What If Dying Was Fun?
Just a little bit?
I had the pleasure of attending a Death Cafe last weekend, which is a small public meetup where people discuss dying, grief, endings, loss. They’re neat, and if there’s one near you, I’d recommend attending.
Death tends to be a heavy social topic. It naturally weighs a room down, sobers it up. It demands a seriousness that is (you know, deservedly) reverential.
Lately, though, I’ve been feeling like we’re missing something when we discuss dying. An aspect that goes largely ignored in favor of melancholy or sorrow. And it’s… fun. It’s the idea that death is the solution to a very long and arduous riddle. The word that ties the whole crossword together. The release of wondering, pining, and searching (which can also be fun, but that’s for another day). It’s a simple mental-move when considering the Ultimate — which is the realization that you’ll finally know.
And won’t it be fun to finally know?
We move through life in Mystery. A looming question, a countdown clock. Perhaps we imagine an annihilatory blackness. A cosmic river, a flash of light. Perhaps, through Faith, the Mystery skews towards content: a place we go, a reunion with the ones we love, a chance to begin anew. But even with the practiced assurity that a Beyond (or not) awaits, there will still only be one, singular moment in which we find out for sure.
What a trip.
I’ve had the privilege of sharing rooms with those who are dying, and it’s always surprised me how literal the border between existing and not-existing feels. For me, this Death-Feeling has been a truly palpable thing - a genuine fuzziness in the air, a sheer veil that seems to drape itself over the room. And when the person has passed, the static of the veil has lifted - leaving me with the clarity of my own aliveness.
Death is a mirror in this way. When I picture this twilight, in-between moment, I imagine being paused on the crest of a roller coaster’s peak. I feel a buzzing, the coaster brimming. I hear the light ‘click-click-clicking’ of the wheels on the track as it prepares to drop. And I’m looking back on the dips and valleys of my life, neutrally musing over the triumphs and mistakes, relishing the bird’s eye view of the landscape, trepidatiously glancing towards the ensuing plunge. When I truly feel into this moment, there’s some anticipatory apprehension, sure, but there’s also excitement. As Bill Hicks would say,
“The ride goes up and down, and round and round. There’s thrills and chills, and it’s very brightly colored, and it’s loud, and it’s fun, for awhile. And some people have been on the ride for a long time, and they begin to question - is this real, or is this just a ride? And other people have remembered, and they come back to us and they say, ‘Hey, don’t worry, don’t be afraid, ever, because this is just a ride.’”
If you set the heaviness aside, it’s an exhilarating thought, isn’t it? Taking the dive into the unknowable? Embracing the carnival - seeing the ride through to the end — and past it? What if we didn’t have to fear, or cling, or grasp. What if instead, as we neared the moment of release, we felt into the glory of what it means to Be, and got just plain delighted to find out where, what, or who we might Be next? Or better yet, didn’t plan at all, and merely savored the moment to moment experience of the event that has loomed so palpably over our lives? Here it is, right now, truly happening, isn’t this wild?
…Aren’t you just dying to know? (Forgive me, I had to.)
There’s a really lovely article written by Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed’s long-term partner, on the end of his life. It’s beautiful, and worth a full read. In it, she says,
“I have never seen an expression as full of wonder as Lou’s as he died. His hands were doing the water-flowing 21-form of tai chi. His eyes were wide open. [ … ] His heart stopped. He wasn’t afraid. […] Life – so beautiful, painful and dazzling – does not get better than that. And death? I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.”
If I’m given the gift of a conscious passing at a respectably old age, one in which I’m aware that the end is nigh, I hope to possess a similar sense of awe. Because what fun it is, to sit on the edge of such an exciting precipice, towing the line between here and there, being this and not-being this.
What awaits?
Laurie Anderson, Tenzin Choegyal, and Jesse Paris Smith made an album that ethereally takes you through the Tibetan Book of the Dead. With headphones, a nice breeze, and an open heart, the experience is transportative.