One of the most troubling aspects regarding death is its pure finality. As far as can be detected, there is nothing beyond it. Though many believe in some form of afterlife, there is no evidence regarding what kind of existence that would be. Despite fantastic images of golden streets and halos or on the other end fire and brimstone, all of that imagery can only be acknowledged as symbolic. Death is an absolute limit when it comes to knowledge, and like all such limits, it brings up difficult philosophical questions regarding infinities, nothingness and the nature of existence itself. 

Jorge Luis Borges, the noted Argentine author, often used death as the primary subject of his short stories. He always presented death in a paradoxical form, either in the sense of a mystery story, along the lines of Poe, or in a more metaphysical, philosophical sense. Death, for Borges, as for many other 20th century authors, was the prototypical philosophical problem, but Borges took a unique approach to the subject. Instead of explaining death in terms of existence as a whole, like Heidegger, or explaining the reasons why people fear death like Sartre and Camus, Borges took a more aesthetic approach. He tried to explain through a series of short stories what death meant and what death could do.

Three of Borges’ stories are sufficient to show his method. The first, “The Theologians,” is concerned with two antagonistic medieval theologians, each endeavoring to prove two contemporary heresies to be false. One realizes that the other, in attacking the first heresy, has unwittingly fallen into the second, and denounces him. What he finds though, after his own death, is “for the unfathomable divinity, he and John of Pannonia (the orthodox believer and the heretic, the abhorrer and the abhorred, the accuser and the accused) formed one and the same person.” This unity of opposites strains the imagination: try to imagine something being completely black and completely white at the same time. It is a difficult mental exercise; in real life it is fairly impossible. Indeed, it has been accepted at least since Aristotle that the principle of non-contradiction is true: that a thing cannot have one property and another property at the same time and in the same respect, and clearly, to have that tension in one being is impossible in this world. Borges, though, is implying that the possibilities of life after death are open-ended, including even the most irrational possibilities. Where Thomas Aquinas notes, “There can be nothing irrational predicated of God,” Borges steps in to note that that formulation leaves the option open for everything else in the realm of things we don’t know.

For Borges, though, this is child’s play. To create paradoxes in death is easy, since all options are open. What is better is to create paradoxes around death, specifically around the moment of death. Two other stories of Borges’ are not concerned with what happens after death but in the time and the thoughts surrounding the approach of death. The first, “The Secret Miracle,” regards a Jewish man caught by the Nazis and sentenced to death. Before the Einsatzgruppen can open fire, he finds time and motion suspended, but he realizes that God has listened to his silent prayer in the night: “God had worked a secret miracle for him; German lead would kill him at the set hour, but in his mind a year would go by between the order and its execution.” For one year, as he perceives time, he works (aided by his prodigious memory) on completing a drama that he had been writing. Then, a moment later, as the German soldiers perceived time, he is killed by their bullets. Like Peyton Farquhar at the Owl Creek Bridge, time has been suspended at the moment of death, during which time the mind plays out its course.

The crux of the story is an extension of the idea of “one’s life flashing before one’s eyes;” that upon the moment of death time is compressed to fit the suddenly prodigious working of the mind. This in itself is an interesting experience. Moments when one’s mind seems to work faster than the events going on around it has fascinated fiction writers for many years. The world of Borges’ protagonist, though, is not moving merely in slow motion: all movement has halted completely. 

Imagine, though, that the man had no Magnum Opus on which to work; imagine that he did not have the recollection to work on it in any effective manner. Imagine still, in a very Borgesian manner, that the allotted compression of time was extended beyond a year, that it becomes an infinite amount of time the man has to spend without moving, only thinking. The same thoughts would eventually churn around in a circle as the maximum limit of boredom would be reached. No longer would this be a miracle, it could easily be described as hell.

This is a problem that many people who believe in life after death might consider. If, as many believe, our consciousness survives after death, without a body to get sensory experiences or to communicate, what kind of existence (or heavenly existence, more properly) could one hope for? While answers to this question abound, it might temper any boundless optimism for life after death to consider what that existence might be like. Another story of Borges, indeed, could answer the problems raised by the reductio ad absurdum of the second.

