How To Accept Death When You Live In A Society That Denies It
Denial.
To refuse something. To believe that something is untrue.
How are you with denial? Where in your life have you experienced denial? What needs have denial served? Has denial helped you in the past or hurt you in the past? Denial shows us where we are attached to wanting things to be different than they are. There may be disbelief, skepticism, or a hard refusal to see. We may deny the grade we received on the exam or deny the severity of an illness. We may deny hard news or things that we feel will be impossible for us to change.
Realistically, we have all danced with denial on some level in our lifetime. There is denial that happens on an individual level but also a societal level. In modern America, we see a significant amount of denial around our mortality. This is both societal and individual. It varies individually, but when you zoom out and look at the landscape of life and death in the U.S., there are many themes and causes of this denial.
This is not news to us, but it is also not inevitable. Historically and through many cultures we death is honored as a natural part of life and weaves seamlessly through life.
In this article, I am going to highlight some of the key themes and causes for the denial of death in modern America. I will then highlight specific ways to help you deepen your acceptance of your own mortality while living in a society that denies death. Accepting your mortality and exploring impermanence throughout your life will help support you and your loved ones in dying well.
*Please note that this is a high level look of a somewhat secular America and does not include specific religious groups or strong cultural communities within the United States. I am still a student and learning about different systems and styles of life and death, so if you feel things are missing from this piece, please email me (alyssarosehealingarts@gmail.com) and help me grow in my understanding.
Understanding Our Denial
As you may have noticed, most of America denies death. The trouble is, dying well depends on accepting death. You cannot expect to die peacefully, easefully, with gratitude in your heart if you do not live peacefully, easefully, and with gratitude in your heart. There is a labor to death and it is often said, “You will die how you have lived”. That being said, if you’re interested in a good death and supporting those you love in dying well, coming to accept our mortality is a prerequisite.
So how did we get here anyways? Here are a few areas that fuel our denial and help us to build a life based on the illusion of impermanence.
DIGNITY DEPENDS ON INDEPENDENCE
The United States is obsessed with Independence. Check out our history. In our fight for freedom, we have elevated the importance of depending on ourselves. We believe that in order to create a good life, we must take action and not depend on others. Asking for help feels like a weakness. This shows up so much in speaking with older adults. There is great fear and distaste around the idea of becoming a burden to one’s family, and many people tell me they want to die when they can no longer feed themselves or bathe themselves.
Dignity, these days, depends on independence, or so our culture tells us. Ironic, huh?
Our culture awards us for our independence, and looks down upon those who need to ask for help from others. Everything has a financial cost, thus it makes sense that we must work for money to pay these costs. True community, however, depends on actually leaning on each other. Deep and trusting relationships depend on supporting each other more than just ourselves through financial transactions.
Without a gifting economy where we share in the abundances of life, where we give freely knowing reciprocity to be our shared currency, trust is difficult to build. When we offer our goods and time to our friends, family, and neighbors with only gratitude returned, we strengthen bonds, build deep connections, and strengthen our capacity for trust. This supports a stronger community, a more connected peoples.
SEVERED CONNECTION TO THE NATURAL WORLD
Communities that live in nature and in connection with the natural world often harbor a healthier relationship with the circle of life. They witness it daily. The birth of a colt, the death of a hen. The birth of a litter of pups, the loss of a crop to hail. The relationship between the people and the natural world is felt and it is clear that they depend on each other to thrive. Death dances through daily life and the people know that many things must die in order for others to live. They know that the sheep offers her life for them to live. The circle of life, the beauty of senescence, the confrontation with birth and death in day to day life is an ongoing lesson and practice of coming to know one’s own mortality more deeply.
LOSS OF MULTIGENERATIONAL HOMES
It’s a big deal to move out of the house and go to college in much of the United States. It is often celebrated and for many years has been seen as a negative to move back in with parents after completing this education (though this has been changing over the years). When we move out from our family homes, we become dependent on financial income to support us in paying rent and we learn to live on our own. But what happens when our parents who gave up so much to raise us get sick? How can they come live with us when we have full time jobs and can’t care for them? We have the money but not the time to care for them so we can pay for them to go into a nursing home. We can pay minimum wage for home health care to come to them in their home. But our time is the most valuable thing and it is what we give to the machine in order to give us money to pay for all the goods and services that support ourr life… what kind of life is this?
