If I had my life over again, I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practice the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life.
Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life.
Without an ever-present sense of death, life is insipid, limp. You might as well live on just the whites of eggs.
- Muriel Spark
In going to speak about death and story, there's no preparing for it. No way to get together an authoritative and comprehensive presentation on views of death. On what actually happens on the afterlife.
And the reason there can't be a comprehensive presentation on this is that it is infused with mystery. The transition into death is mysterious. The fact that we must die is mysterious, as is our relationship with those who have died.
I'm considering death these days because I realized that the altar within me that I have for death has become dusty. I used to think that having an altar to death in one's self would be strange and morbid.
I feel now that death is accompanying life at all times. Death is a great teacher, perhaps the greatest, is the basis of life. We see predation, one animal consuming the life of another. And this is true for those who don't eat the flesh of other beings, for eggs and seeds and milk are also potential life.
The seeds on the Himalayan Blackberry bush are intended to create more Himalayan Blackberry bushes. If I pick some of those berries and eat them myself, I'm taking that potential for life, and I'm using it for my own life, as when a snake steals a bird egg, or a wolf kills a baby caribou. Life continues, but is directed into other life.
How can we live our lives to honour the lives who made it possible?
Life comes from death, and death comes from life. Perhaps if we set aside these two different words, we might find that death and life are one.
As we enter into this exploration of death and story, I invite you to consider your own altar for death. Who is there on the altar? Are there figures of deceased loved ones? Are there animals and plants? As you go through your life, what is your relationship with the potential death surrounding you?
In many stories, the potential for death is the main driver of the story. This potential for death might be an invading army that the protagonists oppose. It might be the death of a loved one that they're striving to save. A dragon might be that potential death, raining down terror on a village. Or from the dragon's point of view, those little humans with their pointy swords coming out of the village could be the potential death. Avoiding death is a huge factor in stories and in our lives.
Death accentuates life. Or rather, awareness of of death accentuates life. If a person knows they are going to die, then what life they have becomes that much more precious. Of course, we all know we are going to die, but it's possible to have this awareness all the time, and for this awareness to accentuate our lives.
Even though our lives are relatively short, it can feel like a long time. Quite a lot happens in the span of eighty or a hundred years. Heck, a lot happens in a month, or a day, or an hour. It's easy to lose sight of death, of the end being present, of our lives being held in a particular container, because most of us don't know when we are going to die.
However, some of us do.
Or did.
I've been listening recently to the David Bowie’s final album, called Blackstar. Now, David Bowie has gone through many different eras in his career, and I'm not familiar with most of them. Some of the early pop songs are cool and everything, but I never got so into them.
This last album is remarkable, and I would say that this is because he wrote and recorded it while he knew he was dying.
He had cancer, and his death was coming closer and closer. When a creative, expressive, deep-thinking person is served notice that they will soon die, they may well create something extraordinary.
(Listen to the audio for a clip)
I'm thinking also of Gord Downie. In this part of the world, he’s famous. He was the lead singer for the Tragically Hip, perhaps the most famous Canadian rock band.
He got news that he had brain cancer, and an estimate of how many months he had to live. Not down to the day, but pretty close. In his last years, he redirected whatever attention came to him to indigenous rights in the far north, where situations are often dire.
(Listen to the episode for an excerpt)
In myth, I'm thinking of a famous example in India.
A king, Maharaja Pariksit, was cursed by a young brahmin boy, to die in seven days by the bite of a winged serpent. This king was served notice: ‘Seven days from now, this curse will land on you, and you will be killed.’ He knew exactly how long he had, so he went down to the banks of the Yamuna, a holy river.
He sat and he fasted, waited for his death, and prayed for guidance. Lo and behold, sages showed up, and more sages showed up, and more sages showed up, until there were hundreds and hundreds of them.
A particular young sage, called Sukadeva Goswami, came last. All the sages there understood that Sukadeva was the one who would speak that day, and they too were keen to hear him.
In those seven days, Sukadeva Goswami spoke day and night. Pariksit Maharaja listened and asked questions, and all this led up to the point of the king's death. He wanted to pass into that death as best as possible. Awareness of his death amplified his life.
The presence of potential death, of oncoming death, amplifies a story. This death could be physical death, but it could also be other kinds of death: being parted from a person forever, the death of a relationship, the aging of a child into adolescence, the aging of that adolescent into adulthood, or the aging of an adult into elderhood.
And as with all deaths, mythically speaking, and scientifically speaking, the fading life enters into what comes next. Death becomes new life, and death is therefore seen as a transformation.
And what of old death?
Death surrounds us: the death of previous civilizations that gave way to what we have now, the death of trees that form our buildings, our chairs, the paper, and the books we read. Old death. Mummies, graves.
Many great stories have old death within them. The kings and queens of old built monuments that we still see around us, as ruins. It's always fascinating to see the layers of old cultures that still poke through into what's here in the present.
If we look around the world, and dig into the history of the inventions that we use, into etymology, our own genetics, and the development of philosophy, we find that all of what we have today is nourished by beings who have lived, and entered into death, and in so doing have passed their generativity onto the next generations.
There are small deaths throughout our lives.
In French, sleep is sometimes called, ‘Le petit mort,’ or the little death: a forgetting of life and slipping into some other world, only to return changed. Even boredom is a kind of little death, a fertile absence of engagement from which deeper, fuller activities can be born. Sickness can be a small death. I'm feeling under the weather today, and so reminded of my mortality. I feel frail, older. It’s easier to imagine breathing my last. This remembrance can be a great companion.