Borges’ third story is somewhat similar to the second. It is also not explicitly about death. Instead, the protagonist of “The Zahir” finds that he cannot get a certain coin out of his mind. From there the situation escalates: “[Soon] they shall have to feed me and dress me… I shall not know who Borges was. To call this terrible is a fallacy, for none of the circumstances will exist for me… I shall no longer perceive the universe, I shall perceive the Zahir.” This story, when considered in terms of death, insists upon the question: How is such an existence different, mentally, from death, if we take, for the sake of argument, death to be the annihilation of the consciousness? This mind has been taken out of time; one moment is no different from another. With no chance for change, is there really a difference between the mind being void and the mind having an eternal, unchanging object? “None of the circumstances will exist for me,” the fictional Borges says, and in a way, wouldn’t this be the culmination of the extended experience of the protagonist of “The Secret Miracle”? The first circumstances to disappear, for him, were the physical events surrounding him, i.e. the moment of his execution. The next might very well be the circumstances of his various states of mind, to the point where he would reach a single, unchanging object of thought. 

In some ways, Borges just seems to be playing games with infinity and paradoxes. While they make for excellent mind-teasers (something to consider, perhaps, the next time you have nothing to do for a year but think) they don’t actually address the problem of death. The deaths of his protagonists are not existential problems but metaphysical conundrums, and they do not address the action of dying. On the other hand, they really cannot––no story can, anymore than a fictional character can perform any real actions. Death is something, no matter how much it is considered, analyzed, theorized about, written about or even feared, that must be done. It is an action which must be performed. As such, it goes beyond mental activity, theorizing and even paradoxical mind games. Come what may, it is something that can only be done, and it can only be experienced on an individual basis. Along with not being able to know what life after death might be like, we cannot even communicate what the moment of death is like; it is something that we each must see for ourselves. To make too much noise about such a moment is to risk looking utterly foolish at the critical moment. Therefore, as regards the moment of death, it might be wise to consider Wittgenstein’s words: “Whereof we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent.” 

I have heard it said that funerals are for the survivors, a path towards closure and a final chance to say good-bye before your earthly remains are interred.

I say those people are wrong. Dead wrong, in fact. Without you, the dearly departed, there would be no funeral. In its very origin and by its very nature, the funeral is all about you. It is the last, most important moment of your presence above the soil, and yet, for some reason, we too often find ourselves content to leave this last event of the utmost importance to the care of funeral directors for whom the dead and their layings to rest have become routine.¹ Quite honestly and literally, you are never going to get another chance like this: a gathering of your friends, family, coworkers, compatriots, sympathizers and well-wishers dedicated to sharing memories of you in such an unabashedly public forum. Not a single detail, the eulogy nor the location of your grave, should be left in the hands of one who is less than completely and totally devoted to making yours one for the record books.

Thus, there really is no other choice. You must become your own funeral planner to assure your eternal place in the memory of the living.

Some may claim that they would rather be remembered for their final moments and life than for their funeral, but this really is a ridiculous claim. Life, and death, are beyond your control, and you really cannot depend on either turning out the way you would like and leaving only the best impression of you behind. You may like to think that you will go out like Chewbacca, bravely throwing the youngest Solo to his father and giving a final roar of defiance to the crashing moon, but there was a planet’s worth of people milling around who had no idea what was about to happen. Simple odds say that you are going to be in the latter group. Besides, even if you do believe it is your fate to go out in as noble and glorious a fashion as the mighty Wookie, it is still best to hedge your bets and make sure the funeral is going to be brilliant. You never know when you might slip and make those final moments a wee more ignoble.

Others might suggest that putting so much thought into your own funeral and death is a morbid obsession. A distinction must be made. You are planning your funeral, not your death. Really, the former is completely distinct from the latter. The only thing the two share is a directly causal relationship. Funeral planning requires no thought towards your inevitable death at all. Besides, the funeral is about cementing the continued memory of you. Are those who take photos during their vacations in order to preserve and share the memories called kill-joys because they are already thinking ahead to when the vacation is over? No. The same respect should be extended towards those who take possession of their own funeral planning.

