It’s absurd to talk about normalizing death since nothing could be more normal as it is. Nonetheless, we all naturally fear it. Aside from its horrific variants wrought by violence or disease, death means a foreclosure of all human possibility. No other living creature, we are told, knows that it will face this foreclosure. It might be the case that wounded animals do sense that they will die; but I am ready to accept the thesis that no other creature contemplates its demise with so much distance and freedom. Yes, we are free to think the unthinkable foreclosure of all thinking. The theater of our life shuts down completely. Either we try distracting ourselves with some counterfactual scenarios, or we concentrate on the action. Then the show is over before we know it. But perhaps the experience of living will have been more meaningful, more “true to life.”
It’s been said by the ancients that the human being is the only animal that can stand upright and hence ponder the stars: the realm of eternal permanence associated with heaven, eternal life, or the natural or moral law. Observing or enacting the theater of being alive, we are ensconced between the tragic freedom of knowing its end and the contemplation of a higher order, embodied in the stars or the inexorability of natural law. God, some think, looks down on us and will save or condemn us. The natural law doesn’t care about our wishes or needs in the least. That’s what makes it so reliable.
Ensconced between death, freedom, God, and nature, our minds fix on one of these focal points: the pious on God, the scientific on natural law, the morbid on death, and a certain mentality I associate with Existentialism on freedom. The Existentialist doesn’t necessarily dispute the force of natural law or the existence of God. But thinking like an Existentialist does tether our consciousness to the least stable, most challenged post of all. Freedom by definition is not something fixed. As freedom, it defies death by refusing to submit to its authority. It’s true that death exercises an irresistible power over us. There’s no escaping it. But power is not authority.
Badiou puts it this way: death is no part of life. There is a whole tradition of claiming that no one can maintain freedom in the face of death: the school of “there are no atheists in foxholes,” etc. Not only do I doubt that this can be defended with common sense or historical evidence. I can’t imagine what those who propose it think they gain. If a killer points a gun at our head and says, Believe or else, what good is that sort of “belief” to us or to the integrity of the belief? Faced with the torture instruments of the Gestapo, we might profess all sorts of things. This discredits rather than proves its point.
Badiou is right: death is no part of life. But dying is. For the unfortunate, it can take up a regrettably extensive portion of life, outweighing the value of life. I’ve always thought that dying was more fearful than death. Many people agree. This is why I am grateful that Terri shared the details of her husband’s passing. Like many older or infirm people, he stopped eating. He lasted about forty days. He satisfied his thirst by allowing himself popsicles. Their sugar content must have extended the process by a week or two. What about pain? According to Terri, his only pain was a stomach ache when he consumed thirteen popsicles in one day and got sick from them. He definitely didn’t die in agony. That’s a relief. I appreciate that Terri shares the information in exactly the same tone as if discussing a house repair.
Those who carry out hunger strikes undergo the same process of dying. They have a reason. And so do I. I’ve told my wife that I don’t intend to become a “high-maintenance basket case” burdening the family. Ending it all is best for me and best for our family. More precisely: it’s best for me because it’s best for all of us. It’s only slightly ironic that her most furious paroxysms in recent years were touched off by any gesture of my control over the house or my authority to make decisions for the family. Will my death sustain or undermine her control mania? I hope it will bring her to her senses. I hope that instead of lightning candles she will perform the incredible acts of kindness of the young woman I fell in love with even before I knew it. I still love and believe in the girl who played chess with her neighbor, old Herr Schindler.
Signed,
Andrew (Weeks)
Normal Thoughts 