Death & the Undone
By: Nick Wilbur
Tags: Philosophy, Morality, Death, Family, Christianity

Why does death spur in us so much emotion?

The simple answer is that losing someone we love ends a relationship. It stops real-life love, pushing one of the most powerful emotions in life to the periphery. When someone dies, they become a jumble of memories, their smile, their voice, the feeling of their presence never again to be experienced in the flesh.

But there’s a difference between the sadness of loss and the anxiety that death spurs in us. And I think that fear is rooted in the unfinished.

I am still constantly processing the beauty of James Allen’s As A Man Thinketh. He seems to have covered so many topics in so few words.

“The sole and supreme use of suffering is to purify, to burn out all that is useless and impure.” — James Allen, As A Man Thinketh

I think we fear death because we fear work left undone, problems unsolved, friendships unmended, projects unfinished; of dying incomplete and imperfect. I am reminded of Philip Roth’s novel Everyman, where the protagonist is inventorying the gathering at his funeral. His two sons, he says, “knew little of him that was praiseworthy and much that was beastly and who were present out of duty and nothing more.”

Despite the charade we put on for the departed, where only good times are shared in loving eulogies, our hearts carry dark truths about each other. When we see another man lying flat on his back in a box, there are no more chances, no more dreams, no last words. We are free to remember him for what he really was.

And then you remember that one day you’ll be in that box.

My grandfather died with tears in his eyes over the sins he committed, not against God but against his family. During our goodbyes he apologized to me for an affair he had half a century before. It was not his only sin, no doubt, but it was the one that plagued him in his final days. He blamed himself for planting a seed in his son, who modeled the behavior years later when he walked out on his wife, my mother.

My grandfather and I once read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden together. We talked at length about the theme, “thou mayest,” the idea that you may become what your biology or genetics or parentage would have you become. Or thou mayest not.

“But the Hebrew word, the word timshel — ‘Thou mayest’ — that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’ — it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.” ― John Steinbeck, East of Eden

There was a choice, and many conversations were had discussing personal responsibility. At some point, I remember telling him, you’re no longer responsible for the choices your children make. I forgave him long before he apologized, but in the end it didn’t matter.

My grandfather went to paradise in agony. He lived 92 years, most of them full of love and laughter. But as his body and mind began to fail, there was still guilt in his heart. When his time came, he was relieved that God had not forgotten him, but he was afraid of what he left behind.

Not even death absolves us of our transgressions. Perhaps the best we can do is toil to redress our missteps and try as best we can to live by example, to burn out the useless and impure. To do now what we would most regret not doing if we were to die tomorrow. And to mend friendships and finish projects that will make us die complete, even if we can never die perfect.

If there is a forever-after, you better pray there’s a forgiving God waiting beyond the gates.