So get started now. If you find yourself with a spare moment on a bus or in a class where the professor is attempting their third analogical explanation of blacks holes, brainstorm. What is the mood you want set? Appropriately sorrowful acknowledgment of your too short time in this mortal coil? A team of sable horses to draw an ebony hearse, riding along a path of nocturne rose petals? It may also be wise to set a black dress code. Remembrance of your playful side? Have your two most British friends perform the eternal “Dead Parrot” sketch in place of a eulogy, substituting you for the bird “bereft of life.” Reminders of the wild and crazy parties? Enforce a two-drink minimum for entrance, spike the drinks with absinthe and make sure your coffin is water tight. The possibilities are only just beginning, and that is how you truly should approach the funeral. This is not an end, but a beginning to your new life in memory.

End Notes

¹Perhaps these words are too harsh. Allow me to soften them. Those professionals who claim such a title can be an invaluable help to your own planning. They have experience in such matters and can offer advice and know of suppliers outside the typical channels. Really now, who else can you reasonably expect to not only know suppliers of black roses in sufficient quantity but also the most accomplished area cover singers of Wind Beneath My Wings who are not put off by singing to a corpse rather than a living, appreciative audience as well?

Heidegger viewed death as a “phenomenon to be understood existentially.”¹ In constructing an existential understanding of death, Heidegger hoped to spur Dasein into authenticity. In The Vitality of Death, Peter Koestenbaum explains that “death is our drastic limit, our sharpest reminder of man’s finitude…but it also leads to courage, strength, integrity, and makes clear what our genuine values really are.”² For Heidegger, death is the end of our life story, and this characteristic end is what propels us toward our own end—conceiving it as the ultimate end, life becomes so much more valuable. Can we look at our own death in such an empowering way? Is it possible that the life we live now is more important than the death inevitably coming? I argue that Heidegger’s examination of death, as a possibility for Dasein, is essential to authenticity and fullness in life. 

We should first note that Heidegger wishes for us to look at our being in a different way. To help realign the way in which we think of being, Heidegger uses the term Dasein, to replace our use of “I” or ego, because those terms fail to reflect our essential connectivity to the world around us (we cannot separate the subject from the object, or “I” from the world). Heidegger believes that “Dasein finds ‘itself’ proximally in what it does, uses, expects, avoids—in those things environmentally ready-to-hand…Knowing oneself is ground in Being-with.”³ What are we then? How do we conceive of “I” at least at some level? We are identified by the world around us. The position we are in, the people who consider us and speak to us. The expectation of others is an important role in our basic understanding of self. Morality, customs, rules and guides are constructed by others and are a part of the world that we know and identify with, without which we wouldn’t be who we are. These constructions of social expectations are the things of the world and are intricately woven in our self-hood. As we are defined by others we are also limited by others in so much that they define our being and therefore our possibilities. I believe this is a relatively easy concept to grasp in that our being—existing now, in time, place, culture and environment—is limited by the things around us. The possibilities of a fourteen-year-old boy in the United States is much different, for instance, than the possibilities (materially, culturally, socially) of a fourteen-year-old boy living in a rural village in Columbia (at least in the current situation). Those things around us, the world and others around us, determine our possibilities and are inextricably linked together.

Death is significant to Dasein only if Dasein realizes that death is his alone. What happens when we are cut off from the world and from others? Heidegger believed that death cuts Dasein from being-in-the-world (being human means essentially related to the world around us) and the “they-self” (that part of our being that is identified by others—their expectations, norms, etc.). Heidegger explains that “death is the possibility of no-longer being-able-to-be-there…when [Dasein] stands before itself in this way, all its relations to any other Dasein have been undone.”⁴ Our participation in the world is instantly cut off in death. All of our habits, customs and actions within the world—everything connecting us to the world and others—is severed with the possibility of death. Paul Tillich explains, “The thought of possible non-being is the birthplace, both of the mythologies of creation and of the ontologies of being.”⁵ The inevitable possibility of non-being is an event (and thought) that highlights our being. More importantly, the possibility of death is the possibility of being nothing. As Heidegger says, death is the possibility of no longer being there. Identity, belonging and our conception of what “I” am is pulled apart and forced into nothing.

