Conversations with a Soul (33 page)

The question is particularly potent when the manner in which death claims someone feels all wrong and violates our sense of justice, or our belief in the goodness and orderliness of life.

I remember speaking with a woman shortly after she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. She confessed to an overwhelming sense of
outrage
that her body, which she had cared for and cared about, which had thus far behaved in a trustworthy and predictable manner, should suddenly turn against her and initiate the possibility of her death.

Her cry of
why
had nothing to do with a need for information about the clinical nature of her disease, but was rooted in a deep sense of betrayal that led her to question her dependence in the dependability of Life, her faith in God and the grounds for having any confidence in the future.

She eventually beat the cancer but she had to revaluate many of the assumptions upon which she had relied.

Her struggle to live with the frailty and uncertainty of being human led to a remarkable gentleness with others, especially towards those who faced what she had faced. She also learned to embrace a healthy measure of ambivalence when it came to questions about the future, even though she never lost her enthusiasm for life.

She reordered her priorities, such that in her relationships with others she demanded a far greater level of honesty than that which she had accepted prior to the diagnoses and treatment.

Furthermore, having looked death in the eye she understood that one day she would lose the freedom to reach into the future which made the present all the more precious. She became impatient with procrastination and pointless delays and railed against the promise of intimate moments that were set aside, often for no good reason.

In order to live alongside of death, she had to restructure the terms through which she engaged life. There had never been even the vaguest hint that one day she would die, now she had to take account of that reality.

Like her, I have need of a model, a structure, a common configuration, and some way of accommodating to the stark reality that one day I will die. I sense a need to put death into a context that will keep it in place and prevent it from overflowing into every lived moment.

I refuse to have my life surrounded and given meaning by death; instead, I choose to live my death contextualized by the wonder and the grand vistas painted by life.

However it comes, I want my death to be more than merely the winding down of a biological mechanism. Just as I have wanted my life to have meaning and purpose, beyond merely a name on a birth certificate and another on an undertaker’s log, so do I want my death to have some significance, at the very least,
to me
.

A good friend helped me to focus on this issue of dying with significance from the point of view of constructing a  'bucket list.' He wrote:

I had a conversation with a friend the other day who said he was going to lead a retreat around the idea of a bucket list. I paused for a moment and then said, "I hope that you are not going to focus only on the idea of a bucket list consisting of big, dramatic, perhaps risky, costly things. I hope you'll give room for people having a drive to being kind or generous, spending time in the park with the neighbour families, visiting the kids abandoned at the sub-acute hospital around the corner, etc.

Because I am a lover of life, I have never felt more alive than when clambering over one horizon after another, so that I might explore what mysteries and wonders I have not yet encountered. Sometimes in pursuit of discovering a place I have never been before, sometimes to explore the boundaries of human relationships, and sometimes simply to dream about the possibilities hidden in tomorrow, of which I understand very little. For these reasons, I cherish a hope that death will come as the ending of one journey of exploration and the beginning of another.

This means that I need a mental image of death within which I am free to ask questions as well as express pain, fear, anger or whatever emotions the experience arouses without yielding to a nihilistic destruction of my faith in life; nor being overwhelmed by cynicism.

I know I cannot answer many of the questions, and that my best attempts will always be provisional because life is always changing. I also know that what answers I do manage to frame need to have some tough integrity to them. I remember recoiling after reading a scroll at the entrance to a mausoleum suggesting that the mourners should not think of their loved ones as dead but rather as having been set free to enjoy the park-like ambience of that place!

I refuse to live with the delusion that death is a matter of leaving this earth for a stroll in a garden, although I would be quite happy to be proved wrong!

Perhaps it is enough simply to
ask
the questions, for in asking I bring a certain legitimacy and objectivity to my struggle and then I am free to walk around my questions, to weigh them and try to understand each nuance brought to life in the question.

Is death primarily about destruction and disintegration? Is it the prelude to some form of reincarnation or is it about being born anew into other realities, in the same way that rain evaporates to become the next cloud and the next rain shower, each time changing its structure, yet not ceasing to be? And how shall one discover the truth about dying, and more importantly, surmise what lies beyond death? What could possibly constitute evidence when we come to chart the territory that lies beyond the experience of dying, that  'other world' which is completely unknown?

Or is it really, completely unknown? Have not other cultures and beliefs passed on to us hints and insights in their attempts to deal with the same questions we ask ourseves?

I believe we all have questions like these lodged somewhere in our psyche, each legitimate and wanting to be articulated; each yearning to be shared with a few significant persons, even though the sharing frequently opens the door to yet more questions.

What strange forms these terminal questions take and how varied their origins! Sometimes they are prompted by the death of another, particularly if that other is a close friend or relative, sometimes they just pop into our heads, just there without rhyme or reason. Sometimes the questions arrive as a response to something we’ve read or a few words lodged in a conversation, which refuse to disappear and be forgotten, and sometimes they accost us because we have been summoned to bring comfort to another in grief and suddenly we are brought face to face with our lack of answers.

I am not alone with my questions for different cultures have adopted behaviours viewed as an appropriate response to the experience of death almost always
based on their particular view of death
. Wearing dark clothing, for example, or a black arm band for a specified period of time, is common practice in those cultures where death is viewed as the 'grim reaper,' the personification of tragedy, the destroyer who lays waste and separates those who have dared to love from their beloved.

