The first time we lose a loved one, and for those infamous seconds that seem to exist independent of time itself, the whole world turns blank. We're suddenly overcome by an unbearability that, until that point, we had no idea we were capable of handling. It hits us like a runaway train, only worse; a relentless storm battering down on us from every direction. For many people, nothing is ever the same.
Many experiences challenge us to reflect on what it means to be this lump of carbon-based structure we call human, and what it all means that we’re here; right now in time and in this very nook of space. But none comes close to witnessing the death of others, and especially the death of those we care about. Death, however, to put it less morbidly, seems to be the inevitable end of all things. With all their magnanimity and majestic scintillations, even stars eventually run out of energy.
Amongst our earthly activities, death emblems the specialness of how we all transverse through the cosmos. It signifies, among other things, the quality of time we had together with those we love or doing things we cherish (that too precious a thing to ever be taken for granted); a bridge on which we reminisce or regret the past while sharing a common fear of the unknowable future.
It holds up a mirror for the seer to recognize how their obsession with trying to live a perfect life — one in restraint of taboos and full of guidebooks detailing how to live a life others will accept, as if everyone's brief existence is not theirs to, uh, freely exist — is nothing more than a fleeting illusion. Thus, in many ways, while death is the end of many things, for us still able to breathe and contemplate and tweet gay jokes, it is a reawakening, a cleansing of all those daily struggles and the ability to see them in all their transparent glory.
It isn’t in my place to prescribe to anybody how to deal with the grief of losing that which, though dead, still claimed a part of them. I would like to suggest, with no authority whatsoever so don't take my words for it, that coming out the other end of losing a friend or family member or pet or favorite author or... isn’t a slow progression towards acceptance, but a hastened one. And like most things, the way we view death dramatically impacts our reaction to it. The trauma that initially sets in and sets the pace of recovery from this devastating loss; the insight into where we've been heading with our flawed, human lives; the motivation to bring back a big chunk of the meaning that seems to have been lost along with those people.
Perhaps this is the universe’s way of persisting in reducing everything to a false simplicity, and it falls on us to (yet again) find hidden meaning in them. The German poet Lisel Mueller already held that what exists, exists so that it can be lost and become precious. Though brilliantly worded, it shrouded death in an unnameable terror, one of detachment and memento mori. Hence, to Beckett’s Pozzo, life is merely an “instant,” too brief to consider. But hey, to each their own.
There is no doubt that humans are all genetically related. Looking into this family more closely reveals calming, and deeply soothing reminders that, even though achieving immortality as a concept is impossible, mortality, tinged with pain and loss, can be viewed through many spectacles. This makes it easier to see the silver lining in our frailty.
We don't die to wholly cease to exist, and not in the weakass oh-yea-our-legacies-lives-on-forever kinda way. I meant not dying in the literal sense. Even if cremated, the components you and I are composed of are never really destroyed when we die, only regrouped and reconfigured. It isn’t a coincidence that the Ship of Theseus, a thought experiment developed by ancient philosophers thousands of years ago, still dazzles us. It goes:
If the ship of Theseus were kept in a harbor and every part on the ship were replaced one at a time, would it then be a new ship? If it is not the same ship, then at what point did it stop being the ship of Theseus? If it is the same ship, then could all the removed pieces be reassembled to form a ship, and would that be the ship of Theseus?
Studies at an atomic research center revealed that about 98 percent of all the atoms in a human body are replaced every year. Which of these ships, our younger or current selves, we decide represents who we are is entirely a choice we're allowed to make. It is, after all, our "internal ship" that's defining how we're feeling about things that aren't exactly physical — like our own mortality.
We need not believe that the people we lose are harboring over us, seething to come back in their incarnations, nor feel guilty about moving on. After all, those people were each a unique facet of us, and in numerous ways continue to live through us. This isn't to say we should necessarily defy suffering that hole of emptiness and force ourselves to be at ease, but to open our minds to the possibility of joy, purpose, and meaning, regardless of whether everything or anything is eternal — existing in one form or another — or temporary.
It isn't always the loss itself that feels unbearable, but what it represents; the what-ifs that haunt us. And that… that we can learn to mold into something positive. For our sanity’s sake, we kinda have to.