Heidegger wants us to view death as “essentially mine” so that its importance remains clear for Dasein. He makes a distinction between Being-towards-death and Everydayness of death. Everydayness is pushing death away from our own self, and instead thinking that if “one dies” it is simply the “they.”⁶ While we are dying already (as a part of life, death is inevitable) we change the death of “me” into a “case of death” in someone else. This way of thinking removes death from Dasein’s possibilities and leaves death in ambiguous terms irrelevant to Dasein. If “they” are the only ones who are attached to death, as we know it, then we are able to ignore death. At this point death loses significance (any and all that it had) and as Heidegger argues, “‘they’ provides a constant tranquilization about death,” so that any unease we may feel about death is pushed aside.⁷ By having death belong to “they” it is also changed. We are no longer in control of its significance, “they” determine its meaning for me and how I will act toward death. The “temptation, tranquilization, and alienation” of death will ultimately conceal any true meaning death has.⁸

Heidegger believes that Being-towards-death will lead Dasein to an authentic existence. Dasein must embrace the possibility of its own death: 

Death, as possibility, gives Dasein nothing to be ‘actualized,’ nothing which Dasein, as actual, could itself be. It is the possibility of the impossibility of every way of comporting oneself towards anything, of every way of existing…Being-towards-death is the anticipation of a potentiality-for-being…that is to say, the possibility of authentic existence.⁹

When we think of death as our own possibility, something that is inextricably ours, then all understanding of what we are, or will be, when it comes to death, becomes meaningless. Because of the impossibility of anything possible, we can not look to the future (past death) into other possibilities, and so all anticipation of possibilities (future ways in which I want to be or do) are impossible. With this understanding we will see that the end of all possibilities signals our potentiality now. The anticipation of the event of death allows one to be “liberated in such a way that for the first time one can authentically understand and choose among the factical possibilities lying ahead.”¹⁰ For Heidegger, an authentic existence is an existence lived knowing and choosing among one’s possibilities. In some way we separate from the “they-self” to choose on our own. Death, then, allows Dasein to be the author of his/her life. If we view our life (possibly our being as it is in the world) as one life-story, death would be the ending. The ending carries just as much importance as the total story—the conclusion as completion and wholeness. By looking at our life as finite we see the importance of the choices we make. The end, as the end of our being, if held in resoluteness allows Dasein to recognize it as a fundamental goal of its Being, and, as Dasein, we live with this goal in clear view and it becomes the culmination of our life choices, our life story. 

It might be suggested that death does not hold the existential or ontological significance that Heidegger wishes to attribute to it. Must we really focus on our death in this way? The end of our possibilities can be simply that: the end of our being in the world, and not the hallmark of our lives. This critical stance proposes that the end of our lives holds no importance, that death as Heidegger apprehends it is inflated and over-determined. This is a concern of Paul Edwards, who believes that Heidegger “is guilty of confusing death with concern over death and of a failure to keep separate the present and the future.”¹¹ Since death is the nullification of everything, we cannot know death and hence cannot know the possibility of death. Death, in Edward’s view, is incorrectly considered as a “golden opportunity” of our lives, which is “something to be ‘welcomed,’”¹² but “in any intelligible sense, the culmination of a person’s life must be an event or a sequence of events in his life.”¹³ We might say that death is simply the end—the ceasing of possibilities in life—and that the death event is in no way as important as those things before. Every possibility before the event, our continued projection into possibilities, is far more important than the fact that eventually those possibilities will end. 

