Of Grave Concern: On Our Dying – As We Live More Fully

Grave Concerns: Revisiting Some Material on Our Dying – As We Live More Fully

And all our yesterdays have lighted fools – The way to dusty death.
- Shakespeare’s Macbeth

I am not afraid of death, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.
- Woody Allen

Oh great…death. WTF? – Just what we need. A buzz-kill blog posting on death (and how ironic to use the word “kill” as a way of saying: I was chilling along, enjoying some Tweets on my iPhone, and checking out Boing Boing via my RSS reader– and then this guy wants to talk about death).

   Yes, that is my point. It is just what we need. But not the kind of presentation and examination of “it” you might be thinking.

For example, I came across this informative news item with the DallasNews.com.

Remembrances: Deaths that shocked and saddened us in ‘08 12/08 By TOM MAURSTAD 

On one hand it was good to see an respectful overview of the “passing” of a selected few in the past year (2008), but on the other hand, it was sad news of those in the “spotlight”, those who were deemed important enough to notice (or that we should care). But at least the reporter had the minimal skill to ponder the bigger picture. Here are some excerpts to make my case (from Maurstad, 2008):

“We wish everyone a happy this, a merry that. Yet beneath, behind and in the midst of all that fizzy, frothy fun, there is a steady, patient presence. Death. We know it, we’ve always known it and always will know it. Death comes for us all: rich and famous, poor and unsung, Republican and Democrat. It’s the ultimate bipartisan movement, building a bridge, we hope, to somewhere.

Every year, there are the big-name deaths, and they tend to come in two varieties. There are those like Heath Ledger’s. They are sharp shocks that make you reflect on what a tightrope this thread of life can be. You wince at the loss of promise. Then there are those like Paul Newman’s. They are more of a slow, steady ache as you mark the chapters in your life by the parts played and realize that the world has, in a small but important and irrevocable way, changed. It is no longer a world in which Paul Newman, Bo Diddley or George Carlin live. But in a way, the big deaths are easy. Think about the deaths of Tim Russert and Charlton Heston. They received so much attention, so much coverage, it was as if you could out-source the experience. The media grieves so you don’t have to.

Celebrities have many roles in life, but in death they serve a single purpose. They are time markers. You see the name and somewhere inside your memory, a button is pushed and a reel of images and feelings unspool. In what’s impossible not to recognize as a gathering trend, 2008 was a year full of such time markers for Boomers.

Big or small, world-famous or personally important, we take a moment as we leave the old and step into the new, to say goodbye and thank you.”

Ok, that was refreshingly different in a news story (usually devoid of thinking and reflection) to pay tribute to not only highlighted names, but to wax poetic (somewhat) on Death. But still – the catalyst and the focus was on the recognizable few. And indeed, you can learn more of the dead people in 2008 by going to the “Dead People Server” at http://dpsinfo.com/dps/2008.html. But what about the rest of us? I mean, not yet, but what if…you know….me or you, were to move on….you know…die? Would we get a mention at the end of the year? Probably not. Yes, there are the obituaries, but more on that later (read on).

Or instead of not making “the list” we could simply get lost in the shuffle and aggregate anonymity of the statistical tables (Nostalgia alert!: I always knew the TV show The Prisoner {from the 60’s} would come back to haunt me- “You are Number Six” {and then Patrick McGoohan says, “I am not a number — I am a free man!”)

that we can count on (pardon the pun) from the CDC and other Kafka-like bean counters. For example, here is some recent information (released on June 11, 2008, but notice that data has some lag effect and is presented in the usual mechanical soulless manner, But hey! that is what they do) for you on Death,

U.S. Mortality Drops Sharply in 2006, Latest Data Show.

Deaths: Preliminary Data for 2006. NVSR Volume 56, Number 16. 52 pp.
Age-adjusted death rates in the United States declined significantly between 2005 and 2006 and life expectancy hit another record high, according to preliminary death statistics released today by CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics.The 2006 age-adjusted death rate fell to 776.4 deaths per 100,000 population from 799 deaths per 100,000 in 2005. In addition, death rates for 8 of the 10 leading causes of death in the United States all dropped significantly in 2006, including a very sharp drop in mortality from influenza and pneumonia.

 Other findings in the report (just a few: I don’t want to bore you to “death”)

Between 2005 and 2006, the largest decline in age-adjusted death rates occurred for influenza and pneumonia, with a 12.8 percent decline. Other declines were observed for chronic lower respiratory diseases (6.5 percent), stroke (6.4 percent), heart disease (5.5 percent), diabetes (5.3 percent), hypertension (5 percent), chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (3.3 percent), suicide (2.8 percent), septicemia or blood poisoning (2.7 percent), cancer (1.6 percent) and accidents (1.5 percent).

