Tag: Death Meditation

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There’s a New Reality Series About … Death?

“The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning” is a forthcoming reality series set to air on NBC’s Peacock

Are you ready for death? Allow this new reality show to prepare you for the end.

By Kayla Kibbe

When reality TV first came out, it was about celebrities with sex tapes and rich wine moms yelling at each other. These days, reality TV shows are about things like organizing your home and — checks notes — preparing for death.

The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning is a new reality series set to premiere on NBC’s Peacock streaming service, The Hollywood Reporter announced Thursday. According to THR, the unscripted series is basically going to be the Marie Kondo of death, and each episode will feature a “Swedish Death Cleaner” who will help people prepare for their inevitable demise. Per Peacock, the Death Cleaner will help people who “are at a major crossroads [to] organize and demystify [their] homes, lives, and relationships,” thereby “allowing us to prepare for death while we enjoy life.”

“In this series, viewers will be taken on an honest and emotional journey as they watch everyday people conquer their worst fears and discover who they really are on the inside,” said Rod Aissa, executive vice president of unscripted content for NBCUniversal Television and Streaming. “We hope our compassionate and dynamic series sparks conversation within each household and breaks the stigma around mortality and the tough reality of letting things go.”

In case this doesn’t sound weird enough, the series — which is based on the 2018 best-selling book of the same name by Margareta Magnusson — is also produced and narrated by Amy Poehler for some reason. “We are so excited to work on such a life-affirming project with the genius creators at Scout,” said Poehler, referring to the production company behind the series. “Swedish Death Cleaning reminds us to focus on what is truly important, and we couldn’t find a better team to take this journey with than Peacock and the incredible Scout Team.”

But while a reality series about death may not have been on your streaming content bingo card, death is kind of in right now. In 2020, Vox dubbed Millennials the “death positive generation” due to their interest in planning their own funerals, preparing for death and otherwise facing the inevitability of their own mortality. And as THR noted, death planning has also been having a bit of a moment on TV lately, appearing on shows like This Is Us and Human Resources.

Death is clearly in for 2022, and given the current state of the world, it’s not hard to see why. While a reality show about death prep may not be as fun as watching wine-drunk housewives scream at each other, it’s certainly relevant programming for our current era of late-stage human existence. There’s really never been a better time to embrace your mortality.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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A skate geezer ruminates on death and dying

by Michael Brooke

There are literally millions of articles, books, videos, podcasts, and pieces of art dedicated to the ideas surrounding death and dying.

But I’d wager a large fortune that very few of them give a perspective of death and dying through the lens of a skateboarder.

The book “The Endless Wave: Skateboarding, Death & Spirituality” aims to do just that – or at least start a conversation or two.

Firstly, I am by no means an expert in skateboarding, but I enjoy it immensely.

I’ve been joyfully riding since 1975 and pride myself on riding all types of terrain with all types of skateboards.

I enjoy street, vert, transition, longboarding, freestyle, and I’ll even run slalom cones.

My journey writing about skateboarding started in 1995 with this article: dansworld.com/michael.html

Dansworld was one of the first websites on skateboarding, and I was fortunate to be able to write about my experiences.

Full disclosure: I got the date wrong. I started riding in 1975, not 1976, but everything else is pretty much spot on.

The site inspired me to create my own website. I called it The SkateGeezer Homepage.

Its aim was to publicize older skateboarders and get them thinking about the nostalgic side of riding.

Visit the page – interlog.com/~mbrooke/skategeezer.html – if you dare, but I warn you, the graphics are pretty brutal.

Then again, what do you expect? It was created over 25 years ago!

The SkateGeezer Homepage led to a book contract and, in 1999, “The Concrete Wave: The History of Skateboarding” was published.

It sold 42,000 copies and launched a 52-part TV series.

After this, I launched International Longboarder Magazine in the summer of 1999. This magazine eventually became Concrete Wave, and I published and edited it until the summer of 2018.

Here’s a collection of issues: issuu.com/concretewave

The Concrete Wave: The History of Skateboarding: a book by Michael Brooke

From Publisher to Funeral Director’s Assistant

When I decided to sell the magazine, it was because I felt that it was time to do something else.

Originally, I thought I’d move into working at a non-profit. It turned out that my life was going to go in a different direction.

I wound up answering a job advertisement at a local funeral home. I had done some volunteer work at a nearby hospice and retirement home.

After my interview, they asked me to come in for a day to try things. This was late June 2018, and something about the job felt right.

So, for the last three years or so, I’ve been working as a funeral director’s assistant. It was quite a transition from publishing.

I pretty much do everything but arrange funerals.

From premature babies to those over 100 years old, I’ve experienced death up close and personal.

I’ve done dozens of house calls to transfer the deceased back to our funeral home and assisted at well over 500 funerals.

It’s been over three years since I wrote about skateboarding and over 25 years since I connected with Dansworld to write my first piece.

