[FRIAM] death

[Steven A Smith]

Glen -

As always, you pose interesting points to ponder, and very apropos as we 
approach el Dia de los Muertos, Samhain, All Souls, Halloween.

As often, my first response was to clatter out a massive missive 
pondering the many facets of death (and life) from my own idiosyncratic 
Complexity perspective, which I *shall* submit, but first, a shorter, 
more personal response:

I've lived long enough to see a little death, even in this sanitized, 
hygenic culture that tries to keep us from it.   My parents attended a 
few funerals when I was a child but did not take me nor my sister... I 
just remember their "sunday-go-to-meeting" clothes and a somber mien for 
a few hours.   When JFK was shot, my 2nd grade teacher came into the 
room (after the Principal called her into the hall to tell her) crying 
which continued for the next hour as we all shuffled outside to watch 
the flag lowered and then raised to half-mast.  I had only the barest 
idea of what a President was and even less as to why my teacher (and 
others) would cry so much... I thought maybe they knew him 
personally?    My parents were somber the next day as we drove 100 miles 
for our monthly shopping trip, taking advantage my father (federal 
employee) having the day off and I remember them stopping for gas at a 
tiny station and chatting with the operator/owner for much longer than I 
was used to... surely discussing the implications.  A few years later, 
my grandfather, who had lived with us for a few years off and on, died.  
He was 1000 miles away and we didn't attend the funeral but I had a slim 
idea of death.   My other grandfather died (also 1000 miles away) while 
I was in High School, and my parents attended his funeral but I did 
not.  A friend (of sorts??) killed his parents who all lived less than a 
mile from my house.  It still wasn't very personal and I had yet to see 
a dead body or attend a funeral.

It wasn't until my first year in college that two people from my high 
school that I knew died (one car accident, the other CO asphyxiation 
from a bad heater in a low-rent apartment) and I was faced with it's 
reality at a whole new level.   Dozen's more from my circle died over 
the years, but few who I knew well or was close to... then I had the 
experience of watching two men (father-in-law and father) die of 
Alzheimers... roughly a 10 year process of the "self within" dying until 
the "body itself" was empty and then also dead (WTF?).   I've also known 
a small number of people who took their own lives, but the closest to me 
killed himself at my home this previous May.  That put a YET another bit 
of familiarity onto the mystery of death.  I have yet to be present at 
the moment of death of another human being, but I have attended the 
(intentional) death of a few pets and a few hunted animals, a few 
livestock-for-food animals.  But I did watch the original Flatliners 
(Kiefer Sutherland).

On the disposition of my body/remains upon death?  I think those 
activities are for the survivors.   Flood my body with formaldahyde, put 
me in a pine box, dig a hole to bury me, and wait for the chemistry to 
leach out until the worms and microbes can stand to digest me, toss me 
in a blast furnace and put my ashes on your mantel, or put me out for 
the scavengers...  it makes me no never mind.   But I know how people 
are and I suppose I should offer my preferences which happen to be 
leaving me out for the scavengers, great and small...  not an easy 
option in our modern/western culture!   But I do have a huge tree behind 
my house in whose stout branches I probably *could* remain undiscovered 
long enough for the ravens to pick bare eventually...   but who would do 
the honors?   I find the modern practice of cremation overly 
industrialized/sterile, but as the options go, I'm good with that one.

Life (conception/birth) is a mystery for sure, and I've attended each 
more than once, but death is somehow yet more mysterious? But Life 
Itself is all that is actionable.  Buddhist Scholar Steven Levine 
introduced me to the softer ideas of awareness and enlightenment through 
his "A Gradual Awakening" which was partly focused on the lessons he 
(and E. Kubler-Ross) were learning from their engagement around death 
and dying with the AIDS community for whom a diagnosis was a (delayed 
but sure-thing) death sentence in the 80's.   It seems that sometimes 
one doesn't really LIVE until they have had to face their eventual 
DEATH...   I'm still working on it.

For my survivors?  An (im)proper wake is about right...  gather, tell 
some stories, drink some hard liquor, contemplate mortality, move on...

Nobody gets out alive!

- Steve


On 10/28/17 11:23 AM, glen wrote:
> 2 interesting essays on death, the first with some of our obligatory buzzwords.
>
> Not nothing
> https://aeon.co/essays/if-death-comes-for-everything-does-it-matter-what-we-kill
>
> Welcome the reaper: Caitlin Doughty and the 'death-positivity' movement
> https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/oct/27/caitlin-doughty-death-positivity
>