How to die
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This week’s question comes to us anonymously:
How do you deal with your impending mortality?
I believe that the best way to die is to do it once, and right at the end.
I’m trying to remember when I first learned that we all die. (Spoilers!) And while I can’t pinpoint the exact moment, I imagine it must’ve been pretty early. I grew up in a Catholic family, which meant crucifixes were all over the house. At some point I had to ask what they were all about.
Some kids learn about death when their gerbil kicks it. It’s a good lesson. Gerbils, although very cute, are infinitely replaceable. Some kids learn about death when they’re told the almighty being responsible for absolutely everything was murdered, which is a little more of a kick to the gut than tossing Mr. Peaches in a shoebox, having a little backyard ceremony, then stopping for ice cream on the way to pick up Mr. Peaches II.
After being told that god was dead, I was told that he did it to save us, because we were born filthy and were destined to go to hell for it. But, for logic or magicks that I’ve never fully understood, because he let himself get murdered he broke that cycle and now we could go to heaven when we died… maybe. But only if we followed the rules. (Which, if you think about it, sounds like he didn’t do it for us as much as he wanted to get control of the craps table for himself.) After that I spent eight years in Catholic School, which is a racket designed to convince you—using terror and guilt—to live the one life you’ve been given in the service of the church, with the promise that doing so would grant you a fantastic payday. But only once you were dead. Don’t worry though, kid. Let me tell you about the afterlife! I was maybe in 6th grade when I realized this was all a con.
Which brings us back to square one: we are all going to die. I myself have not died yet. (This sentence will age badly.) Some people believe that dying is a transitional phase, and some people believe that death is an end phase. And while I count myself among the latter, I have no desire to talk anybody into—or out of—a belief system. I’ll respect yours, and I hope that you, in turn, respect mine. (I do reserve the right to shit on Catholicism, for reasons.)
The first person whose death I remember is my great-grandmother’s. I didn’t know her very well. I only saw her in the summer. And by the time I was aware of her she was already lost to Alzheimer’s, although we didn’t call it that yet. By the time I was aware of her, she was a shadow, going from room to room in my grandparent’s house, sitting in front of the TV, being chaperoned for the occasional walk by my grandmother, eating silently at dinner. Then one summer she wasn’t there. I didn’t register her loss as much as I registered my grandmother’s pain from losing her mother.
In time, we lost my grandmother the same way. When you lose someone to Alzheimer’s you lose them twice, and the first time tends to be the harder of the two. The person you know is gone, and you are left with a ghost. A ghost who has the same shape as your grandmother, and the same smile as your grandmother. And you love her, because she is your grandmother. But your grandmother has also left. The pain of being able to touch someone who is no longer there is unbearable. And when the second death comes, the death of body, there is almost a sense of relief, and along with that, of course, the shame of feeling it.
I will also lose my father the same way, except that I’ve already lost him in ways that I’m not ready to talk about yet. He was a ghost for most of my life.
I’m now old enough that I’ve seen the majority of my older family members die. As well as teachers, and friends. At 58, I’m also old enough now that when my own death occurs I’ve aged out of that period in life where people greet the news with statements like “gone too soon.” I’ve moving into my “he had a good life” era. Which means you made it to the end, or at least the zone of life that people begin to think of as an acceptable age to die. Which isn’t to say that I, myself, am in a hurry for it to happen. I’m not. I enjoy being here. My people are here. My stuff is here. And like I already said, I think of death as an endgame. I still have a lot of stuff I want to do.
We’re all going to die. (Spoiler.) We should choose to do it once. Right at the end.
The sad truth about death is that it isn’t a singular event. It occurs over the course of an entire life. For some of us death is a slow-motion event that occurs over the course of our lives. When we make choices to endanger others, we die a little bit. When we refuse to help someone in need, we die a little bit. When we choose personal gain over the health of our community, we die a little bit. When we present a fascist autocrat with an award to curry favor, we die a little bit. When we turn our heads to other people’s suffering, we die a little bit. And with every small death we become more of a ghost of the person we used to be.
