By Dennis Peters

Spring is in the air. Frogs can be heard down by the creeks. The riotous cacophony of a multitude of bird species assails the ears. Fawns stumble around, amazed at “first times”: walking, nuzzling mom, playing with a sibling. It’s the perfect time to think about… death! This will be fun. Really!

Death Be Not Proud is a book by John Gunther, following his son Johnny’s (ultimately losing) battle with brain cancer. The title is taken from the first line of a poem by John Donne: Holy Sonnet X. I remember reading the book, perhaps in junior high, and thinking about the struggle, the operations, the special diet (Dr. Max Gershon), the x-ray treatment.

Freud talked about the “death drive,” or Todestrieb—a drive toward death or destruction.

Being Mortal is a book by Dr. Atul Gawande, published in 2017. A teaser paragraph about it says: “Being Mortal shows how the ultimate goal is not a good death but a good life―all the way to the very end.”

On Death and Dying, by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross, was published in 1969. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association: “It does offer insight and understanding so that all those who have contact with the terminally ill can do more to help them.”

How We Die: Reflections on Life’s Final Chapter by Sherwin B. Nuland, was published in 1994. Nuland died of prostate cancer in 2014, at the age of 83. Denise Gellene wrote in The New York Times:
To Dr. Nuland, death was messy and frequently humiliating, and he believed that seeking the good death was pointless and an exercise in self-deception. He maintained that only an uncommon few, through a lucky confluence of circumstances, reached life’s end before the destructiveness of dying eroded their humanity.

“I have not seen much dignity in the process by which we die,” he wrote. “The quest to achieve true dignity fails when our bodies fail.”

In a previous discussion I made the claim, “One of the most unreasonable things about this life is that it ends in death.” I still strongly affirm that! There’s something very wrong with developing a state of consciousness and self-awareness through our lives… and then nothing. Like a light switch, able to be flicked off in an instant.

Given that unreasonableness, humankind has over the millennia developed all sorts of beliefs about what comes after. And of course they are beliefs, because there is no knowledge of anything beyond that last breath.

But perhaps there’s a different way to look at this. We all are the product of a life cycle. Our species, most species on this planet, are born to a mother, live a life, and die. That cycle plays out any number of times. During that time of living that life, we humans contribute to a culture. We are part of the growth and development of that culture. In terms more familiar to us as Unitarian Universalists, it is an “interdependent web,” one which continues on and on through time. So while we are not immortal as individuals, we do contribute a relevant “seed” to our species, and to our planet.

“Wait! Wait!” you shout. “My beliefs say that there is more than that! I am a unique presence. I continue on after my death from this life.” Okay. [Pause.] Are you asking me to comment on those beliefs? If they give you solace through this valley of tears then I am happy for you. And there are a number of different beliefs about what happens after death. Let’s take a look at a few.

Christian. Life after death is an eternity of either Heaven or Hell. Heaven is time spent with God in a “valley of love and delight.” Or sitting on clouds, strumming harps. Or it’s in Hell, a place of horrendous fire, or the outer darkness, of weeping and gnashing of teeth. For all eternity. (Will we have teeth to gnash, then?)

(There is a Larson cartoon. It’s in Hell. Fires are burning. People are weeping. One man is pushing a heavy wheelbarrow, whistling. One devil says to another: “You know, we’re just not reaching that guy.”)

Islam. Jannah (heaven) and Jahannam (hell). Heaven, or Jannah, in both the Quran and the Hadith is described in very sensual terms, with gardens, food of all kinds, servants, sexual partners (“virgins”), etc. Jahannam, or Hell, is the opposite of Jannah, an afterlife of punishment to fit the evil done in life.

Many Eastern religions (Hinduism and Buddhism, for example) believe in reincarnation. Here it gets interesting! The quality or “advancement” of your next life will depend in large part on how you lived this one, what kind of karma you built up. Karma can be considered the sum result of your actions in this life. If you were a rotten person, all of your nasty actions may result in a next life of deprivation, or crippling disease, lousy circumstances. Or, if you believe in the “transmigration of souls” you might end up in a lower life form so that you can learn the hard way the lessons you need.

Many Wiccans also believe in reincarnation. There are wide-ranging views and beliefs in Wicca, so this blanket statement isn’t really relevant for all. Most Wiccans, though, do believe in an afterlife, and a soul. Or again depending on the Wiccan, three souls.

What I find tantalizing is some of the research into reincarnation. Dr. Ian Stevenson spent much of his adult life in this pursuit. He was chair of the department of psychiatry at University of Virginia. He also traveled the world interviewing children with past life memories. I first read about his work in an Omni Magazine article in the late 1970’s. He used careful interviewing techniques and built up a body of work that gave intriguing hints. Still, none of that falls into what could be described as “proof.”

Unfortunately there are no “proofs” for any beliefs about what happens after death. We can speculate. We can theorize. We can come up with wacky proofs that have no basis in reality. For instance, there were the experiments putting a dying person (and their bed, I guess) on a large, sensitive scale. At the instance of death, they were looking for a drop in weight, however minute, in order to measure the weight of a “soul.” They said the drop was 21 grams. It’s a lot of hogwash, of course. If you Google “weight of a soul,” you’ll see a Snopes article about it.

