DENIAL OF DEATH AND AGING
by jonah
As I age I’m finding that, while my faith, my confident trust in God, seems to be deepening, I’m feeling much less certain about life after death. Every morning I face the east and pray: “I thank you Lord for the breath of life; I thank you for the length of days.” So I’m grateful for the many gifts I’ve received, especially for the gift of life. These many gifts are really more than I deserve. I have done nothing to earn them. So I’m grateful. Furthermore, I no longer need the fear of hell or the promise of heaven to prod me on. My experience tells me, that even if there were no life after death, a virtuous life is a good life. Even in the midst of suffering a truly virtuous person finds peace. Virtue is its own reward.
However, I find it difficult to imagine what it will be like to be dead. When I was young, death was only a remote possibility . Now death is becoming ever more immanent. An old priest once told me: “The young may die but the old must die”. Now I understand.
With death, my body will disintegrate. I will be blind and deaf. I will no longer be able to feel physical pleasure or pain. I will no longer have a brain in which to store memories and experiences. And what will happen to all my memories and experiences? Moreover, I’m not sure that my soul is really something apart from my body, although accounts of near death experiences seem to indicate that the souls can become disengaged from the bodies. However that may be, I still ask myself the question: “When I have no body will I be nobody?”
Recently I wrote the following poem:
DEATH AND AGING
When I was a little child
My mother held me securely in her arms
While shadows,
From a hanging street lamp
That was swinging in the wind,
Danced about the dark room.
My mother was You.
Now I’m old
And You came to me last night
I was alone and could not sleep.
Why did I tremble?
Are you not me mother
Still?
I suspect that when persons say they’re not afraid of dying, they’re really in denial. I learned this from Denial of Death by Earnest Becker. When the great founder of modern psychiatry was confronted by his mortality, he fainted away. Some don’t even like to talk about dying. When speaking about the death of a friend or relative, they use such euphemisms as “they have passed” In astronomy black-holes are places in space where gravity is so strong that nothing , not even light, can escape and all the laws of nature, as we know them, disappear. Death is our personal, subjective black hole. Death is a frightening unknown.
Before Vatican II, parish missions and retreats would traditionally conclude with a conference on the four last things, namely, “Death, Judgment, Heaven or Hell.” The terrors of eternal damnation would generally eclipse the promise of eternal bliss. It would seem that walking up and down a golden street playing a harp would in time get monotonous and boring but eternal hellfire really singed the soul. At the Mass for the dead, the dreaded refrains of the “Dies irae, dies illa” (Day of wrath, that dreadful day…) echo the harsh word in Matthew’s great judgment scene: “Depart from me, accursed ones, into everlasting fire which was prepared for the devil and his angels.” (Matt. 25: 41)
When facing up to my mortality, faith with its promise of “life everlasting” and “ the resurrection of the body” has been a real comfort. Is this kind of faith simply another form of denial? However the threat of eternal damnation, restores the elements of uncertainty and dread. I once said that I would prefer eternal damnation to annihilation. How very strong is our instinct for survival!
Fear of death is not a lack of faith. Fear of death is human--is natural. Even the man Jesus sweated blood in the garden when he saw his death approaching. And he was not pretending. He was truly human. As such, he could experience the uncertainty and the dread of dying. In the Office of Readings (Matins) for Wednesday of the Fifth Week of Lent, Augustine writes: “…we gaze on the divinity of the Son of God, something supremely great and surpassing all the greatness of his creatures. Yet in other parts of Scripture we hear him as one sighing, (weeping), praying , giving praise and thanks. We hesitate to attribute these words to him because our minds are slow to come down to his humble level when we have just been contemplating him in his divinity.” Further on he writes: “We must realize that the one whom we were contemplating a short time before in his nature as God took to himself the nature of a servant; he was made in the likeness of men and found to be a man (a human being) like others; he humbled himself by being obedient even to accepting death; as he hung on the cross he made the psalmist’s words his own: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” And he was not pretending.
Denial of death is a lack of faith. Faith is more than assent of the mind. Faith is more than saying: “Lord, Lord”. Faith is trust--trusting confidence. Facing the uncertainty of death with confident trust is the proof of faith. When we die, the temple veil is parted and we enter the Holy of Holies. Death is our final kenosis--our final letting go of our old self and becoming our true Self. The man Jesus could say “I do always the will of Him who sent me” but it wasn’t until he said “Father, into Your hands I commend my spirit” that he could finally say: “It is finished!”