It feels wonderful to be writing again.

I want to thank my family, my wife Michal, daughter Maya and sons Jonathan and Ethan. They have been incredibly supportive of everything I’ve done.

They’ve also been monumentally patient and understanding too. Without them, I’d be nowhere.

I’d also like to thank Nathan Ho for inspiring me and being a catalyst for me to start writing again.

My hope is that this book inspires my fellow skateboarders to think about death and dying from a different perspective – a perspective that is uniquely ours.

Skateboarders: they value the time put into riding a skateboard | Photo: Shutterstock

1. Balancing the Risk vs. Reward

Think about the first time you stepped on a board. Were you a little bit scared or anxious?

Chances are you might have had some trepidation, but it was mitigated by the sheer joy and freedom you saw other skaters experiencing, and you wanted some of that!

So, you took a chance, jumped on the board, and were hopefully rewarded.

It is not just a question of balancing on a skateboard, but how you balance the risk vs. the reward.

Skateboarders know that falling can produce painful and sometimes lethal consequences.

But all those worries and fears are cast aside for the reward that is riding. Now think about the first time you learned to drop in on a mini-ramp or bowl.

Again, you probably felt a little anxious but knew instinctively that the reward would be truly worthwhile.

It is the combination of risk vs. reward that forms the first part of a skater’s lens, and we carry this throughout our life.

What I have learned in my 57 years of living and 46 years of riding a skateboard is that sometimes you have to jump right in, despite the difficulty or risk.

Built into the DNA of skateboarding is risk, and I know for a fact that it has changed the way I look at death and dying.

While it can be risky to skateboard, I feel that the greater risk is not living a fulfilling, joyful life.

The countless hours spent with friends skateboarding create a unique bond.

Sure, there are times you are competing in a game of skate or who can go the fastest down a hill, but mostly the ride is the reward.

Think of the road trips you’ve been on with your fellow skaters. That first push can lead to a lifetime of freedom and exploration.

For me, skateboarding was a catalyst to lead me to people, music, art, and ideas that I normally wouldn’t have discovered.

The more you commit, the greater the reward.

Skateboarding tricks: the more you commit, the greater the reward | Photo: Shutterstock

The Formula for a Joyful Life

Skateboarders know all about quality time – especially if you’re living in a climate that is not sunny all the time.

We cherish the opportunity to ride with friends. But most importantly, we value the time put into riding a skateboard.

We know that at any moment, a pebble, car, or crack in the pavement could stop us in our tracks.

When I attend a funeral, I can tell almost immediately what kind of eulogies I will hear.

If the family is tight-knit and supportive of one another, the eulogies will often be about the time the person put into people.

While hearing about a person’s business or academic accomplishments can be impressive, it is the anecdotes about the time spent with family and friends that really leave an impression on me.

I have never once heard, “I wish my father would have spent less time with us” or “I wish my mom would have spent more time at the office.”

Ultimately, life is about balance.

If you are obsessed with skateboarding to the point that it leaves you penniless, you’ve gone too far.

Conversely, there are so many millions of people afraid to take that first push or to drop in.

They firmly believe that life is scary and meant to be cautiously navigated. Their fears can lead to frustration, anger, and depression.

It makes for a joyless life.

Skateboarding has a magical way of creating a sense of freedom in your mind. Once your mind is free, anything is possible.

After all, you have a 100 percent chance of dying. The question is: what are you going to do about it?

Skateboarding: like life, a balance between risk and reward | Photo: Shutterstock

2. Reality Doesn’t Just Bite – It Spits!

Before I start this next chapter, I wanted to preface things with a small warning. The truth is that discussing death and dying can be very difficult for some.

Nathan and I are going to hit on some very challenging and somewhat painful ideas over the course of this book.

But if you picked up on what I was writing about in Chapter One, I think you’ll do just fine.

The following incident happened about three years ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday.

I had been at my job as a funeral director’s assistant for less than a week.

It was a blazing hot day in July, and I was getting to know my fellow co-workers. At the cemetery, we had spied someone lurking about 200 feet away.

We were told that it was an estranged brother who was not invited to the funeral but had somehow found out the time and place and was making his presence known.

It created a little bit of intrigue, but none of us were concerned that he would do something to disrupt the funeral.

As this was literally my second or third time attending a funeral at a gravesite, I wasn’t really sure if having a lurker was a normal occurrence or something completely uncommon.

It turned out to be something else – it turned out to be completely off the rails. The funeral service took about 30 minutes to finish.

The family left the grave, and slowly the brother walked up to the grave.

He stood in front of the grave and spat on it. Then he said, “I’m glad you’re dead, you f*****g c**t.”

He promptly left, and I stood there with my jaw dropped. As he left, I could feel the tension and anger just swirling around him.

I was literally stunned into silence.

