The only thing certain in life is the inevitability of death.

In spite of this inevitability, however, death is the one thing that we, in the West, refuse to acknowledge, or, at least, to face up to intentionally and constructively. This reluctance relates, not only to our busyness and to an endemic denial, but to the difficulty we have talking about issues that move us feelingly, such as the anticipated pain of parting from loved ones.

Rather than facing our mortality, we prefer to believe the lie that we have been gifted with an unending string of tomorrows.

The Denial

There are a number of ways in which this denial is manifest.

We regard youthfulness as the ideal human condition. It is certainly true that, when we are young, our bodies are at their peak physical condition, with a tautness of skin and with a capacity for skeletal athleticism. It is also in our youth that we discover an abounding hormonal energy, when the evolutionally dynamic of our genes propels us into the discovery of a contra-sexuality, represented, at this stage, by the opposite sex.

However, our blind commitment to the ideal of youthfulness often overlooks the fact that adolescence and early adulthood are associated with awkwardness and confusion. They represent a time when we are beginning, rather than climaxing the period of maturation associated with adulthood. Because of this focus on youthfulness, we refuse to acknowledge, or celebrate, our ageing and the process of maturation that can accompany it.

Most people are reluctant to acknowledge how old they are until they are old enough to be able to boast about it. We work at giving the impression that we are more youthful than we know ourselves to be, because, the more youthful we are, the more we will be desired. Being desired promises to make up for the deficit in our self-esteem. In the endeavour to remain youthful, we spend enormous sums of money on our appearance and on keeping our bodies active and supple.

It is also true that we associate usefulness with worth, and the sense of one's worthwhileness nurtures self-esteem. Ageing, because it is associated with what is seen as an increasing uselessness, is denied, rather than being embraced as a point of entry into another, richer way of being. [119]

In our throw-away culture, where the aged are cursorily regarded, younger generations are at pains to avoid recognizing that this fate awaits them, together with the dismissal that precedes it.

The pace and strain of contemporary life, together with increased stresses on the nuclear family, make it difficult for us to care for our aged parents at home. Furthermore, because we are living longer, and because, at times, the aged remind us of the inevitability of our own ageing, there is a tendency for them to be physically segregated.

Why the Denial?

We need to explore more deeply the question of why it is that we are in denial over death. A number of explanations immediately suggest themselves.

There is a genetic, evolutionary passion for group and species' survival that represents a healthy denial of death and that catches us all up into its momentum. Denial can also relate to our unspoken recognition that our dying can place great physical, emotional and economic strain on our families.

It is also true that we fear death, in the sense of fearing the unknown, a response that is reflected in major transitions in our lives, when we experience "little deaths". We also fear the process of dying. This is exacerbated by the fact that the dying that is portrayed on the media is usually extremely painful or violent. It may also be influenced by our awareness of the fact that the moment of death may be preceded by severe physical or mental incapacity.

At a personal level, death has been associated with loss, the loss, through death, of those close to us, that, more often than not, has not been fully grieved out. This grief remains repressed, and, therefore, will resist the disinterment which the facing of our own death would necessitate.

Furthermore, as we face death, we have to come to terms with the fact that our passion for self-realisation has fallen far short of its potentiality. For many, death also seems to close off the opportunity of redressing the unfairness of life.

It is an obvious fact that death has been sanitised and cosmeticised by the funeral industry, which encourages us to pretend that it will not overtake us. We live in a world of illusion, of myriad illusions, about what is real, about what counts for happiness, about what constitutes wisdom or beauty or excellence and the denial of death, not only represents one such illusion, but is foundational to all the rest and therefore must be maintained at all costs. [120]

Why Face Our Mortality?

The benefits of facing our mortality are many.

If we face our mortality, death will not overtake us unawares, no matter how little notice we have of its arrival. It will ensure that our affairs are always in order, inasmuch as it is in our power to order them. It will also force us to accept and face our fear of death and dying and will encourage us to intentionally explore the paths others have taken, who have been this way before us. Furthermore, it will help us prepare for the physical and psychological act of dying.

It will also powerfully influence the way we live. We will face life, not heedlessly or recklessly, but deliberately and calmly. It will give us perspective on life and help us re-order our priorities. It will help us reduce the busyness of living to its essentials and will develop in us a fruitful simplicity. We will accept life as a grace and surrender to its rhythms, which include the rhythm of birth and death. We will live the understanding that death is a part of life and is its culmination.

Facing our mortality will help us appreciate the benefits of living in the eternal now and will facilitate our engaging this experience. We will realize that people are more important than possessions or projects. We will acknowledge that the purposeful development of the inner person is more significant than the development or adornment of the outer person. It will force us to dis-identify with the persona and to identify with the reality of the total body/self. It will increase our respect for and caring for the aged and will encourage us to celebrate our own ageing.

How Do We Do It?

The degree to which, and the manner in which, we face our mortality is generally related to our chronological age. It is inappropriate, for example, for young people, who have enormous energy for life, to be pre-occupied with death.

Allowing for this proviso, however, it is, nevertheless, salutary for young people to witness ageing and even death, particularly in contexts in which death is experienced as a normal part of living. This was the burden of the message of the preacher in Ecclesiastes. It was also a confrontation with mortality, with the sick and dying, that propelled Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, on his quest for the meaning of life in the context of the exploration of suffering.

It is important, therefore, for us to realize that the aged, and the dying, are a gift to us. The observation that the decay of the body, for many older people, is accompanied by the flowering of an inner, eternal youthfulness, is also inspiring and helps us appreciate that the golden age is not associated with a lost adolescence but with a ripe maturity. [121]

Even more of a challenge are those who face death before they have reached maturity, because, provided they are not suffocated by resentment, the process of maturation, where life is reduced to its essentials and where they exchange pretence for authenticity, is clearly observable because it is accelerated.

For Christians, reflection on the resurrection of Christ and on encounters with the resurrected Christ, together with the enhancement of the business of living through an openness to the graced energies of the Spirit, prepare them for the enlargement of this experience at the point of death.

The after-death experiences of those who have been clinically dead can be life-changing both for those who have lived through them and for those who are informed about them.

The Culminating Instalment

If we view life as a maturational journey, involving a series of stage or narrative transitions, and if we intentionally participate in this journey, we will, at each critical juncture, have been involved in small deaths and resurrections. By processing through these deaths and by venturing on the journey itself, we will be in the process of preparing ourselves for the culminating instalment. Furthermore, if we have processed, in our appropriation of our God-given humanity, from the level of the ego, to the self, to the body/self and to the experience of a unity in God with the whole of creation, an experience that has diminished the sense of a separate self, death will be embraced with an inspired, even if physically distressful, relinquishment that will be as natural as falling asleep. [122]

[SFM 119-122]