Self assessment on death

Self-Assessment on Death

We are all, from the moment of our birth, proceeding to the same final endpoint -- death. But while we know how life is created, what occurs at the end of life remains a mystery. Even after studying death from an analytical perspective, despite becoming more fluent in the various ways different philosophical traditions and cultures have interpreted death, I still fear the end of my natural existence. No matter how complete and apparently neat the explanation is of the life to come, it still does not satisfy me, because I feel that all attempts to answer the question of what occurs at the end of life are engineered by humans, and do not approach the truth of what is likely to transpire after all consciousness has ceased to exist.

When a child is born, as terrifying and exciting as that may be, the parents have some idea of what that child will face in the future -- the joy of learning; first attempts at walking and talking; first love; maturity, and the achievement of other major life milestones. When someone holds the hand of a loved one in death, there is always a sense of loss and fear of the unknown. Perhaps logically, we as humans should comfort ourselves that we will all meet in the same final resting place. But because the nature of what that resting place will resemble is so unclear, even the faithful often find themselves paralyzed by grief.

"Do not go gentle into that good night / Rage, rage against the dying of the light." My sentiments regarding death are very much in line with those of Dylan Thomas' poem "Do not go gentle into that good night." Thomas' poem is brutally honest, as the poet begs his father to resist the death that Thomas knows that will come. Thomas finds beauty even in the futility of resisting the forces that take away breath, movement, and the spark that makes a human being an individual in the eyes of the living world.

Although there may be a soul, because we cannot touch, taste, smell, see, or apprehend it with our senses, the instinct to rage -- and to fear -- death along with Dylan Thomas seems like a natural impulse. Even if there is a world hereafter, because that world will be so inconceivably different, I cannot enter it calmly, with open arms. Part of me is glad that I cannot, like Emily Dickinson say coolly: "Because I could not stop for death/he kindly stopped for me." When I am older, perhaps, I may be able to confront death with resigned acceptance. I have known people facing illness and old age who say that they have no regrets, and simply surrender and bow to the inevitable. But I can only think of all of the things I still wish to do in life, when I hear the world 'death.' I think of my loved ones, of children whom I will never be able to see grow old. I even wonder who will take care of my pets.

Our culture and other cultures deal with death through euphemisms. The metaphors of a long sleep, of going into the darkness, and passing away reflect a need to soften the blow of the loss to humankind and the loss to the self when a unique individual loses his or her life. There is part of me that will always yearn to experience more, who stubbornly believes in possibility. Death is the end of possibility within the framework of what is recognizably human.