I believe there is a danger in limiting the importance of death. Heidegger’s Being-towards-death is not afraid of death. Fear would drown out any meaning that death would hold. With fear we distance ourselves from death and descend into “they-self.” Heidegger makes clear the danger: “The ‘they’ does not permit us the courage for anxiety in the face of death.”¹⁴ We never feel the anxiety of our own death and hence are never in individual existence, living by our own choices. If death is not the “crown” of our life then it may be something to fear. If we only consider the possibilities up to death, neglecting death’s possibility, we choose with no concern of our death but of only “now.” What, we might ask, makes me happy, content and satisfied now? Our choices may be directed to preserving our life (which is probably never the wrong thing to do). Instead of being “liberated” from “they-self” we have become lost in it. Without death being “mine,” death will never have the significance to free Dasein from inauthentic existence and into the realm of its own possibilities. Heidegger’s Being-towards-death is a being whose death functions not to scare but to empower. Death must hold a specifically important place within our understanding. The fact of death, its existential and ontological meanings for human existence, is a heavy weight to bear. Yet it is the bearing of that weight that makes us stronger. We cannot limit it to a simple event. Peter Koestenbaum explains that “the man that knows he will die wastes no time in attacking the problem of finding meaning and fulfillment in life.”¹⁵ Knowing that I will die provides extra gravity to every decision I make, every thing I say and everything I believe (remember that this “I” is the being who is fundamentally attached to the world around him, that is Dasein). Must we elevate death as a possibility? Certainly, if it is to have any affect on us and if it is to change us, then death must be important to me. As mentioned above, it is easy to fall back and let the possibility of death mean nothing—it can be “her” death or “his” death but never “my” death. Death as a sort of capstone, the final sentence to one’s life story, means we cannot ignore it; we must live in anticipation of the event. Knowing death as mine allows me to be “the freest of all men.”¹⁶

I believe this understanding of death can be fairly intuitive. Take, for example, two men fighting. One looks at this fight as a thing apart from himself. It may end, it may not. Nothing is at stake for him because he sees no possibilities. The other man knows that he may die because of this fight. It is a real possibility, not a chance. He knows that he may die. How much harder will that man fight? He will give it all he can—every spare bit of strength and energy. The fight will have a greater importance. The fight takes on more meaning than it would if it were sport or just for fun. Now, suppose that that same man knows that he will die no matter what. What will he do? Better yet, what will we want him to do? Knowing he will die, the man may do two things. He may give up. He capitulates under impending, inevitable death, letting it take him and losing the fight, recognizing he has already lost. But he may also fight just as hard and perhaps even harder. Knowing that this fight is all he has left, the man may choose to give it all he has. He allows this one last fight to be the significance of his life. He tells himself, “They must remember me. They will remember me after this.” He lives, fights, toward death, and when he goes down it will not be a weary, defeated collapse but an exaltation in the face of victory and death. 

End Notes

¹ Guigon, Charles, Pereboom, Derk, eds. Existentialism: Basic Writings. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001. 247.

² Koestenbaum, Peter. The Vitality of Death. Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1971. 128.

³ Guigon, Charles, Pereboom, Derk, eds. Existentialism: Basic Writings. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001. 233.

⁴ Heidegger, Martin. Guigon, Charles, Pereboom, Derk, eds. Existentialism: Basic Writings. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001. 247.

⁵ Tillich, Paul. “The Nature and the Significance of Existentialist Thought.” The Journal of Philosophy 53. 23 (1956). 744.

⁶ Guigon, Charles, Pereboom, Derk, eds. Existentialism: Basic Writings. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001. 248.

⁷ Heidegger, Martin. Guigon, Charles, Pereboom, Derk, eds. Existentialism: Basic Writings. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001. 248.

⁸ Ibid., 249.

⁹ Ibid., 250.

¹⁰ Ibid., 251.

¹¹ Llewelyn, John. Rev. of Heidegger on Death: A Critical Evaluation, by Paul Edwards. The Philosophical Quarterly 32.129 (1982). 388.

¹² Edwards, Paul. “Heidegger and Death as ‘Possibility.’” Mind 84.336 (1975). 551.

¹³ Ibid., 553.