Skateboarding: your skateboard will outlive you | Illustration: Brooke/Ho

Gaining Appreciation for Life

I am happy to report that a scene like this is not a common occurrence. The amount of visceral hatred that seethed in this man’s veins was both intense and shocking.

While I will never know what led up to this moment, it is forever seared in my brain.

A fellow staff member remarked that he’d been working in funeral services for over 25 years and had never encountered something like this before.

I guess in some crazy way, my timing was pretty good.

There is no doubt in my mind that you gain an incredible appreciation for life when you are surrounded by death.

It seems oddly counter-intuitive, and yet I encounter it constantly. What can we learn from my story about this man?

I think you could spend many years trying to unpack a scene like this, but I think it boils down to just one crucial thing.

“You gotta handle your shit, or shit will handle you.”

Clearly, this man (who appeared to be in his mid-60s) and his mother (along with the rest of the family) needed help.

He clearly carries a burning resentment that was overwhelming. Whatever history is between the family, it would appear that it was never dealt with.

This man needed help. Maybe he got it, but I sense it never really helped sufficiently. Or maybe, in the last three years, he did receive some help.

I can only hope that he did. Sadly, I will never know.

Skaters come from a variety of backgrounds. Some are rich, some are poor, and some are middle class.

I would venture a guess that a number of skaters turned to skateboarding because it was a path to freedom from an issue.

These issues or problems can range from mild to severe.

No matter what a skater tries to leave behind (i.e., an abusive home, inattentive parents, abusive sibling, or some other problem), the fact remains that skateboarding can’t fully erase the problem.

Coming to terms with this can be both alarming and painful, but it is necessary.

Make no mistake – I am glad I had skateboarding when I was younger. It wasn’t just a creative outlet; it provided me with a great deal of support.

But in truth, I never dealt with certain s**t until I reached my 50s.

Of course, things change with time, and nowadays, people are a lot more open to dealing with mental health issues.

But the reality is that if you use skateboarding as your only path to freedom, you aren’t dealing with the problem.

This can have a substantially negative impact as you move through life.

If you carry with you hatred against people who don’t look like you or skate like you, it is you who has the problem.

Skateboarding: if you use it as your only path to freedom, you aren't dealing with the problem | Photo: Shutterstock

Skateboarding Will Never Love you Back

Skateboarding promotes the idea of freedom, but if you are running away from an issue that needs to be dealt with, you will never be truly free.

This is a hard truth, but it is critical to accept.

As much as we love skateboarding or any other activity, it can’t truly replace family or close friends.

A skateboarder knows instinctively to value each moment riding – whether alone or in a group.

But as you start to move from adolescence to middle age and beyond, you realize that skeletons in closets have a peculiar way of rearing their heads.

Whatever demons you may carry, skateboarding has proven to be a great way to keep them at bay.

But the demons won’t fully be exercised until you face reality.

I have tried yoga, cooking, gardening, and conversing in another language.

At some point or another, these activities have let me down, oftentimes with ridiculous and embarrassing results.

I used to say that skateboarding never let me down. But the fact is that skateboarding is an activity, not a person.

No matter how much you love your skateboard or the act of skateboarding, it will never love you back.

It can’t because a skateboard is an inanimate object. An object that certainly improves your life, but it is only an object.

Skateboarding will be the catalyst for you to have experiences that you will love.

Often, it will bring you people who you might grow to cherish (and respect).

But the fact remains your skateboard will outlive you. A hundred years from now, your descendants might know that you skated.

But one thing is for certain: if you don’t handle your shit eventually, your descendants will have to.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How Preparing for Death Makes Life More Meaningful

by Tom Rapsas

Is there ever an appropriate time to contemplate your own death? Like grief, death is a topic most of us prefer not to talk about or even think about. Most of us assume our own deaths will happen at some point in the distant future. Yet, as Wayne Dyer once said, the future is promised to no one.

Most of us will wait until we are at the brink of death’s door to contemplate death. It might happen after a terminal medical diagnosis, a sudden heart attack or illness, or an automobile accident. Or you might live in a warzone, where the specter of death visits you on a daily basis.

But the fact is, no matter your station in life, death is a constant presence. We are nearer to death this year than last year, closer to death today than we were yesterday. During our whole lives we are moving inextricably closer to death. We are not allowed to stop the clock or to go more slowly. Old and young, rich and poor, all are propelled toward death with equal speed.

There are some who regularly practice for their own death.

They are not suicidal—in fact, just the opposite. They contemplate death so that they can better appreciate life. It’s part of an ancient Christian tradition called memento mori (translation: “remember your death”). It has received renewed attention thanks to Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble of the Daughters of Saint Paul, a Catholic religious order.

Noble has written a book titled Remember Your Death, where she asks us to become aware of our impending death so that we can become better focused on what is real and important in our lives. In her words, the practice “is more about living than it is about dying.” It’s about living each moment not knowing if it’s our last.