MEDICALIZATION OF DYING
We used to take care of our sick and dying loved ones. This task has been reassigned to medical staff including doctors, nurses, care givers, palliative teams, hospice teams and others. Though palliative and hospice staff are trained to support people through dying, doctors regularly receive very little training on this. It is no fault of theirs, it simply has fallen out of scope of their training and position. They must focus on finding and fixing the problem to restore optimal health. This is a great charge but what happens when their patient will not survive? Unfortunately, due to the denial of death we face in this country, doctors and families will push someone to keep fighting even when survival is not an option. “Giving up” feels like a failure. Though there is a time and place for this, I believe our culture can do a much better job of allowing someone to be dying.
WE HAVE FORGOTTEN HOW TO GRIEVE
“To grieve is to love something that has gone out of sight. To love is to grieve something that has not yet done so”.
- Stephen Jenkinson.
Grieving is an essential part of celebrating life. I know it feels awful but it’s a way we love and it cannot be scheduled or controlled. We must allow ourselves to grieve without fear of judgement, without fear that we are doing it wrong. In modern America we often have such discomfort around others who are suffering or struggling. It’s very hard for us to witness someone grieving and so we try not to or we try to make them feel better. The problem is that we must grieve, emotion must move through and out of us, it must be witnessed. We are all grieving so much, it’s a part of our humanity and if we close the door on it prematurely, trying to focus on the positive and get back to “life as usual”, we will delay our healing and potentially cause pain for those we love in the future. We must tend to our grief and we must create safe spaces for others to grieve.
LACK OF REMEMBRANCE
Fear and denial of death often ride on the back of remembrance. Or lack of remembrance. Being forgotten feels so disconnecting, separating and lonely. In a culture where we don’t regularly honor and remember our dead (except on certain infrequent occasions), it is completely valid for this fear to fill us. We see that some cultures have very strong practices around remembrance, like the Day Of The Dead in Mexican culture for example. There is something very comforting about continuing to connect with our ancestors, both to acquire wisdom and feel connected but also in knowing that our families and friends will continue to love us even when we leave these bodies.
The Risks Of Continuing To Deny Our Mortality
NOT PLANNING DOESN’T MAKE IT NOT HAPPEN
Not planning makes for a rough ride. When a dying person refuses to make any plans, there can be significant issues for the family and friends. This is where we see huge disagreements and breaking up of relationships. Everyone wants what is best for their person who has died, but what that looks like varies significantly person to person. Without a blueprint, the grieving community is left to try and make plans while in the throws of deep grief. Logistics are challenging in this time even if plans have been made, let alone without any prior arrangements. The best thing one can do is to plan ahead for this transition to support one’s family and community in their loss and their grief.
BY REJECTING DEATH, WE REJECT LIFE
How can one live life fully while under the illusion that one is immortal? What in life is a constant? What is life but a great opportunity to practice one’s ability to love completely, be wildly heart broken, and learn to love again. Like the seasons, coming and going, like the waves of the ocean they rise and they fall. Many people speak about experiencing a significant release when they learn of their terminal diagnosis. They knew deep down that they would die of something at sometime, but being told that they are certainly dying in a somewhat specified time frame can be freeing. When we reject our mortality we reject so much of life, so much of ourselves, and we can face greater spiritual pain at the end of life.
WHERE THERE IS SEPERATION THERE IS FEAR (& VISA VERSA)
If family members or friends are in denial of the fact that their person is dying, it can be incredibly lonely and separating. This may look and feel like being surrounded by people who won’t speak with them about what’s really going on, a sense of “cheerleading” and avoidance. It may feel like people are just trying to keep their person happy and comfortable while denying huge parts of reality. This can be incredibly isolating no matter how physically close the loved ones may be with the dying person. We can see, however, that the fear of the loved ones is coming from a place of not wanting to be separated, yet it’s creating that separation at the same time.
OUR LEGACY INCLUDES OUR DYING
When we deny our mortality, when we remove ourselves from family so as not to burden them, we prevent them from experiencing important elements of the experience of being alive. When we try to protect our loved ones from hurt, we prevent them from feeling fully and navigating hard emotions for themselves. This times are essential to our growth, we need them to blossom into mature adults who can hold each other in health and in sickness, who can make safe spaces for grieving and for feeling all the pain, pleasure, sorrow, loss, love, and joy of life.
Alchemizing Denial Into Acceptance
UNDOING OURSELVES
Children have so much potential but they don’t have much independence. How come we don’t associate dignity with independence for children but we do for adults? The creation of a child into an adult is a very exciting process, the building up of the human. There is so much possibility, so much unknown, so much growth available. I believe that the undoing of an adult should be equally exciting and valued in our culture. We now learn to let go of all that we have identified with, all that we have built. Like the monks who make the incredible mandalas from sand only to destroy them. Like the incredible art installations of burning man that are celebrated as they burn at the desert floor. We have our entire lives to practice letting go. Letting go of the things and titles we love but also letting go of control. We must learn to surrender and our death is our final practice of this on Earth. We slowly offer the gift or unending energy back, we offer our hearing back, we offer our sight. In offering these things back, we come to know the beauty of these gifts more intimately, we come to know our blessings and the richness of this life.
