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Saturday, January 11, 2014

The Denial of Death


A young researcher is told that he is dying and writes a book. He comes from a field in which the fears that are precipitated from thinking of one's mortality were, at least, then attributed to Neurosis. He wonders as he pens his work. Man was Ernst Becker.

I recently stumbled upon a discussion about "aging" that maybe has morphed into one on "death." It's on a psychology type Discussion Board but I don't rightly know if the participants are therapists, researchers or folk who like to lurk. Who is to know once one enters the World of the Internet ... full of thaumatrurgy and deceit. In any case, it doesn't matter.  The care taken in replacing rings and pistons while rebuilding a reciprocating gas engine can be learned by experience. Most of us don't get to practice dying ... "Now fall Caesar" no matter how many times you play at it, doesn't impart the fulkness (or maybe I should say the emptiness) of the experience.

One person had a tragic accident where they brooke more that two dozen bones ... she has no fear.

Another lives alone in Oslo ... cheerful town, ther proclaim, of Edvard Munch ... apparently trhe Woody Allen of his day. (Oh, that picture of a woman sitting by her child's deathbed, notwithstanding.) His heater and refrigerator don't work in Balmy sub Arctic Northern Europe ... but, hey.

Freddy Mercury waffled between lyrics of immortality and those of death.

Freud spoke of thinking en passant of death every day.

Moses begged not to die. Moses, if you read the story, didn't go quietly into that dark night.

And even the Prince of Peace called down from the cross ... Eli, Eli, lamah Sabachtani ... I always wondered about that expression made immortal by the writers of the Christian gospels. The Aramaic is uniformly translated as a reference to Psalm's Eli, Eli, Lamah Azavtani ... My Lord, My Lord, why have you abandoned me. But The Crucified well would have known that Sabachtani and Zavachtani sound alike ... especially from way up there on the cross ... and the latter means "slaughtered," and, in that sense, "killed" ... "made dead" (though the Writings of Moses have a word which litterally means "And he made him dead" ... Va'Ymisuhu ... from the story of the poor older sons of Judah, Er and Onan.

Oh, we can kid about it ... that is, we can respond to it as a kid would ... with counterphobic behaviors and speech.

     "Hey, I can abuse these drugs ... I don't care if I'm gonna die."

     "Y'know, I wound that bike's/car's engine out to 7000 RPM and it wanted to go faster and faster. 120,
     130 ... 150 mph ... whoa! What a thrill."

     "YOLO (Y'Only Live Once) ... "

There was a period of time when many of my visitors to my office had AIDS or were about to contract HIV from their reckless behavior. It was during that time that I started hearing YOLO quite a bit ... maybe I heard it, before, but I don't recall that being the case. When I'd visit them in the hospital or at home and near death, I recall none who were in a party mood. Mostly, people held on to my hand, as if to say: Don't let me fall into the emptiness, alone.

The Peat Bog Soldiers ... the Boys who died in the War of the Roses and the ones Moses generaled against the Midianites have all been, as far as I know, forgotten. We the living post markers for our "dearly departed" at the cemeteries of the world.

Am I being maudlin? I don't think so, but I do hold to the belief that paying attention to the closing paragraphs of the story can peacefully coexist with attending to the opening and to the body of the story. So many cultures have expressions about living every day as if it were your last ... making each communication to those we love be ones that we might like them to hold in their memories in the years when they go on in our absence and not being afraid to embrace any attendant fears.

I've long-believed that feelings can be invited much as waves ... to briefly carry and then flow over us. I remembder when my kids were still in school sitting on a beach with sizable waves. We were watching a woman fighting these pretty big pulses of the Atlantic ... unwilling to be carried by them, she was repeatedly hurled onto her butt ... frustrated ... annoyed.

Lord! May I dignify my fears and then let them pass until they return.

With warm regards from a Last Quarter Player

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