Sister Theresa believes that the practice of memento mori is essential because “only God knows when each person will die.” That does not mean going about your day thinking you will die, but recognizing “the possibility that this could come to pass. One day will be our last, and the great majority of us do not know when.” She continues:

No matter how many surgeries we undergo, how much we exercise, or how many vitamins we take, our bodies will break down slowly over time. Indeed, no matter what we do, our bodies will succumb to old age and die.

Spring is an appropriate time to remember our death.

Noble calls out the Christian observance of Ash Wednesday. It kicks off the 40-day season of Lent which ends three days before Easter Sunday. During Ash Wednesday, a priest or pastor dips their finger into a tray of ashes and spreads it on a congregants’ forehead in the shape of a cross. While doing this, they quote the Bible, saying “from dust you came and from dust you will return.” Dust is a metaphor for death.

Sister Thersa tells us that “as Christians, when we contemplate our own death, we also enter into the death of Jesus Christ. We remember death not from our own perspective, but from Christ’s perspective.” And from that perspective, death has been conquered. With the resurrection of Jesus, he has shown us that we all have the ability “to rise with him” and in essence, survive our own death.

You don’t need to be a Christian, for this work for you. Noble informs us that “even if one does not believe in the Christian message of salvation, the rich ancient tradition of remembering death can bring joy, focus, and fruitfulness to anyone’s life.” What follows are three compelling notions pulled from Remember Your Death.

3 Reasons to Prepare for Your Own Death

  1. It can cleanse your soul. When we remember death “it can motivate us to clear grudges, anger, and a desire for retaliation for our souls.” When we are able to forgive others, it can “heal relationships but most importantly, our souls. Forgiveness clears away what stands in the way of our union with God.”
  2. It can lead to greater humility. When we remember our death, we “truthfully admit we need God’s help,” and are more apt to accept God’s grace. By contrast, when we puff ourselves up with pride, we push away this grace. “Remember, you are dust and to dust you will return.” ~Bible, Genesis 3:19
  3. It can give you greater focus. Through the knowledge that the gift of life can be taken from us at any time, we gain a greater appreciation for our lives. As Sam Harris reminds us in a podcast titled The Lessons of Death, no one knows how much time they have left. “We’re all going to lose everything we have—and we don’t know when.” Since we don’t know how many moments we have left, it makes sense to be mindful of the limited amount of time we do have—and treat these moments like the treasures they are.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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On Death, Dying, and Disbelief

BOOK BY CANDACE GORHAM
PITCHSTONE PUBLISHING, 2021

by Nicole Carr

As humans, most of us—especially after the last couple of pandemic years—have experienced the loss of a loved one. As humanists, we know how difficult it can be to grieve as a nontheist in a world that is designed for the religious. Many of the rituals our society uses to mark the end of life are built around belief in the afterlife, and that can leave nontheists feeling stranded and alone at a time when they especially need support. Candace R. M. Gorham offers that support with her book On Death, Dying, and Disbelief, published last year by Pitchstone Publishing.

When my mother died (much too young), I was still a believer. I had already stopped regularly going to church, but I believed in god and the sentiments that the people around me uttered were actually comforting: “She’s in a better place,” “You’ll be together again someday,” “She’s looking down on you.” I knew the rituals and they worked for me.

Twenty-five years later, when my husband died (again, much too young), I hadn’t found humanism yet, but I definitely considered myself a nontheist. Grieving was different this time, and I needed to find new ways to mark his death and find a way to live without him. I wish I’d had this book then.

As a licensed mental health counselor and a former ordained minister turned atheist activist, Gorham is uniquely suited to write this book. She also draws on her personal experience with grief. As she writes in the book’s introduction,

The ten tips I offer in this book were selected based on common questions and conversations I have had with nontheists and are things that have helped me personally. In this regard, I combine my personal awareness of issues unique to nontheists with my professional expertise in mental health counseling, and I try to address this deeply personal subject with the tenderness of one who can fully commiserate with the target audience.

And she succeeds. The book is deeply personal and yet still applicable to the reader’s own situation and experience. The chapters are organized as ten tips, and each one begins with a poem written by the author when she was coping with her own grief.

On my own journey from religion to nontheism, the idea I found hardest to let go was that loved ones who had died were in some other—better—place, where they were somehow watching over me. I held on to that idea tightly after all my other religious beliefs had fallen away. In fact, I held on to it for quite a while after I called myself non-religious. Gorham’s first chapter deals with just that concept, and how to reconcile a sometimes deep desire to believe that a loved one is still with us with our understanding that there is no heaven.

There’s a lot of important advice included about taking care of yourself physically, psychologically, and emotionally. There are the basic things, of course: eating, drinking, sleep, exercise. But there are also tips about things you might not think about in the midst of grief, like the importance of establishing new routines to help you move forward.