Conversely, Hinduism views death as a turning point and excessive mourning is thought to inhibit the progress of the soul, hence white, rather than dark clothing is regarded as appropriate. Judaism has designed a carefully constructed series of steps, based mainly on periods of time, to assist mourners to re-enter the community and pick-up the threads of their lives again, reflecting the Jewish view that:

Death is a natural process. Our deaths, like our lives, have meaning and are all part of G-d's plan. In addition, we have a firm belief in an afterlife, a world to come, where those who have lived a worthy life will be rewarded.
⁹⁴

Because the experience of death is so universal, different theologies, mythologies and cultures have much to teach us, particularly when our Western culture is so short on answers. So that rather than limiting my discussion about death to a single religious system, I have chosen to be open to different opinions, trusting that our common humanity is powerful enough to bridge the differences. After all, beyond the myopia of all fundamentalist dogma, who dares to claim the final word especially when the subject is so impenetrable?

You have already met the Neanderthal people, whose approach to death holds an inexplicable fascination for me. It’s certainly amongst the earliest records of a people confronting the experience of grief. Denied written explanations and the logic demanded by writing, we are left with the stark evidence of
how they behaved
and what they
did
in the presence of death. If we would understand how the Neanderthals dealt with death we are forced to listen to our own hearts, to surrender to personal experience and imagination in order to understand them.

We move now to reflect on two other ancient views of death, and as we might expect, wrapped in the strange language and world view, we will meet ourselves for the struggle with death is a universal one.

Any conversation about death, must of necessity, address grief.

I have often listened to profuse apologies, offered by men and women for yielding to powerful emotions when faced by the death of someone beloved. At such times I’ve wondered why they felt the need to apologize. Was their understanding of death such that they felt they ought to rise above grief, or was it because they felt obligated to spare others from a display of their pain? Either way I frequently found myself wishing that we had a model of death that included legitimate expressions of pain, a feature sadly lacking in our 'stiff upper lip' Western European culture, where signs of grieving tend to initiate acute embarrassment in those witnessing someone’s pain.

Different cultures have approached grief in differing ways, almost all of them working to accommodate the human experience of mourning. The ancient Greek and Roman worlds even went so far as to legitimize public displays of mourning, and frequently assigning to women specific roles in the ritual expressions of grief. The Old Testament contains numerous accounts of men and women lamenting the loss of a loved one. It is impossible to escape the contemporary agony of a father who cries over the body of his son,
O my son Absalom
,
my son
,
my son Absalom
! Would God I had died for thee.

That cry is a universal one and is echoed in the mythical
Epic of Gilgamesh,
possibly the oldest written story on earth. Inscribed on twelve clay tablets, this ancient Sumerian document, wrestles with the themes of death and grief.

The principle character in the epic, Gilgamesh, is a semi-divine figure that was fathered by a god and born of a human woman.

The story begins with an account of how, enthroned as king of Uruk, Gilgamesh proved to be arrogant and hopeless, much preferring the life of a playboy above that of serving his people. Using his royal authority he spent his days claiming sexual privileges from any woman he desired, including those promised in marriage to another.

The good citizens of Uruk soon had enough of Gilgamesh’s irresponsible and rapine behaviour and complained to the sky-god Anu that Gilgamesh was destroying their city. The gods heard the people’s cry and one of them, Aruru, created a foil for Gilgamesh, the wild man Enkidu.

The first encounter between the two hardly boded well for the future, for no sooner had they set eyes on each other than a fight broke out between them. Yet it wasn’t long before Gilgamesh learned to respect Enkidu’s strength, wisdom and sound judgments, and they became inseparable in their friendship and love for each other. The bond between them had a profound effect on Gilgamesh, changing him from his old predatory ways, to become a wise and responsible ruler.

Following his change in character, the goddess Ishtar was quite taken with the reformed Gilgamesh and proposed marriage to him. Gilgamesh, however, mindful of the fate of her previous lovers, declined her offer.

Spurned and angry, Ishtar decided to settle accounts with Gilgamesh and she had the god Anu send the sacred bull of heaven to deal with him. However, Gilgamesh and Enkidu, disinclined to be trampled and gored to death, trapped and killed the bull.

Unfortunately, and not a little unfairly, the bull’s death infuriated the gods. Someone needed to pay and a debate ensued as to who should die for killing the sacred bull!

The conclusion, revealed to Enkidu, in a dream, was that since, Gilgamesh was a human
and
a divine creation whereas Enkidu was (only) a human animal creature, Enkidu should die. He subsequently fell ill and had a series of terrifying dreams culminating in a dream about Hell, a 
'House of Dust'
where all the dead eventually ended up. Finally, after twelve days of suffering, Enkidu died.

Gilgamesh was devastated by Enkidu’s death, crying out;

Hear me, O Elders of Uruk, hear me, O men! I mourn for Enkidu, my friend, I shriek in anguish like a mourner.

For the first time in his life Gilgamesh has to face, not only the agony of sorrow, but also the realization that death will ultimately be his fate as well. Distraught, Gilgamesh could not bring himself to dispose of the body of his friend and kept it until it started to decay.