It is important to have meaningful conversations about death and dying.

People who want to die well must be willing to confront their finitude. We do not have to accept death, invite it, or wish for it. But we must be prepared to say, “Yes, I am human and therefore mortal. One day I will die.” We cannot both cling to the indefinite extension of life and effectively prepare for death.

.. our society today leaves little room for the contemplation of human finitude. To stave off thoughts of mortality, we like to keep everything around us looking new. We design our clothes to be fashionable for a year or two. Our technology is governed by the theory of planned obsolescence. Our built environment comes with the expectation that certain buildings be demolished and rebuilt every specified number of years. And more than ever, scientists and beauty experts alike are striving to find that elixir for infinite youth. Apart from our life-insurance policies, little reminds us of our mortality.¹Dugdale, L.S.. The Lost Art of Dying .

As recognized in earlier posts, meaningful conversations about death and dying are difficult and rarely occur. Essential in keeping us aware of our mortality, it is important to initiate and welcome them.

Awareness of our mortality is essential to die well, ” … ars moriendi hit the mark with its assertion that in order to die well, you must take mortality into account, even when death seems a long way off.”² Dugdale, L.S.The Lost Art of Dying

For most people death is thought to be “a long way off”; which is not unreasonable considering the likelihood we will “go quickly” is low and most elderly will die a slow death,
“One study found that most elderly are diagnosed as having a disease three years before it will eventually end their lives. On top of that a Rand study found that “Americans will I usually spend two or more of their final Years disabled enough to need someone else to help with routine activities of daily living because of chronic illness” ³The Art of Dying Rob Moll

Expected life spans give people confidence that they will enjoy many years after retirement, which, for many, is coming much earlier than sixty-five. Good news , but it reinforces illusions of immortality and defers meaningful conversations we need to die well.

In the ancient world, victorious Roman generals paraded triumphantly through the streets before adoring crowds. Accounts of these “triumphs” vary, but typically the general was accompanied in his chariot by a servant whose one task was to whisper repeatedly in the general’s ear, Hominem te memento! or, “Remember that you are but human!” The servant’s role was to ensure that the general did not start thinking of himself as godlike, as immortal.⁴ Dugdale, L.S. The Lost Art of Dying

It might not be a bad idea to have someone around who whisper in our ear “you are going to die”. Maybe a Death Pastor? 🙂 Just thinking.
On a more practical basis, we can be reminded of our mortality with memento mori (remember you must die). Popular in medieval Europe various types of memento mori — were highly popular, they may have been too popular. They were so commonplace that many people stopped paying any attention to them. Perhaps employing some comtemporary momento mori would counter our avoidance of death and stimulate meaningful conversation. As one example, I have included our local cemetery in my daily walk route. Some tattoos are memento mori. Prominently displayed cremation urns are helpful reminders. There are a lot of creative ideas which can remind us “remember you must die”.

It is important to have meaningful conversations before there is an immanent death crisis. In those circumstances, the likelihood of a dying well experience is remote for both the dying and their loved ones.

I believe Timothy Keller’s recent death exemplified what it means to die well. His final words were: “There is no downside for me leaving, not in the slightest.”

More to come.

STILL ON THE JOURNEY

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  Dugdale, L.S.. The Lost Art of Dying .
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  Dugdale, L.S.The Lost Art of Dying
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  The Art of Dying Rob Moll
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  Dugdale, L.S. The Lost Art of Dying

Post # 2 — Conversations Matter – Death & Dying. “The Slavery of Death” and “The Lost Art of Dying”, and “The Denial of Death” are helpful resources. Interestingly, several recent sermons and podcasts have addressed death and dying. Our local cemetery is apart my regular walking route.
The more I engage the subject of death and dying, the more I am impressed with the profound implications they have for living.This is the first post addressing some thoughts and ideas about death and dying.

Why isn’t death and dying talked about ?

The following citations can be a helpful in beginning to answer — Why isn’t death and dying talked about ? Emphasis is mine.

“Americans like to appear as if they give death hardly any thought at all.” The American lifestyle is thus “for people to create a living world where death seems abnormal and accidental. [Americans] must create a living world where life is so full, so secure, and so rich with possibilities that it gives no hint of death and deprivation.” We accomplish this feat, through acts of death avoidance. Americans live with “the conviction that the lives we live are not essentially and intrinsically mortal.” But this is a neurotic fantasy. McGill calls it a “dream,” an “illusory realm of success.” So how is this illusion maintained? “Americans accomplish this illusion by devoting themselves to expunging from their lives every appearance, every intimation of death. . . . All traces of weakness, debility, ugliness and helplessness must be kept away from every part of a person’s life. The task must be done every single day if such persons really are to convince us that they do not carry the smell of death within them.”

