Friends.
It’s theory time.
I’m always developing theories. Which I guess is the same thing as having ideas about something, but, I don’t know, it sounds better.
OK, so here goes:
I am, of course, always trying to figure out why we avoid everything death in this culture. We don’t talk about it, we don’t plan for it, we do everything we can to try to imagine it’s not going to happen. Even though we know for certain that we and everyone we love and everyone in the world right now and every other living thing is going to die. Also all the people not born yet, they’ll die too, after they’ve lived for a while.
One hundred percent certainty are some super high odds.
One would think we might … be more curious about the process and what comes after death, or at least more creative in our planning for death.
Just goes to show what great actors and actresses we are. And the Oscar goes to … every single one of you for your role in I Am Never Going to Die! 👏👏👏
As you can probably imagine I’ve been to a lot of funerals, memorial services, whatever you want to call them. I’ve sat with so many people and helped them plan a service for someone who has died. I’ve been to back field services, funeral home services, church services, graveside services.
I read obituaries like a crack addict getting her hit. I love to see what sugars off as the story of someone’s life, after they die.
I don’t think I have ever read an obituary or been to a service where the full story of a person’s life was presented.
When someone dies we tend to elevate them to saint status, even though we know full well that they were both saint and not-saint in life.
Death makes us go to the closet to find the Cloak of Amazingness. We drape the dead in all of their greatness, conveniently forgetting all of their … humanness.
And, here’s where the theory part kicks in, I think this is one of the reasons why we avoid death so vehemently. When we mourn as if we’ve lost a perfect person it makes the sting of death that much harder to bear.
When you think about it, it’s a little weird, right?
We all know the person who died was an alcoholic who made our lives difficult. We know we had to spend years running to his side every time his poor choices landed him in the ER again. We know the person who died was kind of a lousy parent who spent more time cultivating her wardrobe than she did with her kids and grandkids.
We know the person who died was both a jerk and a good friend.
We know the person who died was both a generous philanthropist and a lousy dad.
We know the person who died was both a great teacher and unreliable.
It’s the missing and, I think, that makes death harder for us to bear. If we told a respectful version of the truth when someone dies, then perhaps we can send him or her on their way, grateful for their life, honest about what it was and hopeful they will find peace in death.
Instead, like the photo albums of yore, we hold on to every great moment, every happy trip, ever family celebration and drop the rest, leaving us with a lopsided story about a person’s life.
And we do this over and over and over and over, with every obituary, and every memorial service. We put the good times on parade and speak the truth in hushed tones in back rooms, over whiskey at the reception after the public display.
My theory is that if we could be more honest about who we are, who they were, when someone dies then we could better integrate the truth of death into our days: this is life, it’s complicated and the humans in it are complex and one day we will die and in our death we will still be as complex as we were in life.
If you spell my name backwards you get ass at the beginning: assileM. I will be the first to admit that I have been, many, many times in my life, an ass. I have made terrible choices, done awful things. There is so much that I could have done better. But I didn’t come out of the box fully formed and neither did you. The whole point of life is to make progress along the way. We are supposed to make mistakes so that we can make better choices next time. We are built to be flawed, it’s not something to be ashamed of, it’s something to be honest about.
When honestly enters the room I notice, always, a sigh of relief. Everyone’s shoulders drop a little. Everyone gets the opportunity to stop trying to pretend that everything is OK. It’s exhausting to carry around a facade, isn’t it?
I would love for us to collectively agree that making mistakes, being flawed is OK, it’s part of the curriculum in the School Of Life, even though we are trained from early on to get all A’s and to win every race. That’s not life, that’s someone else’s bs agenda.
Alright listen, I’ve got to get on a plane today, to Denver and beyond, to see some of my kids. We’re going to have this conversation: when I die, tell the truth. No pretending I was an angel. I’ll start working on that the minute after I die, but here on Earth, oof, this was and is a mess. A good mess, a nice mess, but truly a mess. Talk about that when I die, how I was part of the mess and how I tried, some of the time, to make it better. And how sometimes I succeeded and sometimes I failed.
Tell the truth. We all know about the connection between truth and freedom.
I offer one of Tony Hoagland’s as a good starting place:
In The Beautiful Rain
Hearing that old phrase “a good death,”
which I still don’t exactly understand,
I’ve decided I’ve already
had so many, I don’t need another.
Though before I go
I wish to offer some revisions
to the existing vocabulary.
Let us decline the pretense
of the hyper-factual: the
myocardial infarction; the arterial embolism;
the postoperative complication.
Let us forgo the euphemistic:
the “passed away”
and “shuffled off this mortal coil,”
as worn out and passive as an old dildo.
Now, if poetry can help, it is time to say,
“She fell from her trapeze at 2 AM
in the midst of a triple backflip
in front of her favorite witnesses.”
Let us say, “In broad daylight,
Ms. Abigail Miller
conducted her daring escape
before life, that Crook,
had completely picked her pocket.”
It is not too late for some hero
to appear and volunteer
in the name of setting an example:
Let us say, “He flew with abandon,
and a joyous expression on his face,
like a gust of wind
or a man in a necktie
from the last dinner party he would ever have to attend.”
To say, “He was the egg
that elected to break
for the greater cause of the omelet;
the good piece of wood
that leapt into the fire.”
“Though grudging at first,
he fell like the rain,
with his eyes wide open,
willing to change.”
I was not … magnificent.
Annnddd, all complex human problems snd emotions can be solved by some talking head sound bytes. Easy
Social media is like death, “We put the good times on parade”. Everyone is beautiful. Everyday is great. All food is beautiful, tasty, and made in minutes w no mess. Another theory for you Meliissa 😉. Safe travels.