When I am, death is not

On humanity and fragility

“The hour of departure has arrived, and we go our separate ways, I to die, and you to live. Which of these two is better only God knows.” – Socrates

I went to a funeral this week, so I’ve been thinking a lot about death and fragility. It’s something you’re cognitively aware of but don’t really understand, not until you’re sat in front of the coffin itself, a wooden box the new forever home of this person, this human being, once fully conscious, wholly capable of laughing and weeping and coughing and of guilt and embarrassment and unmitigated joy. All gone now, permanently, forever. A full life, boxed up, and that’s just, supposed to be it?

The grandchildren told stories of kitchen mishaps and wholesome car rides during the tribute readings. Fond recollections of experiences now committed entirely to memory, recited over and over to each other with bittersweet tuts and careful, measured-out smiles. I find it difficult to face the reality that this will happen to me, too.

That one day the people I leave behind will sit around, dabbing at their eyes, telling stories that slowly morph into something totally distinct from the original, a patina developed by exaggerating only those best qualities in the deceased, as I saw happen today. To think that’s what becomes of us all, a series of amiable tales passed from nephew to grandchild to wife.

This is an unavoidable fate, and our sole imperative is to leave behind a character deserving of those hyperbolic stories. To “wring out every last bit of living”, as Libba Bray said.

The priest read from Ecclesiastes 3:1–8.

There is a time for everything,

and a season for every activity under the heavens:

a time to be born and a time to die,

a time to plant and a time to uproot,

a time to kill and a time to heal,

a time to tear down and a time to build,

a time to weep and a time to laugh,

a time to mourn and a time to dance,

a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them,

a time to embrace and a time to refrain from embracing,

a time to search and a time to give up,

a time to keep and a time to throw away,

a time to tear and a time to mend,

a time to be silent and a time to speak,

a time to love and a time to hate,

a time for war and a time for peace.

There comes a time for everything, but all of those times are succeeded by a being out of time altogether, a final deadline of experience, events, emotions – of everything. A last toll, a finish line. And then experience, whatever it is that ties together all the events “you” have lived through, just stops. Death is an obliteration of experience, a total, calamitous erasure of living.

It is dark, and violent, and terrifying, and to pretend it is anything but is a self-soothing ignorance. It is the ultimate monster in the woods, the unavoidable line in the sand that you’re being carried towards, screaming, kicking. It is terrifying to die.

Epicurus tries to tell you not to fear death, because “When I am, death is not, and when death is, I am not”. The two can never coincide – you’ll never actually experience your own death, so there’s nothing to be scared of, right?

What Epicurus failed to grasp, evidently, is that the notion of “I am not” is completely horrifying. The notion of not existing, of never existing, of never seeing, or hearing, or feeling anything again – of not being.

The fact that, as Epicurus suggests, I personally won’t “experience” the after-effects of that (because I won’t be experiencing anything) is far from consolation, it’s the exact thing that’s so awful about death, about being a totalising, infinite consciousness in a fragile shell.

The human body is a fragile casing – it cuts, breaks, and denatures. It protects us only from the most insignificant threats. It is a miracle, from a physical standpoint, that you’re alive at any moment, when you think about the sheer number of threats to your body, and its inability to defend against many of them. To live is, largely, miraculous.

Standing in front of the coffin, the understanding of those two inverted axes, the fragility of the body and the finality of death, are fully realised. They are real, and brutal. They can no longer be only concepts in the mind, when you’re staring – you’re weeping – at evidence of their applicability.

In light of it all it seems, then, that the best one can do, the most noble and profound goal, is to leave gracefully, with the knowledge that the family you left behind – three children, numerous cousins, nieces, and nephews, and eight adoring grandchildren – saw you out with love, with happy remembrances, and with the desire to live as you lived.