As a child, I watched my mother die almost every day as she acquiesced to the brutality and the gaslighting of my father. I watched as she slowly disappeared into a ghost world where she thought she would be safer. I watched as my father would pull her out of her ghost world only to manifest his rage on her again. I watched as her joy slowly disappeared, replaced by bitterness. And I knew she wasn’t happy in that ghost world because eventually she spent her life trying to pull her children into it with her. To be a ghost among the living is a lonely thing. I am watching my mother die in slow motion. Of course, every sentence in this paragraph is passive, because to write it the other way would be to acknowledge that my father slowly killed my mother over the course of her life.
Eventually I will bury a ghost, and with that final death, the death of body, will come relief, along with the shame that comes with it. I believe ghosts are real. They walk amongst us. Not as lost souls of those who’ve passed, but as the weakened souls of those who die in slow motion.
Dying in slow motion might be the most horrible way to die. We are watching our nation die in slow motion. With every acquiescence to fascism we become a bit less of what we used to be. We become more of a ghost. In our fear, we believe that if we die just a little bit there will be less of us to hurt, or the monsters will be satisfied. But monsters are never satisfied. In our fear, we hand over those who are even more vulnerable than us, hoping that their sacrifice will appease a monster that will never be appeased. But an attempt to delay your own death is a death unto itself. And when I said our nation was dying in slow motion I meant us. Every time we give the monster a piece of ourselves we die a little. If we’re going to die, let’s do it all at once, and at the end.
As James Baldwin wrote in The Fire Next Time: “…one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one's death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life.” The goal of life is to earn your death. To live it in such a way that death becomes a celebration of how that life was lived. To live it in such a way that we arrive at the end knowing that we wrung as much joy from the experience as we implanted in others. To live it in such a way that death itself mourns your passing. To live it in such a way that those whose lives you touched will gather together to remember you, and graft pieces of your heart onto their own. To live it in such a way that those who are still living their own lives are driven to keep living them. Let your death become a model for living.
I was lucky enough to be alive when Henry Kissinger did the greatest thing he’s ever done, which was die. Throughout my life I’ve seen plenty of death. I’ve seen death celebrated, and I’ve seen the dead celebrated. I’ve seen what it looks like when death is earned, which is not the same thing as death being celebrated. We earned Henry Kissinger’s death, he did not. We owe the dead only the truth, and to canonize the dead is to disrespect the ghosts their own lives were responsible for creating. To wash away the evil deeds of the dead is to take that death upon ourselves. Living your life in a way that people celebrate your death is a choice that certain people make, and in their death we should honor their choice by telling the true story of who they were, and the true cost of their lives.
I have no control over how I will die. It’s a thing that will come. It could be violent and quick. It could be slow and annoying. It could come tomorrow. It could be decades away. I know death is there, lurking in the shadows, trying to snatch a little bit of life every day. Sometimes it does manage to snatch a piece. The shadow of my death was born at the same time as I was. Living alongside me. Whispering in my ear. Offering me an easy exit, which I’ve continued to refuse to take. Instead, I whisper back. I tell death how good apple pie is. I tell death how nice it feels to be in a crowd watching a band together. I tell death how nice it feels to sit on the couch next to someone you love. I tell death how amazing it feels to have a dog lick your face.
If I could choose my manner of death, I would choose to have enough time to tell those that I love that I do love them. I would choose to have enough time to tell those I’ve hurt that I’m sorry. But because I refuse to choose the manner and the time of my death I’ve instead chosen to do these things on a daily basis.
I want to earn my death by living my life as if it’s not a practice life. Earning your death means that it is there, whole, for you at the end. A complete thing that hasn’t been borrowed from in life. And you are a complete thing that hasn’t borrowed from death during life but met it, whole, at the end.
We should aim to live our lives in a way that people pick up our unfinished work, because we will leave unfinished work, and finish it. We should aim to live our lives as if this moment—right here—is the one that matters, and should be lived to its fullest. We should aim to live our lives in a way that when death finally comes—and it will—the ones that are left are happy to carry your memories for you.
Because the truth of it is that as long as the people you love carry a piece of your heart grafted onto their hearts, you never truly die.
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