There are people who pick religious affiliation as a kind of “afterlife” insurance. If I “believe” this, and it turns out to actually be true, then I won’t go to Hell. After all, didn’t Jesus say, “He that believes in me shall not perish, but have life eternal”? Hmm. I wonder what “perish” means in this context. Is it Hell, or non-existence?

It seems to me that, since there is no way of gaining knowledge of what happens, without going there, no reasonable, omnipotent Being would predicate what happens to us on a bunch of beliefs. “Oops, you picked the wrong guesses. It’s eternal damnation for you!” And that’s assuming there IS a reasonable, omnipotent Being.

Okay, a sidetrack. There was a time when the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, or SETI, operated on the assumption that sending signals out to try to attract alien intelligences was a good thing to do, because any alien species advanced enough for space travel would long ago have left behind their aggressive tendencies. And then Klingons were invented.

Here’s my personal thought. It doesn’t make sense to worry much about this issue. If there is something there, I’ll be finding out about it soon enough. Since there’s no way to determine what happens… next, I have no good path to the right answers.

I have noticed in my own life, that as I age, life seems to move faster and faster. I remember clearly learning how to tie my shoes for the first time. And yet here I am in my late 60’s, feeling aches and pains, experiencing hearing loss, the beginnings of vision problems. Etcetera. How did I get here that fast? And when I talk with friends who are in their 80’s, I see the different things that they’re going through, and I realize that’s only 15 to 20 very fast years from now—if I even make it that far. Does that seem reasonable to any of you? And without descending into self-pity, wondering where I sign up for an additional 50 years or so, or complaining that life isn’t fair (BIG surprise, right?!), I’m left in a state of wonder. And with questions, like:

• What is all of this for???
• As I lay on my bed, drawing my final breaths, will I consider this life to have been a success, or a failure?
• Will anyone else consider this life to have been a success?

Albert Einstein is purported to have said that, when he was on his deathbed, he would not be evaluating his life as if an engineering project, a success or a failure. He preferred to instead have been of value.

Perhaps the most useful approach that I’ve found is in both Buddhist and Christian philosophies. Now I’m not saying I do this very well! But it is an approach that seems to make a lot of sense to me. It is, simply: remembering that I am going to die.

Seems pretty obvious, right? But I still tend to think of death in abstract terms. Yes, of course, I’m going to die. Of course. I know that. But when someone else dies, I’m shocked. “How could that happen?!” Or when I have a near miss on the highway, or an illness requiring hospitalization, a procedure, anesthesia, I don’t equate it with my death. Yes, I have made out a will. But that’s a precaution, not really a preparation for, uh, well, death.

Another viewpoint. If the thought of my own death doesn’t really have an impact on me, how about: someday this world is all going to go away.

How about this? I could go at any time. Tomorrow, for instance. Or in the middle of the night, tonight. If that’s the case, am I ready for it? House projects. Yard projects. Things I’ve promised to do for people. Are they at a state where I can drop them and be comfortable with that? Lately I’ve been getting in touch with people I haven’t seen in a long time. I had a conversation with Michele, someone with whom I’d gone to high school. I hadn’t talked with her in 50 years. We talked for an hour, and it felt really good, a renewal of sorts. And strangely enough, another high school friend called me a couple weeks ago out of the blue. I hadn’t talked with him in a couple of decades. And there were several others. Not only were these conversations of renewal, they also seemed, somehow, to be a goodbye.

I’m not a big fan of pain. I’d like to go like my father, smiling, in his sleep. And, as the old joke goes: not like his passengers, screaming in agony. But we don’t get to choose, at least not while drinking life to the final drops. I could go into a discussion of fatal illnesses and the possibility of euthanasia, but that needs to be an entirely different discussion. But please note: help is available if needed at:

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
800-273-8255

As Dr. Nuland said, “I have not seen much dignity in the process by which we die. The quest to achieve true dignity fails when our bodies fail.” So it is good to be focused on our lives, not on what we go through when we die. Yet remembering that we will die is the ultimate grounding in reality for us.

I know that many of you are much wiser than I in this. Some of you start out with more wisdom than I’ll ever achieve. And some of you have been close enough to that final door that you’ve gained an intimate acquaintance with that… process.

I think you lead the way for us. It seems to me that the best we can do is remember it. Just as we were born, we also will die. It’s not a sad or scary thought. We can actually take comfort from it. I was put here on this earth, and in this life I have been developing a purpose, and meaning. And I will reach a stopping point. Keeping that in mind will help me to prioritize what I do. Is this thing I’m contemplating, worth doing? Given how limited my life energy and time is, what are the best options, actions, activities in which I can engage?

By keeping my death in mind, may I better understand the cycle of life in this world, and use it to focus my skillsets and energies wisely, to be of the best use. Amen.