When I think of death in myth, with my upbringing in my part of the world, I think of the Grim Reaper: a skeletal being, hooded, dark, and cloaked. When he taps you on the shoulder, your time is up. You must go now to wherever you may go.
And yet there are other ideas of death. In Buddhism and Hinduism, we have Yama Raj, the Lord of Death. He is not a skeletal cloaked man, but a king, and his responsibility is to make sure people coming through the door of death go where they’re meant to. He is conscientious, empathetic, aware, strong, and needed.
Here’s a story about the goddess Kali.
Early on in the creation, there was no death. This may sound good, but people were piling up. They kept being born, and without any death, there was less and less space for the living, so the demigods brought Kali in. She then brought death into the world, and things started flowing again.
Life depends on death.
You might also say that death depends on life. One passes into the other, and passes back. Physically, we know that decomposition is the basis for a new life. Internally, the death of one part of oneself is necessary for new life to come. Relationally, an idea of what a relationship should be—between brother and sister, child and parent, husband, wife—must die again and again, for that relationship to be alive.
Can gods die? Perhaps they must, to compost and come again. If a god, or an idea, is held in stasis, this can be worse than death, an artificial holding, beyond the natural lifespan of that belief system, of that form of worship.
To allow something to die is to allow it to be born again.
And here's a meta point about death in stories: how about the death of a story itself? That is to say, a story’s ending.
I think we all know novel series, television series, and comic series that were great in the beginning, and also really successful. But because they were successful, the people making them just kept making them. Milking that cow, getting that money. But gradually, the magic of the story drained away, and it kept going like an animated corpse.
Other stories go out with dignity.
Just recently, the television series, Reservation Dogs, wound up. It’s such an excellent show, tragic and hilarious. A big, wide story, and very personal as well.
It was popular and could have kept going for a longer. Sterlin Harjo, the showrunner, said they wanted to tell the story of a group of young people at the cusp of adulthood, a time of great change. To explore the decisions they made, the changes that happened within them, and between them and their community. They told that story in three seasons, and wrapped it up.
They could have kept going. You can always spin out some new story from a scenario and a group of characters, but it was the right time for the show to finish, so they did.
Anyway, I’m sure I could string this out and say more about this meta death of stories themselves, of how they go out.
But perhaps I’ve said all that needs to be said.
In the old, old ways that are still on earth with us today, when a hunter takes the life of an animal, they do so with gratitude and ceremony.
It might be a small ceremony, but an acknowledgment. A sense of wishing that being well on their journey, and acknowledging the pain they underwent in order to sustain the human hunter.
Death supports life.
What happens if a person does not give gratitude for the death that sustains them? What happens when we stop looking at death? When we stop giving back?
Well, we still survive because of creatures dying. Whatever our diet is, land has been cleared for us; creatures have been killed. And yet, if we don't face the death, is it not ironic that the death multiplies? It’s strange that this violence spreads all over the world, outsourced so that we don't have to see it.
It’s been the fate of cities, of civilisation, of first worlds. Outsourced death, outsourced violence greater than ever before. A massive shadow of paradise.
Here are some prompts.
Heavy topic. Heavy prompts.
Consider the different deaths you've experienced, of those you've known in your life, and how that's felt different at different times. Perhaps as a child there was a grandparent, or even another child, that died. How did that land with you then? And then consider the later deaths, until you come to the most recent. How has your own relationship with death changed over the years?
And here's another prompt.
Which deaths are we living on? The oil that we pull from the ground is the deaths of old plants and creatures.
And which recent deaths are we dependent on? This keyboard, this computer, the internet infrastructure: all has a cost to other beings.
Robin Wall Kimmerer speaks about the honorable harvest. Most harvests these days are not honorable, but I feel it is important to face these harvests as well, and give gratitude even though they were wrongly taken,. In facing them and being in gratitude, we might return to good relation with those whose deaths depend on.
That, in turn, might reduce the amount of needless death we are inflicting, externalizing, onto the living world.
Here’s another prompt:
In yourself, is there some era of your life that is tending towards death? If so, how might you hospice that part? It could be the part of you that was in a marriage, the part of you that was in a spiritual organization, the part of you that felt a different way about the world.
How might you honor that part and be a death-doula for them?
Here’s the same question for your business. Is there some part of your business, or your business as a whole, that is tending towards death? How might you hospice that, so that the energies contained within can go back into the system of your work, to create something new and vibrant?
Feel free to share your thoughts on these in the comments.
Special credits for the audio version of this episode go to David Bowie and his musicians, The Tragically Hip with Gord Downie as the lead singer, and Hannah Elise, who sang this beautiful rendition of I Just Want a Grieve. And thanks to Sterlin Harjo and the team at Reservation Dogs for making such a wonderful show.
And so here we are, resting in a warm cabin after our journey together.
You can take this time to consider what's alive in you after hearing this talk and to reflect on the story prompts.
Now these prompts aren’t homework, but possibilities. You might respond by journaling, by speaking about them with a friend or colleague, or speaking about them with yourself, while you're walking or driving
You might push back against these prompts or come up with better ones.
You can share your thoughts in the comments on Substack.
Or even better, if you'd like to explore these prompts together, I'm hosting weekly gatherings where we play with stories for an hour. That's included for premium subscribers at just $5 a month.
Or you might just want to let this all go, and roll along with whatever's coming next in your life.
Happy creating.
The Grim Reaper Born Again: Death in Story and Life