Death

It comes to us all -- yet we do not fully believe in death. It is our inevitable future, one of the few constants of an inconstant universe -- yet death is a mystery.  Maybe all living beings, including humans are not designed to fully comprehend death.  Certainly, our minds tend to slip over the reality of our own deaths, as if the idea were teflon coated.

Recently, I have been surrounded by death, immersed in the experience of inevitable loss.  Friends are dead or dying, clients are losing loved ones, even animals are expiring.   Something in me is drawn to and fascinated by the strangeness of it all.  Since I was very young, I have looked on death as the final frontier, the ultimate challenge, a place beyond which understanding ceases.  I have always wanted to know and experience death.

Interest in death is taboo in US society.  We are taught to avoid death, pump it full of embalming fluid, not be "morbid."  I am reminded of when my mother was laid out in her coffin in the village mortuary in Ireland.  There was little attempt to prettify the body.  She looked very dead.  Yet children as young as 7 years old came in off the street, looked her full in the face, crossed themselves and offered condolences.  They were obviously curious and unafraid.     

Death brings up such profound questions: 

Where does the profound richness of life go when someone dies? Does it dissipate out into the darkness, snuffed out like a flickering flame? Does it leave the body and go we know not where?

I have had too many experiences of the dead and dying to believe that aliveness simply dissipates.