I think about death at least once a day, not in a tragic way, but in a meditative way. I suppose it's because that's the only way I can make sense of living against the backdrop of death. At best, it brings me gratitude, but at its worst, it makes me aware of my powerless, weak, feeble, fragile state of being a human.
Consider this: when we are born, from our very first breath, we enter this world under the indisputable condition that we must also exit it, but we barely acknowledge or talk about it. We try to distance ourselves from death to preserve the delicate equilibrium of living. It was a contract we signed at birth, and we somehow managed to overlook it till the end. But this oversight holds no power in the court of existence.
Can we talk about death?
Death first made itself known to me when I was six years old. My mother was cooking in the kitchen. I stood at the doorway, watching her short, tiny body from behind cutting herbs. She wore a red apron and yellow gloves, deeply concerned with the state of parsley and cilantro at hand. I don't know why, but suddenly, the notion of non-existence infiltrated my young mind. What does it feel like not to exist? I could not fathom the thought. It was impossible to imagine a world in which I did not exist—it was unacceptable for my six-year-old mind. So I thought instead of how my absence would feel to others. “Mom, if I leave, would you miss me?” I asked innocently, curiously. She didn't even glance up—lost maybe in the fragrance of tarragon and basil, or perhaps she was elsewhere in her thoughts. She was possibly asleep.
I had witnessed women around me sleepwalk through life. They navigated daily chores and parenting in a somnambulant murkiness. To coexist with the world around them—a world that expected too much and gave so little to them—they had to retreat into numbness. To be present meant to feel the pain of centuries inflicted upon them, so they preferred their fingers touching the soft body of the chives in a trance-like state rather than brushing against the rough edges of their reality.
I was only six and not privy to the depth of their condition. I needed to be heard, so I walked into the kitchen, took the largest knife my small hand could manage from the drawer, and returned to my post at the kitchen doorway. This time, I was determined to be heard. “Mom...Mom!' I said, waving the giant knife in the air. She barely looked at me from the edge of her eyes.
“What would you do if I killed myself with this knife?” I asked, knowing that I was entering an uncharted territory of grown-ups.
She turned red instantly, her eyes wide as if just awakened from a dreadful nightmare--she gasped for air. “I would kill you myself! Now get out of my sight!” she screeched. Terrified by the threat of being killed by my own mother, I dropped the knife at the doorway and ran outside to ride my bike.
We avoid talking about death because we're afraid of the unknown and uncomfortable with the finality it represents. ‘The undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveler returns puzzles the will' indeed. The after-life lack of access to basic infrastructure, including internet connectivity, has left us all in darkness. And no one has returned to give us the news of the other side. Our helplessness against such an existential dilemma makes us turn away from it completely, but it's hard to ignore the most important part of life: death.
Can we talk about death?
My second encounter with death came at the age of nine during a car accident that took my father's life. Though I was in the car too, I don't recall the crash itself, but the image of his lifeless body, covered with a white sheet in the emergency room, is engraved in my memory. Whether this recollection was real or invented by my imagination, my father indeed died in that car crash. Even though I knew in my heart that my father had died, my family insisted that it was just an imaginary story and that he was in the ICU. Maybe it was because they didn't want my mother and sister, who were also in the same car accident, to find out due to their fragile physical state. Or maybe they did not want to be the bearer of life expiration news. So, I found out about his death a month later by accident. One night, as I lay in bed quietly grieving my dead father, my brother asked me what was wrong. “I miss Dad,” I managed to say in between my tears. “There's no reason to cry. We're all going to die one day. Yesterday was Dad, today it could be me, and tomorrow it might be you. Stop crying. You're making everyone uncomfortable,” he responded coldly, like a surgeon doing a routine hip replacement surgery. His lack of empathy told me the truth, raw and naked for the first time. No one had ever said it that way. And I instantly became aware of my finitude lying down in my nine-year-old skin.
We can't define the meaning of life without death. They're two sides of the same coin. How can we understand light without darkness, hunger without fullness, peace without war, or life without death? It is only in the face of our mortality that we can grasp the nature of existence. To not accept death is to deny oneself.
Can we talk about death?
Last year, consciousness left me without warning. My husband watched as my eyes rolled back, my body stiffening into a fifteen-second convulsion, something called Vasovagal Syncope caused by dehydration, low sodium, and crashing blood pressure. Internally, I had a different experience. I was on a roller coaster passing through my life and time and space. I was racing at such speed that my flesh and bones were set on fire, disintegrating until I was nearly nothing. And then, I snapped back to consciousness with a desperate need for air and an overwhelming zeal for life pulsating through me. There I was, lying on the ground, sobbing with gratitude for life—for being alive, for experiencing, for the simple ability to touch the cold ground under my body. That was the closest I have ever felt to life. Almost dead.
Isn't death just a transformation from one form to another? It's not only physical death we dread. We create our personas, as real as our physical ones, wearing them like second skins. We become attached to our identities, holding onto them tightly, unwilling to let go, even if we wish to. Even though I have not experienced death yet—hence the existence of this piece—I have encountered death many times in the form of transitioning from childhood to adolescence, from innocence to sexuality, from homeland to exile, from addiction to freedom, from betrayer to betrayed. I have suffered heartbreak, tasted success, shed bad habits, settled down, let go of old dreams, dreamed new visions—in all these, death was uncomfortable and yet inevitable.
Can we talk about death?
Consider most of the stories told, whether religious, scientific, or philosophical, about death, all to assure us that our existence is not in vain. The fear of non-existence and the dread of existing keeps us on the edge. It's challenging to grapple with death, so we endeavor to craft a narrative about why we matter. And maybe we do matter. And maybe we don’t, but one thing for sure is that death is like a chandelier hanging above our heads, shining light on our finitude, each crystal a reflection of the ways we have lived. To look up at this chandelier, to see your reflection in it, in the words of Robert Greene, “It's not gloomy; it's not morbid. It's liberating.”
Can we talk about death?
The only thing I would disagree with is the premise that we sign a contract to die upon our birth. The forces of nature and time sign it without our consent. We don't get to choose to be born, the same way we don't choose our birth sex. The only thing we can choose is how we live and in that life, we hope to choose how we die- which is also often beyond our control.
These are etherial things that transcend decision and will. Our living was decided before we were even able to attain consciousness of what it means to live and what it means to die. Maybe this is why we as people often look for purpose in life and purpose in death.
In my time as a police officer, I've encountered people who were dying, dead, and in some cases, choose to no longer live. In nearly every case, a cause could be easily identified as to why someone passed, but rarely do we ever know exactly what they were thinking or feeling before they were gone.
I do enjoy the ideas and experiences you've shared here as I often think of death as it relates to what I want to accomplish before I die. I think of life as a period in which I can pursue or choose not to pursue what I discover is important to me, but as I've now lived over a third of my life, I often find myself battling with the idea; have I done enough if I died tomorrow? That answer has always been no. Who knows if that will change the older I get.
This is my favorite piece by far. Mellifluous and sublime. Come for coffee, stay for the conversation about death.