Gorham also includes information about when to seek out a therapist, the beneficial possibilities of medication, how to identify when grief has passed into a danger zone of potential self-harm or pathology, and the healing qualities of nature to help create a “restorative environment.”

And there’s a whole chapter on the need to “Cry. Cry. And then cry some more” which the author describes as “the most cathartic activity I have ever done.” Since humanists tend to like science and evidence, Gorham details, for instance, studies that point to the beneficial hormones and proteins that crying produces, along with the stress-relief and cathartic effect of the physical act.

In the same chapter, however, she reminds readers to “embrace the times when they are not crying” and find moments of enjoyment in the midst of grief. After all,

As a nontheist, you very likely do not believe that your loved one is watching you from the great beyond. So, it is not like they are there judging the extent of your grieving. And you are not competing with friends and family to see who can grieve the hardest and longest.

One powerful chapter is Tip #8: Do something in their honor. Gorham sets out several options for rituals that one can create to remember and memorialize a deceased loved one. In some humanist circles, “ritual” can be a bad word, but many people do feel a need to mark an important loss. As Gorham writes,

As nontheists, we might not like the word “ritual” because of its close ties with religion. However…synonyms include custom, fashion, habit, pattern, practice, and second nature. As you can see, a ritual is certainly more than just a religious activity. Rituals are extremely powerful tools that, when controlled and properly applied—as opposed to letting them control us—can provide the most healing of all of the activities, tips, actions, and recommendations I discuss in this book.

Her suggestions range from “Visit the Gravesite” to “Complete a Project.”

This is a compact book at just 152 pages, and its structure is perfectly suited to dipping in to find just the right tip for where you are in the process of grieving. With a final chapter devoted to advice for people who want to support those who are grieving, the book covers a lot of ground.

Everyone will find sections of the book useful to them. For instance, Gorham stresses the restorative power of nature, but not being an “outdoorsy” person, that advice doesn’t really speak to me. Instead, the sections that resonated most with me were Tip 8 (on ritual) and Tip 9 (on crying), described above. For others, it might be the opposite.

For me, the best passages are the ones that remind the reader that, though we must grieve, grief is not all there is:

You are alive and you must keep living. If you wake up crying, cry while you are getting dressed, cry while driving, cry when music is playing, cry anytime you are alone, cry in the shower, cry in bed, cry at meal time. If you cannot help yourself, then cry, cry, cry. However, it is also absolutely critical that you let yourself experience joy whenever possible….When you are able to break free from its hold and peek your head above water for even ten minutes to breathe the pure air of laughter and smiles, you must take it in as fully as you can.

Most importantly, Gorham stresses that each journey is unique and each person grieving is on a different timeline. The most repeated advice in the book is to be patient with one another—and yourself.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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A ‘death doula’ explains how to transcend your fear of dying so you can truly live in the present

Death doula, Tree Carr, explains what she’s learned as an end-of-life guide and how to overcome fear of death so you can live a life with no regrets

By

Death doula Tree Carr’s insight into peoples’ final days means that she’s more in touch with mortality than most. Supporting people on their final journey may sound like a grim task, but for Tree, this calling has taught her lessons on how to truly live. Lessons which she has shared with woman&home…

Death is the great unknown and the idea of having to face up to our own mortality and how we’ll be remembered after death can feel more than daunting. However, by learning to interact with this inevitable experience with a positive and supportive lens—you can stop being scared of it. In doing so, you focus on living a far better life, with no regrets.

The word alone can evoke terror, superstition, grief, feelings of loss of control, and existential dread. The sobering reality of death is often kept swept under the carpet and considered taboo for most conversational circles. 

In our long timeline of humanity, we’ve sought to cheat it; delay it; bargain with it; or transcend it. Its great and elusive mystery has captivated the mystics and has raised the eternal question that science has yet to answer—does consciousness carry on after the body expires? No matter what your ontological or epistemological worldview on death is, it’s safe to say that most people are scared to death of dying.

What is a death doula?

A death doula is an end-of-life guide who holds compassionate space for a person journeying through the psychological, emotional, spiritual, and practical terrains of death and dying. The word doula is from ancient Greek, meaning, ‘a woman who serves’—although the role is far from being gender-specific.

I felt the calling to become a death doula in my early forties after a lifetime of synchronistic events all revolving around death. From a near-death experience of nearly drowning in the Atlantic Ocean at the age of four, through to many serendipitous moments involving being at the right place at the right time when strangers on the street have been close to death.

“You can stop being scared of it. In doing so, you focus on living a far better life, with no regrets.”
— Tree Carr

What I’ve learned as a death doula

In my work as a death doula, the most challenging aspect that I witness a dying person go through is surprisingly not the biological deterioration of the body (there is plenty of palliative care pain control for that). In fact, it is the emotional or psychological loss of the sense of ‘self ‘ that appears to be the most painful.