CONNECTING WITH NATURE
If you don’t live in nature or even near nature, make it a priority to connect with the natural world. Go hiking and look for all that is dying on the forest floor. Open yourself to all that has come alive from that which has died there. Breathe this in. Or visit the ocean and watch each wave, one life, dance for you before dying and returning to the sea. That wave will never live again but the particles of water will make up many new waves for eternity. Where can you see the beauty in the aging and dying that we witness in the natural world? How can you see yourself in the fallen tree, “dead” but still very much apart of the history and the presence of the forest today. Admiring a beautiful flower, remember that this flower blooms only once, and the blooming is, in fact, the glorious dying of this specific flower. The full expression and complete offering of beauty to the world in her fairwell. Feel the joy of witnessing this, and understand the connectedness and the duty of that flower to live, grow, bloom, and die while connected to the rest of the plant, or the rest of the garden.
CARING FOR OUR SICK AND DYING
It is common that when people are sick or dying they may go to the hospital. Though this is often with great intention and often is the right thing to do when medical attention is necessary, it’s important to maintain a connection with our sick and our dying loved ones. To be involved in the process, to witness this and to support our elders through the process. We must learn to be with those who are uncomfortable, those who are in pain, those who are suffering. A great way to practice this is by volunteering with hospice.
When it comes to dying, it’s important to really be with the corpse before calling the mortuary. Be with this human body where the spirit no longer resides. Come to know that this person is no longer in the same form you have known him/her to be in. As we practice staying focused, witnessing the pain, the struggle, the death, we learn to understand death and life. This is a powerful tool for you in your healing.
PRACTICE REMEMBRANCE
The fear of being forgotten is significant. Make it a priority to connect with your well and wise ancestors. Check in for a moment and notice how you connect with your ancestors now. Do you remember them regularly? Do you honor them? Do you speak of them or to them? Do you celebrate them? You can make an ancestral altar, speak their names, take a moment at the beginning or the end of your meditation to feel their presence, call them into your day, listen to music that reminds you of them, put their pictures somewhere you will see them regularly, tell stories of their lives, etc. This can be as casual or as formal as you would like. Read more about creating an ancestral altar here or contact us to learn more about incorporating remembrance ritual into your daily lif.
PRACTICE IMPERMANENCE
Do not be consumed by the illusion of permanence. Nothing in life stays the same. Whether you tune into the changing of seasons, the growth of your child, the life and death of your garden, the aging of your body, you will learn again and again that everything is coming and going. One great practice for this is meditation. As you sit and focus soley on the sensations in the body, you are sure to find painful sensations. Though you are likely to want to act and to change the pain, if you sit here with your full attention on the pain (not wishing for it to go away but curiously observing it), you will notice it transform. The same is true with an itching sensatiton, warmth, cold, etc. It is the truth of nature and the more we come to embody this, the better prepared me way be for our death and the death of our loved ones.
HOW YOU LIFE IS OFTEN HOW YOU DIE
You cannot expect to die peacefully if you live a life of violence, agitation, regret. Don’t wait for the death bed to find your peace, practice it now. How are you with endings? Do you change the song before it’s finished? Do you turn off the video before the ending credits? Do you eat the best part of your meal first or last? How do you want to feel at the end of your life? How are you cultivating those feelings throughout your life now? Mindfulness is an important practice for this. Simply observe yourself going through your day. How are you in the “mundane” daily routine of life? How are you with discomfort? How are you with letting go?
MAKE A PLAN AND SHARE IT
Planning ahead is a gift for those who love you. Make a plan and share it with those who love you. It’s important for everyone to be on the same page in order to make sure your wishes are met and to make sure they can be appropriately prepared. This plan can include plans for your assets, your funeral, your remains, your vigil, how you want to be remembered/contacted by your living family, etc.
IN CONCLUSION
It can be hard to shed the skins of conditioning that we didn’t even notice we carried. It’s difficult to confront topics of mortality when we feel healthy and things seem to be going well. It’s essential for us to start the conversations with our loved ones early, however, so we may support each other well. We must be curious about mortality and practice loving and letting go through our lives in order to die well and support others in doing so. This does not have to be sad, solemn, or painful. It simply is a reality of our humanness and the more we engage with it through our lives and the many smaller deaths, more able we will be to die well and die peacefully.