¹⁴ Heidegger, Martin. Guigon, Charles, Pereboom, Derk, eds. Existentialism: Basic Writings. 2nd ed. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 2001. 249.

¹⁵ Koestenbaum, Peter. The Vitality of Death. Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Company, 1971. 27.

¹⁶ Ibid. 

I am an actor. The other day I was preparing a monologue which begins like this: “Do you ever think of yourself as actually dead, lying in a box with a lid on it?”¹ I worked on the monologue all day, preparing for an audition in the evening. I’ll admit, as an actor, I struggled with it. Genuineness did not come easily. Finally the time came, and I set off on my bike in the darkening of night to traverse the dirty, slushy streets to Spokane Center Stage. It was a dangerous time to bike, even with a blinking red light to defend me, and I felt an edge of adrenaline as the cold night air moved past my face.

I was saying the monologue in my head as I road down the slope of Division toward the river. There was a wave of cars behind, their harsh white headlights silhouetting me. It was in that light that I saw it. I felt a moment of panic, such that seems to make time slow to a crawl as the mind races. A black rabbit. Black…if it were only a white rabbit, perhaps it would have hope. There was no chance that the cars could see its black fur against the asphalt. It hopped––once, twice, in the second lane of Division. Its only hope was to pass under the cars, to miss the wheels. I hit my brakes and swerved off to the roadside as I heard the thunder of cars behind me. I dismounted and walked back with a tight, sickening worry in my face. There was a motionless black lump in a pool of lamp-light. Oh, no…no…I dropped my bike, and as I drew closer I could see it clearly. Sure enough, dead. Only a few guts hanging out, twisted in an unnatural pose, frightened nothingness in its black eyes and blood in its ears. I used some trash to pull the rabbit off the road, told a nearby store owner what had happened and continued on my way.

That was death. I saw it. I saw the rabbit alive, then I saw it dead. I was a little sick to the stomach. But I was emotionless. Paralyzed. On some level I simply could not comprehend what had happened.

After arriving at Center Stage and getting settled, I gave my monologue. It was stiff and mechanical––lifeless. I tried to think about the death I had witnessed to make the death in my monologue come alive. The director had me lie on a table. He said, “This is your box. You are inside. Look around, feel the wood and concentrate on the box. Now say it again.” With a few minutes of work he broke me out of my mechanical reading of the speech; he told me it felt more honest.

As I rode home I had a chance to reflect. We do not think about death much. In our society, it is basically confined to old folks homes. It has been tidied up, put on a shelf and forgotten. We hide it away in an effort to hide ourselves from it. But death is part of human existence. Someday we must reconcile ourselves with it. My experience awakened me to my emotional paralysis towards death. Death is a foreigner. Its ways and customs are unknown to me. I find it bewildering and confusing.

Perhaps we should, as a society, welcome death. If we stopped hiding from it and let it be known to us perhaps at least we would not be paralyzed with confusion when it came into our midst.

End Notes

¹Tom Stoppard, Rozencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead (New York: Grove Press, 1967), 70.

As a Christian, I believe that death isn’t the end and that once we’ve left this world we enter into a new one. Yet there’s no denying that facing the end of your existence as you know it is a frightening prospect. By making a spectacle out of death and focusing so much attention on how it happens, as a society we try to make it into an understandable and measurable entity. We even anthropomorphize it, give it a black cloak and scythe, and occasionally a Jamaican accent.¹ The white light at the end of the tunnel, a loved one appearing by your side to lead you away from this earth and of course Death himself with his hour glass are all familiar images when it comes to passing on. Clichés allow us to face death by taking away the mystery and providing a safe and familiar place to hide from the unknown. 