From what I’ve personally observed, at the end of life many people experience a long, slow, and winding loss of who they knew themselves to be. They are thrown into the existential dark night of the soul asking the big questions: What am I? Who was I? What was this all for?

As a result, this can propel the dying person into depression, grief, isolation, and anxiety. This is where the role of a death doula can be very helpful, traversing alongside a person as they lean into the fears and trepidation of the big D!

Certainly, overcoming the fear of death it’s not a ‘one shot’ remedy most of the time and can be a gradual unfolding that combines a mixture of practices and experiences.

How I help people overcome fear of dying

Person contemplating life

Surprisingly enough, my death doula work isn’t always for people who are actively dying. I have folks getting in touch who aren’t dying at all, but they have anxiety around death. Perhaps they are coping with the loss of a parent or struck with grief from experiencing the death of another person they knew.

I guide my client’s through navigating death phobia, tackling grief illiteracy, bereavement catharsis, and reframing the narrative around the topic and therefore moving into a peaceful acceptance of death.

Part of the journey can involve meditations on death, closure techniques, and emotional integration through a variety of creative processes—letter writing, drawing, conversation, and more.

Here are some simple practices I encourage my clients to engage in each day to help overcome the uncomfortable feelings around death…

Observe the ‘little endings’

One way you can start to journey into your fear around death is to have a daily practice where you bear witness to the ’little deaths’ all around you every single day.

It’s a form of mindfulness with a central focus on the theme of endings. When you meet a friend for coffee and then you both say goodbye and they walk away and leave. This is a little ending. When you lose your mobile phone. This is a little ending when the sun sets every evening. This is a little ending.

Allow yourself to hold awareness for these little endings and be with any emotions rising up. Begin to surrender to the process of not holding onto the little endings but allowing them to release. 

Engage the art of non-attachment, seeing that the only constant, is change. Regular meditation practice is also a good habit because it will help to stabilize a conscious state of equanimity through experiencing endings.

Watch the cycles of nature

A pathway through a dark foggy wood

Another helpful tip is to sit and be with nature, observe and be mindfully present. Being closer to nature connects a person to the reality of impermanence. Observing the shifting and changing of the seasons. The growth, decay and return to Spring Equinox. This forever cycle of life, death, and rebirth.

Observe yourself falling asleep

Something else that can help out is sleep. The threshold states of sleep are liminal experiences just as death can be. When one becomes comfortable in these altered sleep states it can help ease the fear of death.

Make space in your bedtime routine for observing this. As you fall asleep every night and you hover on the liminal threshold of the hypnagogic state you can practice and surrender to the idea of your own death. Allowing yourself to relax and surrender to sleep from the cusp of fatigue is a surprisingly easy and transformative technique.

Attend a Death Cafe

Death Cafes are safe spaces to gather and meet to talk with other people about all things death and dying over coffee, tea, and cake. Whether you share your own experiences around losing a loved one or a beloved pet. Or maybe you are navigating your own end-of-life journey, Death Cafes are death-positive, compassionate, non-biased, and non-judgemental events.

In the many Death Cafes that I’ve facilitated worldwide, I see the boundaries of culture, gender, age, race, and religion dissolve as we all come together in solidarity over the one thing we all have in common—the fact that we will all one day die.

Living a life in fear of an inevitability that we all share can prompt or worsen difficult emotions, like anxiety, depression, panic attacks, and conditions like sleep anxiety
and insomnia.

However, by embracing the awareness of this inevitable life process, through positive and supportive ways, can not only help us live a more enriching life—but also help us to live one with no regrets.

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How the Absence of a Funeral Makes Death So Much Harder For the Living

Olivia Claire Friedman on Trying to Mourn Without Ritual

Rippingille, Edward Villiers; The Funeral Procession of William Canynge (c.1399-1474), to St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol, 1474

By Olivia Clare Friedman

In January 2021, I lost one of my very favorite people. Frances was seventy years old when she died. Her death wasn’t COVID-related. I’d known her since I was twelve. She was in her thirties then. She was divorced—had been for years, her ex-husband lived in another state, I never met him. And she had no children. I was the closest thing to her child. I was her daughter, she said.

Because of the pandemic, her funeral was put off. I’d just turned in a draft of my novel Here Lies, set in a dystopian future in which the government cremates the bodies of the deceased and then keeps the ashes. A young woman named Alma tries to re-claim the ashes of her mother. All the while, Alma must find her way through grief and mourning.

Just after I’d finished the novel, Frances was gone. I found myself inside the cloud of grief, trying to sort through it and finding no answers. I became a mourner-in-waiting. For Frances, we had no funeral. Family members didn’t want to risk a gathering, and I knew, in pandemic times, this was the right approach. Frances wished to be cremated, and so she was. When the time is right, we’ll have a celebration of life, a friend of Frances’s said. Maybe something on a boat. We’ll scatter her ashes. Since then, we haven’t made plans.

