Danse Macabre. N. Thomas Johnson-Medland
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stalks us at every turn.
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It may actually be Death Himself that stalks us at every turn.
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Whether it is the idea of death or Death Himself, it does not matter. We are stalked throughout our whole lives by the notion, the idea, the feeling, the reality and the imminent haunting dream that we are going to “not be alive” someday. Someday, what we are now will either not be at all or will somehow be different—very different. Someday we will die.
We are stalked by this at every turn. We are all stalked by this and yet we fail to talk about being stalked. We live in a silent fear and collusion when it comes to death: “I won’t talk about it if you don’t.”
It is time that we talk about death and the fact that we will all die.
* * *
I have been swimming through words my whole life. They have been under me, over me, and even within me. Everything—even until now—has been a ripple on the surface of their water; a disturbance in their force; a means of waking me up. Everything has led up to this “now”. All of the words, emotions, experiences, and processes that I have seen and handled and lived among coalesce to make me who I am. All that stuff is still in me. Some of those words are about death.
I believe words are a gift for us to use to add meaning to the things we have experienced. Words are a gift to help us unite with other people; unite behind words that can reveal that we are very much the same with some slight variations that make us different. Words are bridges to the separateness among us that makes us one.
* * *
A new universe explodes into consciousness every moment in cosmic time. Pieces of God wake up to remembrance, every time an eye opens to the morning. The whole of creation swims in words and is awakened to itself with every fluttering breath. Each time someone is aware, God has a breath.
In this scenario death is but the closing of an eye. Life is but the opening of consciousness to what it means to be awake—awake and with words. “Now” is life and being awake. This moment has death just beside it, just next to it. But, this moment is itself life.
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Words can help us paint simple and exotic images about the encounters we have and the meaning of these encounters. Words can help us encounter death and uncover the meaning it has in life. We would need to sound those words, first. Then, we would need to share them. This would require we lay down the silent fear and collusion we have surrounding words about death.
Being with over 1500 hospice patients and their families during the approach of death, I have seen again and again how bringing words up and out of the darkness of our interior lives and into the light of day, helps to make us whole and integrated. We are healthier when we are able to allow these things to come up and out of us, and not repress them inside forever.
* * *
Somehow we have lost our words about dying. We have stopped having meaningful discussion and elaborate myths about what goes on and how things unwind. Death has become the great silence. It is a place and a journey we refuse to utter.
* * *
I started out wanting to just tell you stories about death from hospice patients and their families. Then I realized that death was tied to every assumption and hope that we have as human beings and that we would end up having to discuss the dozens of layers of meaning in our lives because death was attached to all of them—death is attached to everything. Death and the idea of death drives everything we do or think or say or that we fail to do or think or say. I guess that may be why we go mute about the subject.
Death is attached to everything.
* * *
Bear with me, the conversation will become muddled. We not only want to avoid the topic, but when we do talk about it, the air gets thick with confusion.
Perhaps it is because death uncovers the great fear in all of us. Perhaps it is because we are unprepared for how death will approach us. Perhaps it is because we are not sure if our stories of death are right or wrong; or if their stories about death are more right or more wrong. Whatever the reason, we do not talk about death much—if at all. And yet, death is a way we must all go.
Our neighbors may not hold the same set of words about what death means. We believe our death is a bursting into resurrection. They believe our death is a becoming of dirt. The other ones—over there—believe that our death is just another way to get back in line to come back to life as something else. Rather than just allowing multiple stories about how things may go; it is just better not to talk about it. Or so we believe.
* * *
We have gotten silent about a lot of things because of this diversity. Who wants to discuss their looming fears with people who have such divergent beliefs? Why risk? But we are going to encounter the rich diversity of belief and story more frequently these days as our technology has made us one village, one people almost overnight. We have had no time to figure out how to live in this new reality.
If we get silent in the face of this great fear, we pass nothing on to our progeny or our surviving race about what it is we are feeling. We deny them the ability to know what is normal in human experience. This kind of silence robs mankind of depth. It is not the silence of contemplation and love. It is the silence of fear. Speaking into the fear is often enough to lift the heaviness of its pall. Not just for us, but for all who come after.
The fear is not simply about feeling unprepared to die, or sharing divergent beliefs about death. The fear is also about feeling unprepared to talk about, contemplate, feel anything about death itself; unprepared because we have not allowed ourselves to playfully and routinely regard death (let alone the mystery of living). In light of this global village of information that we have been thrust into overnight, what could I possibly add to the discussion around death—or anything for that matter?
This uncovers another fear, the fear that talking about death will cause death to happen. Just listen to how people soften their voice to a whisper when they say the words: “cancer”, “death”, “terminal”. The very sound of the words makes us shutter. We impose magic on the words. Magic that does not bear out in principle. Magic that is tied to fear.
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The only sure thing that will come to pass in the life of anything born is that it will die. Living things die. That death hides behind the silence of a myriad of fears.
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Swimming along side and just to the rear of these fears is the fear that hides behind them—pushing them out into plain view. It is the fear of living; the fear of truly being alive. The fear of living hides behind the fear of contemplating or communicating death and the fear of hastening death. It will not let us live because it fears making too much noise in the presence of death. As if it would become a target of death itself. Having a “Zorba-like ethos” or “joy of living mentality” somehow taunts death and all of the other dark, negative forces and attributes of life. If you enjoy life too much, it will surely be taken from you.
Without a regard for death, without bringing it up, without truly living we will never be able to be awaken and live in the now. Our fears of death keep us already dead. Numbed, we sit behind a curtain, viewing death and calling it life. How have we become so mixed up? Why do we choose to live with unresolved fears?
* * *
It is time to carve out some words about death. It is time to uncover some of our fears and look at this thing that will affect all of us.
I will place some words I have found and some words I have formed into a space with enough room around them so we can look at them and see them clearly. Perhaps gain visual access to some notions we had never seen before; maybe hear something old in a new way. Maybe be able to dispel a thing or two that does not fit.
We have become a global village very quickly. We can know way too much, way too quickly. With the onslaught of constant information we have lost our ability to process and