Why, then, are flag draped coffins such a disturbing image to the public if we have desensitized ourselves to death? Because the clichés and over-used phrases are only a thin cover hiding the ultimate knowledge of man’s own mortality. Far too often in our world of instant gratification and materialism, meaning is what you make of it. But the undeniable truth is that all people have to face death. By making death a character in a cartoon show or the driving force behind popular television shows such as CSI and Law and Order, we try to take control over death. When we see a photo of coffins in the cargo bed of an aircraft, we realize just how little control we have. Murders are sensationalized on the evening news and court proceedings are followed avidly by the media, with speculation continuing many years after the actual event occurred.² By investigating and publicizing horrible atrocities, our society is once again trying to bring death into understandable terms. 

There are so many clichés and over-used images when it comes to death and dying that we sometimes forget about the underlying significance. Death saturates the media, whether in the form of news stories about the latest gruesome murder, coverage of the war in Iraq or genocide in any number of places around the world. In these cases, rarely is the actual event itself the focus. Instead we get numbers and names. When soldiers die, the news shows us pictures of the deceased in uniform and a montage of their hometown while a sympathetic narrator tells about their years playing high school football. This is followed immediately by a story about a squirrel who water skis. And then, of course, there are all the crime drama and forensic shows found on every television network, which break down evil actions into fibers and small plastic shards. Take away the unknown, substitute the familiar. 

We don’t so much glorify death in our culture as take advantage of it for dramatic effect. But how long will it be before we become so desensitized that even the sight of a bloody corpse isn’t enough to arouse our disgust or sympathy? If we succeed in rationalizing death, what does it mean to be alive?

End Notes

¹ The Cartoon Network show “the Grim Adventures of Billie and Mandy,” features this image of Death.

² The Jonbenét murder, for example. Only one case among many that still fuels tabloid headlines. 

Death—the final frontier. We’ve wandered through the oceans, mapped the world from space…heck, we’re mapping space from space…

We’ve seen and touched worlds that were forever out of our reach, until someone thought to put flame beneath steel and fling pebbles at the stars. We’re on the precipice of who knows how many millions of new discoveries, and yet this remains.

Death, the final frontier.

But we’ve been sending explorers into this deep night for millennia, for generations, hordes of brave wanderers, heading out of the warm comfort of this bright life to go where so many have gone before. The long journey into darkness, the long trip into endless night—or is it light?

We’ve had many brave explorers go, but few come back. It has a dismal survival rate, and yet we pour so much funding into it, sending people out to explore those lonely worlds—or not so lonely. Maybe there are whole realms like New York City, teeming with the millions of wandering dead, for so many have been sent through.

You’d almost expect them to start turning people back after a while, there’d be so many there. It’s too full, they’d say, and the government just can’t afford to pay everyone’s afterlife insurance or their undead upkeep. Their haunted housing program for the homeless hoodoo is running out of haunted houses. We just can’t take any more. Close the borders!

Would we wander the world endlessly then, seeking we knew not what, inescapable physical life binding, blinding, when we should have long since gone down to the grave?

Yes, many go down…too many prematurely in this past century alone. Something was wandering in the world, then, some distant horse carrying a fell rider, several riders, claiming the lives of the innocent, of the not so innocent, of the heaven bound and the eternally damned alike. Illness whispered through the world, “dis-ease,” wars and rumors of war were heard on the wind, the crops fell full grown in the fields, too many were carried down to darkness. A sigh, a scythe, flash and glint, grunt and struggle, till the pale horse recedes into the distance, suddenly slower, suddenly heavier by a hundredfold.

And yet…and yet…out of the many brave folk sent out from this life, some have brought word of the next. There was an odd tale wandering the world, making the rounds of the credulous and crazy, the strange and the small, of a…but it’s too much to fathom.

A…dying god?

Odd. Decidedly odd.

Odin, it was, the grim, the grey, the One-Eyed. He’d traded the eye to be able to see beyond the ken of man or god. He hung from the spear, from the tree of life, from the tree of all Life, all things. Nine days, he’d hung, nine long weary days, dead, hung from a tree. Then awakened again, and down he came. To none to tell the tale…

That god?

There was young Horus, the son, the Sun, the son of the god of the dead. Osiris’s son, Isis’s son, son of a god long dead. Shattered, Set shattered Osiris, broke him apart, till many small pieces lay scattered, lay shattered to dust. Isis reclaimed them, called them together, raised her husband again.