My mourning feels suspended in time. Something inside me is holding its breath.

I found myself inside the cloud of grief, trying to sort through it and finding no answers.When I cried for Frances, I cried by myself. I didn’t want to upset my baby or my husband, so I shut the door to our bedroom and wept. But my husband understood. He lost his father to cancer ten years ago. He says he felt like his life broke in half. There was everything before his father’s death, and everything after.

Even though I’d closed the door, my baby could hear me crying. My husband said she asked for me, pointed to the door. Later, when I thought I was done crying, I’d go and do something else, like prepare for teaching or take care of laundry, and the grief would circle back, coming up all over again. That is the difficult part, when the grief returns without a warning. Grief that bubbles months later, years later—that’s the grief that lands a surprise blow.

My sadness has no order. It can be hard to see a trajectory, a way out, just as it has been hard to see a trajectory to the virus, a real sense of an ending. Of course, in writing, we try to find an arc, a shape to things. Right now, Frances’s death hasn’t had a shape. She was here, and she is gone, and there hasn’t been a funeral or ritual to mourn her.

In the middle of the pandemic, this was a heartshatteringly common story—deaths and no ritual to mourn. I wonder too about others who have felt relief. Not everyone wants a ritual for their grieving. Some won’t want to mourn at all, or they won’t want to go to a funeral, maybe because they were estranged from the deceased, or they don’t want to travel, or they’re too raw-hearted, or just ambivalent. There are those stories too.

My mourning feels suspended in time. Something inside me is holding its breath.The decision about what happens to our bodies after death is one of the most personal choices we make. Traditional burial, cremation, a green or natural burial…we choose. It’s a choice that might be rooted in family wishes, religious expectations, cultural traditions, personal preference, or all of these. Still, we choose. We can also not choose. Even the decision to choose—that decision is ours.

We already know that rituals of mourning are part of the heart of most cultures and traditions. I think about luxurious rituals, brimming with people and songs. I think of opulent funerals and horse-drawn carriages and the blasts of trumpets. I think of the Terracotta Army, a massive assembly of terracotta sculptures of thousands of soldiers, chariots, and horses buried in the tomb of Qin Shi Huang, the first Emperor of China. I think of the many sounds of New Orleans’ “funerals with music,” what were called jazz funerals, and second lines. I think of photos I’ve seen of massive funeral pyres. Of long processions of cars I’ve driven by on local roads, or images of funeral crowds overwhelming cathedrals, people pouring out of the doors.

There is also quiet mourning, silent mourning. During some periods in British culture, the length of mourning was expected to be nine months. Wearing all black, of course, visibly signaled your mourning state to everyone around you. Nine months—the period of gestation! And I think of Dickens’ Oliver Twist going to live with the undertaker. Oliver has “an expression of melancholy in his face,” the undertaker says, so he decides Oliver would make “a delightful mute,” staying silent and wearing all black, walking alongside the coffin at children’s funerals.

I think about solo mourning. Recently, I was discussing the subject of funeral rites with a friend, and he brought up Antigone. Antigone is the Greek mythological figure, the daughter of Oedipus, whose story concerns the burial of her brother. Because of the nature of her brother’s death, his burial is punishable by death, King Creon says. Even mourning him is punishable by death. But Antigone can’t abide this. She still buries her brother on her own.

The decision about what happens to our bodies after death is one of the most personal choices we make.Even with a ritual to mourn Frances, a part of me would always feel suspended, like I was holding something in. But a funeral, a celebration of life, can give mourning a location, its own spot on the map of grief.

Grieving can make you feel selfish and ridiculous and angsty and tangled. One loss summons previous loss. With Frances’ death, a string was pulled. My grief brought up past deaths. I thought of the deaths of my grandmothers, great and great-great, from years back. One died of cancer, another grandmother died of natural causes. All of the grieving gets knotted together.

Frances’s obituary was longer than other obituaries I’ve read. The act of reading it was a kind of ritual, because it captured her so well, the experience of knowing her. She loved animals close to the way she loved people. She was one of the most generous souls you ever met, and she was also very candid and keen. She lived with an illness almost all her life. She lost her parents at a young age. At the end of the obituary were the names of loved ones, family and friends, in Frances’s life. And seeing that, everyone’s names together, made me feel like we were all standing there, physically somehow, in print but side by side. In ink—and I do believe in the power of ink—we had a kind of ritual mourning for Frances.

I have my own rituals to mourn her. They’re simple, seemingly small, but to me they’re not small at all. I look out the window more than I used to. I look at the sky more than I used to. Are these rituals? Yes, I’ll call them that. And if I wanted to, I know I could have my own made-up ritual. I could light a candle and sing. I’m not sure what the words would be. My crying too is mourning, a ritual of mourning. Going outside in my yard by myself to cry or just to think alone—yes, I’m coming to understand, all this is a ritual too.