 Alzheimer’s disease passed diabetes to become the sixth leading cause of death in the United States in 2006. An estimated 72,914 Americans died of Alzheimer’s disease in 2006. However, the preliminary age-adjusted death rate from Alzheimer’s did not change significantly between 2005 and 2006.

 Well, between the celebrities passing on and the mind-numbing numbers, what else is there to think about? In fact, I don’t want to think about it. Life is too short to worry about d…., you know, why bring it up? That thing… I’m too busy. Besides I can get my quota with watching Dexter on Showtime

or playing Left 4 Dead on my PC…wait, what are you doing?….

            Boom!

            This is the moment where we bring in the equivalent of the wake-up notice, only more loudly, and with more attention getting…like Jules (Samuel L. Jackson) in Pulp Fiction,

“I’m sorry, did I break your concentration? I didn’t mean to do that. Please, continue, you were saying something about best intentions. What’s the matter? Oh, you were finished. Well then, allow me to retort….”

            And in the spirit of rogue scholarship on aging, I shall.

From Jules to Jaques…as in lines from the famous ‘all the world’s a stage’ speech in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, and the beginning of my retort that would should break our concentration on just drifting along (comfortably numb) – and then it is there – and here, and now. And are we ready? Not for death, but for the complete realization, the sheer terror or knowing –“This is this, there is no more in this life. It is over. And only now do I really know that…wow, why didn’t someone tell me?”

      JAQUES:

                All the world’s a stage,
                And all the men and women merely players:
                They have their exits and their entrances;
                And one man in his time plays many parts,
               ….But at the end – not much but, “mere oblivion,
               Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.”

Really? Mere oblivion? And all of it gone? But I didn’t get that text message. Maybe the server was down that day and my inbox was frozen. Maybe I didn’t like Willy boy’s stuff anyway.  Okay, fair enough. But let us take a look at a few cultural venues (and a few representative examples) where there have been attempts to send the message of your (and mine) finitude with varying degrees of success.

Movies:
Death Takes a Holiday (1934)- or later as - 
Meet Joe Black (1998) {Brad Pitt as “death”; and then as a reverse-aging being in “Benjamin Button” – gotta give credit to Hollywood for making both topics more interesting with the star power; but what’s next? Angelina Jolie as a hip Geriatrician? (hmmm, that could work; you heard it here first!}

The Sixth Sense (1999) (“I see dead people”) by M. Night Shyamalan with the trademark twist ending.

Now you may want to me bring up Death Proof by Quentin Tarantino and render some philosophical nuance to that movie (segment); but I say there is none. Except some good lines by Stuntman Mike (“Ahhh, yeah, I know. Sorry. It’s my mom’s car”) and Earl McGraw (“Shit. Two tons of metal, 200 miles an hour, flesh and bone and plain old Newton… they all princess died”).

Death Proof

But for me – it was in the movie Baraka (now on Blue Ray DVD) with the haunting voice of Lisa Gerrard (Dead Can Dance) and the haunting images of burnt bodies of died near the Ganges (India) that has seared into me the reality of life – served with a bucket of cold water – ah finitude – now I see.

  

And speaking of Music:

Knockin on Heaven’s Door, Bob Dylan  {sort of Kubler-Ross stage theory set to music)

And When I Die, Blood, Sweat, and Tears {a ditty with some great lines}

Don’t Fear the Reaper, Blue Oyster Cult {little did I know in the 70s – I thought it was a song to impress the babes – Love of two is one}

Don't Fear the Reaper

Dust in the Wind – Kansas {my all time favorite existential song – oh, the nullity of it all}

And then the uber-group in relation to our topic: Dead Can Dance
(think: “I am Stretched on Your Grave” from Toward the Within – and I challenge you to listen to the voice of Lisa Gerrard on the same album with the song Cantara and not know the spine-tingling sensation of something other-worldly – ethereality).

