?
Only by journeying into the place of loss of control can we find lasting freedom.
There are other faces of death, such as despair and pretence. These, too, if they are to lose their hold over us, have to be named, owned and brought into the circle of love.
SEE ETERNITY IN A GRAIN OF SAND
One way to befriend death when we are young is to see in the things that are visible intimations of things that are invisible. We need to take time out to do this.
To the north the mountain ranges stood like kings upon their thrones. The sky was an arch of pearl. A cloud city, with towers and battlements complete, went floating by. The mystery of the Infinite was about us. Then the old stalker spoke. ‘Is it not fine,’ he mused, ‘to be abroad on a day like this? For, look you, the high places win the heart to peace, and here a man gazes on the mirror of his own eternity.’ ALISTAIR MACLEAN, Hebridean Altars7
To see a world in a grain of sand,
And heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.
WILLIAM BLAKE, Auguries of Innocence
This approach has been made famous by William Wordsworth’s ode ‘Intimations of Immortality’, which ends with these words:
To me the meanest flower that blows can give
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
These intimations often came to Wordsworth as he ‘wandered lonely as a cloud’ among ‘a host of golden daffodils’. They led him to conclude, in the words of his ode:
Our noisy years seem moments in the being
Of the eternal silence.
RAINBOWS
Our hearts do indeed leap up when we behold a rainbow in the sky, yet it disappears as suddenly as it appears. The rainbow seems to say to us, ‘This life is ephemeral, but there is something that lies beyond it.’
HARBOURS AND HORIZONS
Little fishing boats securely tucked up in the safety of a harbour after the ups and downs of their days at sea speak to us of homecoming, and of the final harbour of this life. When we are young it is good to enter wholeheartedly into both the choppy seas and the homecomings of life.
Human beings are touched by the mystery of horizons. As a boat disappears from our own horizon, it may appear on the horizon of people on the other side of the sea. Is it like that with our dying?
BIRDS AND WINDS
Birds and winds come and go, and often we do not know where they come from or where they are going. It is amazing that birds can travel over 3,000 miles from a place, and return to that exact place three years later without map or compass.
The sensation of flying often comes into our dreams. Like the birds, there seems some mysterious instinct in us which calls us to transcend our present limitations. Is this an intimation of immortality?