A funeral, a celebration of life, can give mourning a location, its own spot on the map of grief.In February, one month after Frances’s death, a small gray cat started coming to our door. This was significant—Frances had adopted many cats, maybe thirty-something. She stopped counting; she was embarrassed; her house was overrun. As soon as you walked in through her front door, you’d smell cat pee. She had cat beds in rows on top of her own bed. One time I saw a tomcat pee on an electric socket, and the whole thing started sparking.

So this little striped gray cat kept coming around our door, and of course my husband and I fed her, and of course she wouldn’t leave.

I waited to name her, because I knew when I did, that’d be it. And anyway, when I did start to think of names, it was torturous to find the right one. How about Lady Grey? “No, not that,” my British mother-in-law said. Other ideas were the names I’d wished I had when I was a kid—Fiona, Michelle, Serena. I thought about her face, her expression and eyes. I’d try out one name, and then I’d scratch that and decide to start over. We left her nameless for months. Then one day, I went all in. I finally decided on a name.

Annie is wild and scrappy. Her tail is three-quarters gone. She leaves mushed-up mice and lizards on our welcome mat, dead voles with pink claws in the air. These are her gifts. She’s been with us for months. We’re used to her now, but I’m not used to Frances gone, and sometimes I have to remind myself: She’s not here. I don’t know if we’ll gather with her ashes, but here comes the gray cat when I open the front door, ready for breakfast. Here she is—rolling in dirt, sniffing the air.

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I look at death every day – let’s change the way we talk about it

By Adesola Mojo

As a forensic pathologist, the dead of all ages, shapes and sizes have been the focus of my career. Numerous times a day, for the past 40 years, I have looked closely and directly at death, knowing that, for many – probably most – of the people I examine, the start of their final day had been completely normal. Death had come swiftly and unexpectedly. So, as I dress each morning, I often wonder where I will be at the end of my day. At home? Or in a mortuary, being slid into a fridge on a shiny tray?

In medical circles, we had been expecting a global pandemic for several decades. The HIV/Aids pandemic of the 80s was a sombre milestone, resulting in about 36 million deaths worldwide, but I never anticipated that the first pandemic of the 21st century would develop from a virus in China. I had expected it to come from a lethal reorganisation of the DNA of the influenza virus – as happened in 1918, when “Spanish” flu killed at least 50 million people worldwide, and in the subsequent, less lethal, influenza pandemics: 2 million died in the 1957 flu pandemic and 1 million each in 1968 and 1977. The last notable flu pandemic was swine flu, in 2009, which resulted in about 500,000 deaths. A serious influenza pandemic is about 50 years overdue.

Death had become a subject to be avoided or glossed over. Our lack of experience often meant it felt overwhelming

I know that I am unusual in having had such a longstanding personal insight into death and the fundamentally precarious nature of our lives. Many of us have never seen a dead body, even of a close relative. In our westernised, urban society, the tradition of paying your respects to the body in an open coffin in the parlour is now rare. This offered the opportunity to recognise the normality of death: to look it in the face; to consider your responses; to remember your own impermanence

By the start of this century, it seemed to me that death had become a subject generally to be avoided, glossed over, obfuscated and (if at all possible) simply ignored, at least until one was faced with it personally. Now, the lack of this experience often means it feels overwhelming.

Before Covid, I noticed how our language was becoming increasingly euphemistic. The noun is “death”, the verb is “die”, but these words were seldom heard. Dying had become “passing” – and the focus was usually on “easing that passing”, to sanitise and smooth it and manage death in a way that diverted distress. I felt I was seeing a significant disconnect develop between the profound, human process of grieving, with its incumbent pain, stress and sadness, and the emollient aims of the death industry. It was a disconnect that was welcomed by so many.

The pandemic challenged this approach in almost every respect. Suddenly, death and the consequences of death were the focus, day after day, of every news report. The facts were raw and painful, the words stark. The noun was “death”, the verb was “die”. These people had not “passed”. Covid, I hate your harvest, but I thank you for rewilding such endangered language.

As the pandemic continued, interviews with families became the modern equivalent of the wake beside the coffin in the parlour. Where once there was little or no desire to see the body after death, now the denial of contact, at the end of life and afterwards, was traumatizing.

I hope one positive to come out of our new reality is a change in society’s approach to death. It is still too early to tell – and perhaps I never will be able to tell, since I am inside the taboo, looking out. But, from my perspective, I would say that a new willingness to engage with death would be a healthy change.

I have been lucky. Few of my close family have contracted Covid; none have died from it or even been hospitalized. However, during the course of the pandemic, three of my friends have died: two from natural disease – one suddenly, one slowly and painfully – and one from an accident. Covid has killed many, but, even in the depths of a pandemic, I was reminded that people continue to die of other causes – and that these causes also kill millions.

Let us face up to the inescapable fact that humans die. Until then, life is for living.

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