No One Gets Out Of This Life Alive

“The truth is, once you learn how to die, you learn how to live.” 

― Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie

One of the joys of the job that I have is that I get to be with people in their last breaths. I say this is a joy not because I am sadistic but, because it is where we become our most vulnerable. Death is lifes great equaliser and it is the ritual of life that we must all partake in.

I strongly feel that my life's passion is towards the vulnerable. Those who are at the weakest, or whose pain leaves them speechless.  It is a great privilege and a total gift that I can share in these moments with these people.

However, it costs. It costs to be in the place of death. It knocks the wind out of the sails of life and can leave us searching for the words/answers/feelings to what we experience in front of us.

Recently, a death left me searching for something that would put this into context. I asked questions about the person/the reason for/I even made catchphrases that would some how explain that this person was in a better place.

I realise now, that I was doing these things not for the deceased - for this person was already dead - but, I was asking these questions for myself. I was attaching my understandings of death and mortality on to them and in so doing I needed to find reasons for what happened. I needed to explore these things for myself. I needed to learn how to die in order to learn how to live.

Death is a hard reality to deal with but, it is even harder to deal with when we are running away from it. Freud believed that humans unconsciously thought they were immortal. That they would live forever. I honestly think that is true for many people. That we run so far away from our own inevitable death, that it is a shock when we have to look it square in the eyes. We see this, when a celebrity figure dies. Not everyone who grieves their death knows them, but somehow the bouquets stack up outside the gates in remembrance. I wonder, if in someway we are actually in these moments grieving our own deaths through the collective action/experience.

I wonder what would happen if people really looked at death in the eyes and didn't resolve it. That they sat with the fear and the anxiety that is death and embraced it would it affect their own lives. Would they start to see the parts of their own lives that are already dead and need to be resuscitated? Parts of their lives that need resurrection.

If you want to listen to a song about societal death here is a YouTube link from one of my favourite artists.