And speaking of other-worldy-ness and
“can I break your concentration” – Books:

Kubler-Ross is the original on this matter as least on a mass readership scale and I can still remember writing DABDA on my hand with a ball-point pen as a “cheat” to help me with the exam question…What are the stages of dying? And Nuland’s book was a spectacular example of the cold scalpel opening up the clinical/medical process of what is going on when I am dying -

On Death and Dying By Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, M.D., Elisabeth Kubler-Ross Published by Sagebrush Education Resources, 196

Tibetan Book of the Dead - The Tibetan Book of the Dead: Or, The After-death Experiences on the Bardo Plane, According to Lāma Kazi Dawa-Samdup’s English Rendering By Karma-gliṅ-pa, W. T. Evans-Wentz Compiled by W. T. Evans-Wentz Contributor Donald S. Lopez, Jr. Published by Oxford University Press US, 2000

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker Published by Simon and Schuster, 1997

 The American Way of Death Revisited By Jessica Mitford Contributor Jessica Mitford Published by Vintage Books, 1998

 Remember Me: A Lively Tour of the New American Way of Death - By Lisa Takeuchi Cullen - Published by HarperCollins, 2007

How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter By Sherwin B. Nuland Published by Vintage Books, 1995

And remember when I mentioned about paying attention to the NOTICE of people who are now dead (at least for most of us – you know regular folk – in the OBITS –here is a book for you:

The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries By Marilyn Johnson Published by HarperCollins, 2006

 You still can’t remember the messages of why it is good to pay attention to death?

What about some Paintings?

The Triumph of Death Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1562 Museo del Prado, Madrid

A little too gruesome and horrific?

Okay try my favorite – Isle of the Dead by Arnold Böcklin. Böcklin painted five versions of Isle of the Dead from 1880 to 1886. Pick anyone you like – and then sit and take it in – and then you may feel, taste, smell, hear, and see the movement toward the end point – alone.

What about some Cultural perspectives?

Try to learn more about – The Día de los Muertos Season – or read Death and the Idea of Mexico by Claudio Lomnitz The MIT press (2005) and compare to the US (general) culture:

 

 

Death and the Idea of Mexico is the first social, cultural, and political history of death in a nation that has made death its tutelary sign. Examining the history of death and of the death sign from sixteenth-century holocaust to contemporary Mexican-American identity politics, anthropologist Claudio Lomnitz’s innovative study marks a turning point in understanding Mexico’s rich and unique use of death imagery. Unlike contemporary Europeans and Americans, whose denial of death permeates their cultures, the Mexican people display and cultivate a jovial familiarity with death. This intimacy with death has become the cornerstone of Mexico’s national identity.

Finally, I have two recommendations for you. Although, both of these books deal with our topic – the approach and the spark for contemplation are quite different.

Japanese Death Poems (compiled by Yoel Hoffman. Tuttle Publishing (1986). My copy has many pages dog-eared and the haiku verse is better than having you break your concentration with the temper of Jules (while eating a Big Kahuna Burger).

May I share one that I like?

Gesshu Soko (died at age of 79) -

Inhale, exhale
Forward, back
Living, dying:
     Arrows, let flown each to each
      Meet midway and slice
      The void in aimless flight –
      Thus I return to the source.

Spoon River Anthology by Edgar Lee Masters

All I can say is that you should a copy of this have this nearby – read and learn – and live from it. It is our American version of Death as a teacher – and a far more poetic way to convey meaning beyond the grave – than our standard obituaries. Now, I would like to share one with you. But it you can try to make this a multi-media experience. Perhaps some synthesesia.

Bring forward for your visual review a copy of Arnold Böcklin’s Isle of the Dead.
            Play Sergei Rachmaninov’s – The Isle of the Dead (EMI Classics)
           And read this:

            Widow McFarlane

I was the Widow McFarlane,
Weaver of carpets for all the village.
And I pity you still at the loom of life,
You are singing to the shuttle
And lovingly watching the work of your hands,
If you reach the date of hate, of terrible truth.
For the cloth of life is woven, you know,
To a pattern hidden under the loom –
A pattern you never see!
And you weave high-hearted, singing, singing,
You guard the threads of love and friendship
For noble figures in gold and purple.
And long after other eyes can see
You have woven a moon-strip of cloth,
You laugh in your strength, for Hope o’erlays it
With shapes of love and beauty.
The loom stops short! The patterns out!
You’re alone in the room! You have woven a shroud!
And hate of it lays you in it!

———————————————–

            And here is the kicker -

            Weaving – loom – threads – shroud – pattern. I appreciate what Schopenhauer meant (now – more than ever) about the second half of life (see my previous blog posting on A quantum of tranquility…) - 

We try to make a pattern from the cloth of our life with Death as the master teacher nearby –
Have you begun to weave yet?

                Thanks, Scott D. Wright