The Death of You

My new book, The Death of You: A Book for Anyone Who Might Not Live Forever comes out tomorrow via Wisdom Publications!! To celebrate I’m releasing this month’s free article a week early AND it’s an excerpt from the book!! Check it out, and pick the book up wherever you get books!

Love,

M

A middle way

Now, we don’t personally know what dying is like, but we do

know that, from a physical standpoint at least, being alive

and being dead are pretty different. You can call a living

friend on the phone or pop by their house to visit. You cannot

do that with your dead grandparent. (You can try, I

guess, but it will be very different than when they were

alive. I’m betting. And if their phone number has since

been given to someone else, you will have a very confused

stranger on the line wondering why you’re calling them

Abuelita.)

Think about someone you love deeply. You wish they

could live forever! You could spend your life afraid that they

will die, wishing with all your might that they won’t, until

one day they do. Or, you could enjoy the time you are given

with them, softly aware that, yes, someday it will be over.

I’d rather spend my time present than worrying. And it’s

totally doable, being present. Worries might still arise, but

over time we can get better at letting them go rather than

allowing them to overtake us. This is our practice.

Another way to go, on the opposite end of the spectrum,

would be to completely ignore the fact that this person you

love is going to die someday. A sort of out-of-sight, out-of-mind

mentality. Maybe, if you don’t think about them

dying, they just won’t! Until they do, and it will be pretty

fucking hard to ignore, and you won’t be prepared for it

at all.

But there’s a middle way.

In this middle-way scenario, you have put in time understanding

and exploring the reality of death. You’ve become

reasonably aware of the finite nature of life. Because

of this, you are neither compelled to sit around worrying

that your loved one will die, nor to take your time together

for granted. You know that time is limited and you appreciate

it. In a certain sense, this is the absence of clinging and

aversion.

This same mentality can be applied even after your

loved one has died. At that point the truth becomes that

they are gone. You don’t get a choice about that. It will hurt.

You will undoubtedly experience very real, very profound

pain. But it’s possible to feel that pain and not cause yourself

undue suffering.

Feeling that pain is hard, but it sure beats aversion. I

tried the aversion route when my mother and sister died,

and I can tell you: it’s impossible. You might spend a decade

on drugs, desperately trying not to feel the pain, but all you

will have done is prolonged it, turning it into real, ongoing

suffering.

You won’t do much better with clinging. Your loved one

will remain very dead, and no amount of wishing and

wanting will make the truth untrue.

So we return to the middle.

In the middle, we can feel the pain. We can be truly,

deeply sad about our loved one’s passing. But we can also

feel joy. We can have good days. We can move forward in

our lives. We can find beauty all around us. We can allow

ourselves to be transformed by our pain into something

even greater.