We don’t know death

MULLINGS Easterine Kire Joni Mitchell in Both Sides Now sings, “I really don’t know life at all.” But I think that we know life a little. It is actually death that we don’t know. This Christmas, some lives have been lost in highway accidents and some lives have been taken by illness. As for the bereaved families racked by pain and loss, death is that ugly thing in the night, the gaping mouthed beast swallower of their beloved ones. The platitudes we offer to comfort them are so overused that they have lost their power. In the face of death, how small we are, and oh so mortal. “There is something final about death something inarguable.” The four year old son of a friend has been asking many questions about death. He wants to know if he will die, and what will happen to him when he dies. As adults, I think we all feel a little stupid when a child poses questions like that. Do we tell him the truth or do we give him the sugared down version? What is the truth about death anyway? The Tenyimia feared death so greatly that they conjured up various legends about it as they tried to understand it within the limits of their village world view. In fact, an oral narrator explained that the Tenyimia religion rotated around their fear of death, and how to avoid apotia deaths. (Apotia deaths are death by drowning, fire, falls, war, and any accidentally caused death.) Dreams of impending death are taken very seriously. Both the Igbo and the Tenyimia have a ritual where they clean the graves of dead ancestors, and honour their dead. Grave cleaning is set aside for the month of January. We bury our dead with the things they loved when they were alive. Traditionally we mourn them deeply with howling and wailing, and expressions of loss and regret. All that can be so confusing for a child experiencing death for the first time. And we must admit that truly we don’t know death well, therefore our response to it shows our defiance of defeat. Nor will we fully know death in this life. Unless of course we have a NDE, that is, a Near Death Experience, which are those amazing events in the lives of some fortunate people. They go into the beyond and return with stories that our earth trained ears and minds find hard to believe and comprehend. But what if those stories are real? Then death is simply another dimension of living. I don’t intend to demean death and the grief associated with it. Death is real. Grief and sorrow are real. But the good book confirms that death is both an end and a beginning, a kind of rite of passage into the rest of your life. “For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.” Weep with those who weep. It is right, and a compassionate thing to do. But go further. We are wonderfully made, too wonderfully made to simply end in death. Beyondness must be true. Be honest with a questioning child about what death is. By so doing, you are preparing him for life. No, we don’t know death well at all. We should start learning.