Death: An Exploration

Chapter I: Living with Death

"Men fear death, as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children, is increased with tales, so is the other." -Francis Bacon

My upbringing was very different from that of my peers. Some might say that I grew up in a haunted house, surrounded by death. I grew up with a skeleton in the living room that my father had acquired through some elaborate business deal, involving rooting around in some man's cellar. I looked into the face of death in the living room every day. At first it freaked me out to see someone who had once been alive, like me, but was no longer. However, I went from being scared as a child to occasionally being startled by the skeleton to being curious. I would stare at it and brood on the bones restructured into a cold representation of the human that once was. Although we first thought the deceased person in our living room to be a man, from the hip structure we deduced that she had in fact been an unusually tall woman for her time. We changed her name from William to Willamay.

Willamay was the crown jewel of the dead that populated our house. The walls were festooned with mummified cats, turtle shells, and skulls of various animals. Pig embryos in jars sat on the windowsill. In the freezer there were birds and reptiles in various stages of decomposition. Perhaps because of this upbringing that some might call macabre, I have always had what seems to be an unusual fascination with the final destination. I have never been obsessed with death, but I have fantasized about it, gone through the death of loved ones, and in dreams have faced my own.

Although dealing with death as a child was confusing, I experienced death on many levels. Most notable was the loss of my great-uncle Tom, with whom I was very close. He was an intelligent man with a legendary background in athletics and business. Even though he was advanced in years, we would wrestle on the floor when I was four or five. He was always generous with his time and went out of his way to give me little extras, including treats and the kind of attention that endears a child to an older relative. His passing when I was only seven gave me a new perspective on death. It was an uneasy initiation to the lifelong pain of losing those we love. It was hard for me to understand that I would never see him again.

Having Willamay in the house and being surrounded by artifacts from dead animals, combined with experiencing the loss of someone so important, I was forced to contemplate death. This compelled me to consider the vestiges of death; the remains of beings that had once existed but were no longer alive.

Over the years I have lost good friends and relatives and, as I assume nearly everyone has, I have continued to ponder what death means. One important result of this introspection: I have tried to find a deeper meaning behind what it means to be alive. Death is one of the only certainties in life. We live in a world of dualities: hot and cold, male and female, etc. So if there is life, then logically there must be the opposite.

As far as we know, we are the only species that analyzes the phenomenon of death. Reliving an imagined death over and again without actually experiencing death can compound the suffering. But only those who can appreciate death for what it is and begin to see the possibilities in it are able to find some relief from the dark shadow that this inevitability seems to cast. Why don't more people approach it, as many of our visionaries have, as a release? Those who were able to see death as more than some diabolical riddle or an end to everything seem to lead fuller lives. Consider this quote from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart:

As death, when we come to consider it closely, is the true goal of our existence, I have formed during the last few years such close relations with this best and truest friend of mankind, that his image is not only no longer terrifying to me, but is indeed very soothing and consoling! And I thank my God for graciously granting me the opportunity (you know what I mean) of learning that death is the key which unlocks the door to our true happiness.

But it seems that our society moves to a different beat than Mozart did. The subject of death becomes even more complex when we consider the role of violence in our society, because death is often the product of extreme violence. Brutality seems omnipresent, from the increasingly gory movies and television shows to mass shootings that plague the United States. Almost every week, it seems, there is another mass shooting. The obsession people have with murder mysteries and serial killers is insatiable. We also seem to have an unquenchable desire for tales of undead monsters, specifically vampires and zombies. What does this say about death and our quality of life?

"The first breath is the beginning of death." -Thomas Fuller

We grow from babies to adults, and our bodies and minds go through many changes. After passing through the awkward crucible of adolescence we amble into adulthood, without the rites many primal societies retain to signify reaching womanhood or manhood. After we wax strong, with most raising families and nurturing careers, there comes a time when we start to lose things: memories, muscle mass, thoughts, and abilities. We hit the pinnacle and enter the decline. Slowly, things we took for granted in our youth are gone or don't work the same. Eventually, as Warren Zevon said as he was aging, "Your shit's fucked up... The shit that used to work / It won't work now." During this process of regression we start to become children again, not as sure on our feet, in need of the care of others-vulnerable. With many older people, a jovial innocence returns that can be only seen in the smile of a child. The process of returning to the place from where we came, which poet Harold Brodkey referred to as "wild darkness," can be unsettling, but it is a road we all must walk. This is the cycle of life that those who make it to old age experience in its entirety. But we do not forget that death happens at all ages and is experienced by all people.

In the words of my father (speculating after copious bourbon consumption): "You return to the best place you've ever been...when you die, you go back to the womb and you come out kicking and screaming because it was so wonderful and you hate to leave." I later realized that this notion was similar to the words of the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who contended that "after your death you will be what you were before your birth." This point of view takes the ability to look beyond our learned experiences to something greater; perhaps, as Carl Jung speculated, to a collective unconscious, which is something that we are connected to and is bigger than ourselves.

How can we be so certain that death is something to be feared? Is there any other reason for this than mystery? Plato reminds us of a simple truth that has not changed in thousands of years: "To fear death, gentlemen, is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows whether death may not be the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they knew that is the greatest of evils. And surely it is the most blameworthy ignorance to believe that one knows what one does not know." Heeding the words of Plato, I recall that almost nothing is certain. But these thoughts are even more powerful when considered alongside this quote by neurologist Oliver Sacks: "There will be no one like us when we are gone, but then there is no one like anyone else, ever. When people die, they cannot be replaced. They leave holes that cannot be filled, for it is the fate-the genetic and neural fate-of every human being to be a unique individual, to find his own path, to live his own life, to die his own death."

As I have grown from child to adult, death has appeared to me in many forms. Experiencing death has dragged me into emotional pits and has also compelled me to deep contemplation. This journey has filled me with wonderment as well as remorse. In the following chapters we will look at death from many other perspectives, which I hope will build to a whole greater than the sum of its parts.

Karol Berger, Bach's Cycle, Mozart's Arrow: An Essay on the Origins of Musical Modernity. (Berkley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2008), 190.

Warren Zevon, "Warren Zevon Lyrics," Metro Lyrics, n.d., accessed November 6, 2015, .

Oliver Sacks, "Oliver Sacks on Learning He Has Terminal Cancer," The New York Times, February 19, 2015, accessed August 5, 2015, .