Vast portions of American Christianity are aimed at propping up the illusion, giving religious sanction to American death avoidance. We see this in the triumphalism within many sectors of Christianity—the almost manic optimism of church culture that cannot admit any hint of debility, disease, death, or decay. These churches are filled with smiling cheerful people who respond with “Fine!” to any inquiry regarding their social, financial, emotional, physical, or spiritual well-being. Due to many churches’ explicit and implicit religious sanctioning of the American success ethos, church members become too afraid to show each other their weakness, brokenness, failure, and vulnerability. Such admissions are avoided, as they threaten to expose the neurotic lie that sits at the heart of Christian culture and American society—that death doesn’t exist.

[_{““You will not certainly die,” the serpent said to the woman.”
Genesis 3:4 NIV]}

Death and Life: An American Theology – David McGill via The Slavery of Death- Richard Beck

We don’t know how to deal with death, and so we ignore it as much and for as long as possible. We concentrate on life. The dying don’t want to impose their plight on the people they love, even though they may be eager, even aching to talk about what it means to them now that they face it. Doctors and others fail to pick up on this desire, because they project their own reluctance to deal with death onto the patient. Sometimes the dying will ask that their loved ones make no fuss over them, hold no ceremony, just cremate them and move on; as though they were doing the bereaved a favour in colluding in their aversion to death.
Death undermines meaning. Something important is lost when one forgets this. …
The connection of death with meaning is reflected in two often-discussed features of human life as we understand it today.
The first is the way in which facing death, seeing one’s life as about to come to an end, can concentrate the issue of what we have lived for. What has it all amounted to? In other words, death can bring out the question of meaning in its most acute form.
The second is the way that those bereaved, or left behind, struggle to hold on to the meaning they have built with the deceased, while (unavoidably) letting go of the person. This is what funeral rites have always been meant to do, whatever other goals they have served. And since a crucial way of doing this is to connect this person, even in his death, with something eternal, or at the very least ongoing, the collapse of a sense of the eternal brings on a void, a kind of crisis.

The Sting of Death – Charles Taylor

…the fear of death must be present behind all our normal functioning, in order for the organism to be armed toward self-preservation. But the fear of death cannot be present constantly in one’s mental functioning, else the organism could not function. Zilboorg continues: If this fear were as constantly conscious, we should be unable to function normally. It must be properly repressed to keep us living with any modicum of comfort. We know very well that to repress means more than to put away and to forget that which was put away and the place where we put it. It means also to maintain a constant psychological effort to keep the lid on and inwardly never relax our watchfulness.
And so we can understand what seems like an impossible paradox: the ever-present fear of death in the normal biological functioning of our instinct of self-preservation, as well as our utter obliviousness to this fear in our conscious life: Therefore in normal times we move about actually without ever believing in our own death, as if we fully believed in our own corporeal immortality. We are intent on mastering death….
A man will say, of course, that he knows he will die some day, but he does not really care. He is having a good time with living, and he does not think about death and does not care to bother about it—but this is a purely intellectual, verbal admission. The affect of fear is repressed.

The Denial of Death pg 15-16

A few thoughts:

• My church experience confirms death avoidance as the norm. That is troubling in at least two ways:
  First, it is clear indication of the infusion of American society into the Christian culture.
  Second, it is evidence that humanity, including Christianity continues to believe Satan’s lie, “You will not certainly die.”.
• Death provides a perspective on life like nothing else; which explains, in part why we don’t talk about it. We don’t want to face hard truths. It is terrible enough to get to the end of life and realize how meaningless it was with no hope to change anything. “in order to die well, you must take mortality into account, even when death seems a long way off”
• I am finding this discussion theologically challenging. Its tentacles reach deep into some long held assumptions.
• A prime example of a theological quandary comes via a Christian’s response to a doctor’s suggestion that life saving measures for her terminally ill loved one be abandoned:“No, Doctor,” she replied. “We are Christians, and we believe that Jesus can heal. We believe in miracles. You do whatever you can to keep him alive.” 
• Finally: A recent Harvard study found that patients with high levels of support from their religious communities are more likely to choose aggressive life support and to die in intensive-care units. They were also less likely to enroll in hospice. Why might this be?

STILL ON THE JOURNEY