Thought for the Week: Tony D’Souza has a dead reckoning
‘Death is not scary or to be feared; it is sacred and meaningful.’
When was the last time you thought about the inevitability of your death? If you haven’t recently, perhaps you should, because it is stalking you. Whether young or old, fit or unwell, rich or poor, death is looking over your shoulder right now.
In the Middle Ages, people were more familiar with death. A lot of art from this period features playful skeletons and grinning skulls. People were more familiar with death because of the incessant wars, plagues and famines. These days, science and technology have overcome many of the natural causes of death, and as a result it has become sanitised. It is something that happens in private, in a hospital or in a care home, away from prying eyes. A curtain is drawn around the bed and the lifeless body covered up and rushed to the morgue.
Our society cannot face the inevitability of death because it invests every ounce of its effort in the physical. The young are idolised for their youth. Their bodies are held up as the ideal even though we all know they will not look like that for very long. As soon as this year’s models begin to fade, a new lot is found to replace them, like replacing last week’s flowers, now wilting in the vase.
Yet, it is this idea, transience, that can give us a clue to what death can really mean. I was nearly fifty when my father died. He was in a home and had advanced dementia, but it still came as a shock. Death always does when you are close to somebody. The following week I drove to the funeral home to sit by the coffin and say my last goodbyes. Lying in the coffin, my dad looked like somebody I hardly knew. A dried-up version of him. I learned something then. I learned that everything had changed but nothing had really changed.
Death is not scary or to be feared; it is sacred and meaningful. Death reminds us of our transience. Not long after my father’s death a new nephew came into the family. I was able to hold him and look into his eyes. His tiny hand gripped my little finger. Then, I understood the whole thing all over again. Life is a continuum. People die and others are born. That’s the conveyer belt of life – but that does not mean it is not sacred. We all have a short span of life and we share it on this planet.
Death invites us to share in belonging because it is always there. We all belong with and to each other. We are all interrelated. Everything that is born must die. Everything that is created must pass away. That is the nature of the universe. From the most distant galaxy, to our little blue planet. When we truly taste this interrelatedness, we can begin to let go. We can let go of our tiny selves. Then perhaps we can let go of our fear of death and take our place in the great dance of life.
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