Those gods?

The corn god, who’s planted, who’s buried deep down, whose buried well into the ground, well? The one who then grows, a sprig then shows, a corn god rising from the dead?

The myth through history, myth for all men, myth for the quick and the dead. The story is told, long of old, of one whose quick feet flee the grave. A myth, it is, all indeed are, but what if some day it came true?

A true myth in this worlds-realm, of one gone down long ago, down to the dark of the cave, the grave? The caveman, the brave man, the man who lay still and cold. Born in a cave, then, died, and buried in a cave, as of old. Painting his pictures on the wall of the cave, cradle to grave, making his dreams real out of earth, out of water, painting the walls of the cave.

This would be some man, this would be unman, this would be God most divine! This would be strange man, this would be ancient man, this would be Man Everlasting!

Everlasting Man! What a strange plan! Who would actually do it? Hear through the night, through the long lonely day, of this gray world, graying away—a voice rings true through the distant blue, “For love of thee, and of thy kin.”

Yes, out of the darkness, returned from the night, there have come the few, the brave. For which takes more courage, which the more fearful, the single dying or the returned? For second death waits, though Lazarus hates the dark, the stench, the familiar grave. Returned, they have come, they have said what they’ve seen: “A dark, hot, stifling place! People came running at me, tried to devour me! I screamed, but it was all over, all over…then I came back!”

“This…brilliant, white light! It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen…and they were all there to greet me, all my family, the long dead…it was so beautiful. But I had to come back. It wasn’t my time yet. They sent me back…Oh, I can’t wait to see them again!”

“Flames. Hot flames, searing me, burning…I don’t know where I was. I just never want to go back!”

“He met me there, at the river’s edge. He smiled—I’ll never forget His smile. We stood there, or maybe walked…I don’t know, all I could focus on was Him…Yes, I came back. Well, I had to! I couldn’t leave my family alone here, could I? He gave me a choice…I knew what I had to do. So did He, because He smiled when I walked away.”

“A golden crucifix on the wall, where there hadn’t been one before, and there wasn’t one when I came to, later. He asked me—do you want to go now, or later? I thought about it, in the hospital, sicker than sick, and said, if I really have a choice, I’d like to stay if that’s all right. He said, it will be hard, and painful. I said I’d take it, and…well, here I am!”

Tales they have told, places they’d been…what waits, beyond the grave? What waits…who waits?

Who waits, one last breath away? 

Nobody talks about the soul anymore. Somewhere in our obsession with science, technology and the cold hard truth, we lost our way. We forgot what it meant to believe in something we always talked about feeling but could never see. We forgot what it meant to have an almost mystical quality to our identity, a mystery only the closest could ever understand. 

So why is it that we must wait until death to decide if we have a soul or not? Why is it that we will only believe when someone manages to put us on a scale just prior to and just after our death, only to find our corpse weights 21 grams less? Why must we wait?

Just this past year, the first International Medical Conference on Near-Death Experience was held in Martigues, France. The fascination that comes with these experiences is mainly due to the fact that researchers and scientists believe they occur when the brain has shut down and shows no electronic activity. So where do they come from? Some have pointed to this as proof that the soul does, in fact, exist. 

But there’s a problem with that: we should not wait for scientific proof like we wait for everything else. We should not suppress belief, waiting until we see something before our very eyes. No one truly knows what a soul looks like. And no one will ever be able to create a definitive image. 

But if it’s so easy for us to believe in things we can’t see––God, love, trust, care––why is it so hard for us to believe in a soul? To reduce all our thoughts and feelings to mere chemical imbalances and biological activity is a cold, hard way to view Life. There must come a time when we leave behind the facts and the machines and embrace the romanticism of the unknown. Wasn’t it so much more fun to believe you were really going to the moon as a kid than it was to realize that you were just sitting in a Red Wagon?

Nobody talks about the soul anymore. It’s about time we start the conversation. And don’t wait until your death to bring it up––you might not have anyone to share it with.