Ruminations on Death


William Shatner puts it plain and simple on his “Has Been” CD released last year: “Live life, like you’re gonna die… because you’re gonna”. Death is an interesting topic on so many levels. Let’s face it, aside from birth (and arguably taxes), death is the only certainty in life. In spite of that, in Western society, we haven’t really come to grips with this notion.

Is death the end? In many religions, they’ll tell you “no” and speak of reincarnations and afterlife’s. Religion aside, I think that the balance of life and death can be clearly portrayed in terms of energy – and before you roll your eyes and think that I am getting all New Agey on you here, I am speaking of scientific energy here!

Brain activity is the result of electronic synapses. That electricity is due largely in part to the body utilising energy through nutrition and interaction with atmospheric elements. Energy exists in all things at certain levels, though often dependent on a reaction with something to cause an effect. We store energy in our muscles and we gain energy from nourishing ourselves. So, overall, imagine energy as an ocean. The ocean is broken down into little droplets of water (which is actually H20 if you want to go to the basics of each water particle – just work with the metaphor here…). These droplets combine to create anything ranging from clouds to fog to ripples to waves to steam, etc. Each creation has its moment, builds and falls, resuming to the source (ocean) and then becoming something else.

Now transfer this to one’s self. Our bodies are considerably different when comparing the 7 lb newborn to the 200 lb 30 year old to the 175 lb old man. Our body is in a constant state of life and death as cells are created and die – hair grows, nails are trimmed, teeth fall out, etc. What remains constant is the conscious mind and our memory in the minds of others. We defecate, a product of our nourishment and spending of that nutritious energy, other animals assist in the process of decay whether we’re talking flaked skin cells or eating peanuts from our poop, thus gaining and expending energy from these sources, continuing the cycle. When we finally do the “big death”, our bodies are returned to the earth and that energy is not lost, but rather broken down and re-dispersed.

So why do we fear death as it is a natural part of who and what we are? I think, in becoming abstract thinking conscious beings, that we have fallen victim to a distorted perspective that rationalises mortality. Certainly animals in the wild know fear and can sense immediate dangers. I believe that their awareness is, for example: deer smells hunter – thinks: “this bad” and goes into flight mode. Bambi doesn’t sit there and rationalise why the hunter wants to shoot him/her, feel victim or try to talk his/her way out by suggesting the Hunter check out the meat section at his local Safeway. In fact, I don’t think any critter ruminates about being dead, but, more so, the fear of the act of dying. I must concur. I honestly can say that I am totally okay with being dead. It’s the journey from where I am at to the end (point of being dead) that I fear, like being tortured by inmates in the prison where I work.

I am not trying to belittle mourning here, I must point out. Death is certainly hardest on those who are left behind in the conscious state of living. This mourning is more or less a more permanent incantation of when you met the girl of your dreams when you were 10 years old on summer vacation, never to see her again. But, and here’s where I get Buddhist/New Age on y’all, if you could just open that third eye, in spite of the sorrow, you can see that person as they are, as stated earlier, a part of that massive metaphorical ocean of which we will also (and have been all along) giving to and taking from.

To close with the words of Phillip Massinger: “Death has a thousand doors to let out life/ I shall find one”, or, better yet – “Live life like you’re gonna die – cos you’re gonna…”