Some Thoughts on Death

No ... this is not going to be a morbid post.

But death has been something I have been thinking about lately for a number of reasons ... but thinking about it peacefully ... with equanimity rather than fear.

Our family is going to celebrate what would have been my father's 100th birthday in June. He died in 1995, and we will celebrate his life in the small village where he lived much of his life, and where he is buried.

I am dealing with estate questions just now, so the practicalities of my dying are on my mind.

And Anne-Marie's party tonight has been another trigger.

But the other things that have got me thinking are a couple of books about death for people who are not expecting to have an everlasting life. The religious have the comfort of their belief that they will continue into the hereafter; the rest of us cannot take comfort in a life after death.

One of the books begins with the words: "I don't believe in God, but I miss him", and the other describes what comes after death in a very comforting way despite the fact there he expects nothingness after death, as I do. Both books are about not being afraid of death despite living in a culture that fears the very idea. Especially frightening for most people is the concept that we lead brief flickering lives that die out to disappear forever.

In the mid-seventies at university I had a professor I adored ... oh not in any romantic way ... but he was my hero and I worshipped his ideas. He talked about the difference among British, American and Canadian writers, and a large part of the difference had to do with the idea of the importance of the individual. Because Canadian writers have been influenced by both of the other traditions, it is not surprising that we hold beliefs that are an amalgam of the two. As in most other things, we seem to reach a compromise position; in this case between believing the individual has no importance or that he is all important.

Robin Mathews believed that a novel like Who Has Seen the Wind showed the extremes in the reprobate, the Old Ben, and in the rigidly upright townsfolk who were his antithesis, but that Digby, the school teacher, represented the Canadian viewpoint. Digby was a good tough man ... good and tough. He stood up for himself and others. He lived a morally upright life. He was neither anarchic nor rigidly bound by tradition, and he lived his life for the good of himself and other people. He tried to make his small world a better place.

This thread weaves itself throughout Canadian literature. The most important thing that people leave behind them when they die is not wealth or prestige or plaques on buildings, but ripples that continue forever.

The writer of the second book on death, is Irvin Yalom, a psychiatrist who often quotes a philosopher, Epicurus. Yalom says, "Rippling refers to the fact that each us creates — often without conscious intent or knowledge —concentric circles of influence that may affect others for years, even for generations."

So Digby left his influence on Brian, on the Young Ben, on generations of students, and even on the Old Ben and the Mrs. Abercrombies of the town.

Everyone who is a parent will surely touch her children and their children, but all of us leave those ripples whether we are genetically close to people or not.

We all conduct our personal, business and community lives in ways that affect others.

Most of us are just little frogs in little ponds and we make small ripples throughout our lives. Most of us will die without having invented penicillin or caused a genocide, but all of us have done good and bad things that have affected and influenced others in smaller ways.

As I get closer to the end of my life I try to remember the good ripples and hope there were more of them that the bad ones, not just because I want to be remembered as a good woman, but, more importantly, because I hope I have made this world a better place than I found it. It doesn't matter whether anyone can remember which of us had what influence. What really matters is whether things got a little better because we were here.

And that is remarkably comforting.

I wish my father had been more comfortable with the idea of dying than he was. He did a lot of things wrong as a parent, but I see his good ripples all the time in myself, my children and my grandchildren, and I wish he had gone to his death comforted by that knowledge.