This is An Article About Death

I’m at my birthday dinner and I keep bringing up advanced care directives.

I’ve just turned 32 and I want to be prepared. I’ve completed the forms, but my mother-in-law has yet to do so. She jests that I should be her medical proxy, as I’m the only one in the family who understands her wishes. I tell her that we can spend time working on the advanced care directive together.

I’m at brunch with my friends, and I’ve just attended my first death over coffee salon. I enjoy the contemplation, unable to take a break from the serious questions and thoughts as my friends share their latest updates and talk upcoming plans. I keep mentioning how much I enjoyed the salon, but everyone keeps bristling at the idea of discussing mortality.

I try to think back to my first understanding of death. I’m reminded of The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman. A crusader, Antonius Block, is visited by Death, where they play a game of chess. I find it beautiful, elegant. The type of movie that calms me.

The existentialism trend continues, diving deeper into Satre, de Beauvoir and Camus. I find comfort that others have wrestled with these questions of meaning.

And now I’m here, at a conference just for End of Life. The End Well 2024 event has over 800 people in attendance. Death doulas, palliative care professionals, hospice leaders, grievers, social workers, chaplains and supporters. It’s the first time I’ve experienced a conference where egos are not driving interactions. Everyone here has come to the same conclusion. We’re all going to die.

I’ve been immersing myself deeper into the End of Life (EOL) space, finding a strange sense of calm and security. I know mortality is an anxious topic, but for some odd reason I find it clarifying. Each time I evaluate my life choices next to inevitable impermanence, I get more direction. I wonder if its because my experience with grief has been limited. I haven’t lost a loved one unexpectedly. Everyone who has died in my life died with a knowledge that their time was coming. Would I feel different about death if the loss was random? Unexplainable? Unfair?

Probably.

I still sit with mortality as a companion, rather than foe. I’m finding that the universal thread that can be traced through out time and place always comes back to grief. I know it’s painful. I know it’s unbearable. But I can’t help and admire how much of life comes from death.

These are not new conclusions. Nothing revelatory. I find myself getting serious about mortality when I was in my last depression. In December 2022 I lay in the dirt on the top of a small hill. I was begging to understand what my purpose was. What life was. Why any of it matter. I pressed my body deep into the earth, burying my face into the weeds that surrounded me, desperate for some type of resolution. The only thought that appeared was that ‘I belonged to the earth’. At some point, I will die, my body will return to the earth and it will — hopefully — compost and become nutrients for life to continue.

I find this to be satisfying enough. I will eventually die and I contribute to new life through my own decomposition.

But what to do between now and then?

I keep talking about death and dying. We’re at dinner last night, and someone asks me what I’m working on. I mention that I’m exploring End of Life. I pause and tell them to tell me if they want to change the subject. They don’t. They have no fear of death. They fear life.

There seems to be this strange bargain we make with ourselves. A fundamental model for navigating our lives when we’re able to find “meaning” and “purpose”. If only we know our purpose, than we can live a good life.

I think purpose is useful. It can certainly provide guidance. But it also feels flimsy. As if we must identify how and why and what we’re doing in order to feel some sense of clarity. Which is fair. I spend enough time working with companies to help them determine their meaning and purpose in a increasingly disruptive world to know that clarity is worth the investment.

But purpose feels limited. A poor chassis for what we’re really immersed in. I can come to any conclusion I like, any conceptual framework that intellectualizes away the messy feelings and conflicting needs that have burrowed into my body.

I can’t stop talking about death and dying.

I decide to throw out the idea of “purpose” and “meaning”. Instead, I sit with suffering. I’ve known suffering a long time. I’ve played chess with it one too many times to ignore it’s power. I think that’s the problem about death and dying. It feels impossible to separate it from suffering.

But that’s not right. Because life is also suffering. It’s more than that, too.

I can’t stop talking about death and dying.

Does it have to be horrific? Does it have to be painful? Do we have to suffer in death?

I don’t think so. I can’t predict what I will experience. I can only have intention. I can pay attention to what matters. Make decisions now that will hopefully serve me later. Be efficacious as best as I can.

The EOL industry exists to make death less unbearable. Bringing relief and compassion to the inevitable. Is that what I want to be doing? Is that why I keep talking about death and dying?

These are the questions that tear me out of bed at 4 in the morning. I think of Death playing chess with me. I don’t think we’re playing against each other though. I think of the Seventh Seal again, how the characters danced together through the field, with Death leading the way.

It doesn’t feel trite. It doesn’t feel forced. It just is.

And maybe that’s the conclusion I need. Death just is.