We Can Choose How We Are Going To Live

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately, for a couple of reasons.  First, because of the Corona virus. The fear of death, reasonably, drives the reaction manifest in the shutting down of public events of any kind, whether they be church services, club meetings, or ordinary days at school. The fear is reasonable. This is a dangerous disease, especially to the elderly. It’s important to remember, though, that is is nothing like the Spanish flu that killed millions of people in 1918-20.

So, I’m thinking about death also because I have started my new job as a hospice chaplain. Ironically, I have been and will be kept from my eventual patients because of the virus. Most of my patients will be in facilities, either nursing homes, assisted living residences, memory care, etc.  They are all in lockdown, reasonably so.

So, I can’t work. I’m at home, philosophizing about the nature of things.

So, death.

One of the most profound experiences I have had repeatedly is doing a burial. I always say the words from the Book of Common Prayer, “ We commit this body of xxxx to the ground in sure and certain hope of the resurrection through Jesus Christ our Lord, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.”

Pronouncing those profound and final words over a yawning grave never fails to move me.

During the self-quarantine that I have fallen into (an introvert’s paradise, to be sure) I have picked up Boccaccio’s Decameron, a series of stories the author places in a time of plague in early Renaissance Florence. A group of friends with means depart to a relatively remote villa in the countryside which has a quality wine cellar. They sit and entertain one another with stories, many of them bawdy in nature. The contrast between their stories and the reality of what was happening in Florence is not lost. Florence suffered greatly during the Black Death, losing tens of thousands of people.

When I think about time and death I am drawn to two authors, one later than the other. One is my distant cousin, William Shakespeare, and the other, John Donne. Shakespeare often muses about the nature of death, but Donne seems to have dwelt very deeply on the subject, partly because of his own precarious health. Here is a sonnet written in reflection on the nature of mortality;

Thou hast made me, And shall thy work decay?
Repaire me now, for now mine end doth haste,
I runne to death, and death meets me as fast,
I dare not move my dime eyes any way,
Despaire behind, and death before doth cast
Such terrour, and my feeble flesh doth waste
By sinne in it, which it t’wards hell doth weigh;

Donne felt his mortality deeply, and we benefit from his reflections.

Shakespeare also wrote profound words about death. The most familiar, of course, is Hamlet’s soliloquy on death. I quote most, but not all of it:

To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there's the rub:
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause—there's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th'oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of dispriz'd love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th'unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovere'd country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of? (Hamlet, Act III Scene 1)

Yes, the fear of the unknown. Do we just vanish like the morning fog or are we changed into something we can’t understand? That’s the nature of mortality.

This can lead to despair, or profound beauty. The thing that makes life beautiful also makes it tragic, which is that it doesn’t last forever. We can choose how we are going to live. After all, we die only once but we get to live each day.