The Meaning of Death, Part 3 of Many: Fear, Grief, and Actually Experiencing Your Emotions

The subject of death -- and the fear of death -- came up recently in another excellent Daylight Atheism post. Someone had written to Ebon Muse (the Daylight Atheism author) asking for advice on dealing with the feelings of dreadful fear and despair they sometimes had over the finality of death.

Ebon had some excellent philosophies and comforting thoughts about death, as did many other commenters in the discussion. (This piece was developed in that thread, in fact.) But I want to take a slightly different tack on this. I've been thinking about this question a lot recently, and I want to offer a somewhat different angle.

Death is natural, and we shouldn't try to pretend that it doesn't exist and isn't real.

But the fear of death, the desire not to die, is also natural. (As Ebon pointed out in his post, if our species didn't have a strong preference for living over dying, we wouldn't have lasted very long.)

And we shouldn't try to pretend that that doesn't exist and isn't real, either.

I had a very good therapist once. We did a certain amount of the usual therapy stuff: talking ad nauseum to help me gain insight into my behavior and help me choose it more consciously, yada yada yada. But a lot of what we did was simply to create a safe place for me to experience emotions that I was afraid of, emotions that I kept shoving to the back burner because they felt so enormous it seemed like they were going to overwhelm and drown me. Grief and fear over death, of course, being high on the list.

And what I found was that, sometimes -- often, maybe even most of the time -- the best way to deal with difficult and painful emotions is to stop trying to fix them and just let myself feel them. When I let myself actually feel my emotions, they tend to pass. Sometimes they come back, of course; but then they pass again. And they're not compounded and made worse by the meta-fear, the fear of the emotion adding to whatever emotion it is I'm afraid of.

I will caution that this only works if you have a pretty solid foundation to begin with. Which is where all this wonderful atheist and humanist philosophy about death comes in.

The idea that loss, including death, is necessary for life and change to be possible.

The idea that your life, your slice of the timeline, will always have existed even though you die -- and the fact that your life has an end as well as a beginning doesn't eradicate that.

The idea that death is necessary to focus our lives and make us treasure the people and experiences we have.

The idea that we are free to create our own meaning of life.

The idea that things don't have to be permanent to be meaningful. (Many thanks from me go to the movie "Rivers and Tides" for getting this one across so vividly.)

The idea that death is a natural, physical process that connects us intimately with nature and the universe.

The idea that each one of us was astronomically lucky to have been born at all, and that complaining that our lives aren't infinite is like winning a million dollars in the lottery and complaining that we didn't get a hundred billion, or indeed all the money in the world.

The idea that your genes and/or ideas will live on after you die.

The idea that we didn't exist for billions of years before we were born, and that wasn't a painful or bad experience; and so as frightened as we sometimes are of death, it probably won't be any different from not having been born yet.

Etc., etc., etc.

None of this gives us an escape from the deep fear or grief over death. Nothing gives us that. What it gives us is a solid place to come back to when the fear and grief have passed. It gives us a life preserver to hang on to when the fear and grief are gripping us, a bridge over the chasm. It gives us the strength to actually feel our fear and grief and despair... because we can trust that we have a safe place to return to when the feelings pass.

And I think that, for all the comforting philosophies we can offer, the most powerful and useful thing we can give each other in the face of death is companionship and witness. When I'm struggling with the fear of my own death, or the grief over the death of a loved one, what comforts me most isn't ideas or philosophies (although those do help). It's the presence of someone who loves me just sitting with me silently, letting me feel what I have to feel, not trying to fix it or make it go away but simply being with me while I feel it. It's the presence of someone who loves me letting me know that I'm not alone... and by their presence, being part of the foundation that I can come back to when the feelings pass.

I think American culture has a pathological fear of painful emotions, and a freakish sense that they somehow make you a failure. And I know that people often feel helpless in the face of other people's grief and want desperately to fix it, to find a magic button that will make it go away. I've sat with grieving friends and felt that way myself. But I also know that there is no magic button, and that sometimes the only way out of fear and grief and despair is to just go through it.

So here's the final thing I want to say to Ebon's inquisitor, and to anyone else who's struggling with death:

Yes, I have those feelings, too. I sometimes have the despairing feeling that death eradicates and trivializes my life; the sense that, without immortality, my life is meaningless. And I also sometimes have the apparently opposite (but actually related, I think) experience: the despairing feeling that life itself is a burden, a parade of petty struggles and mundane samenesses that end only in nothingness and the void.

But I don't feel that way most of the time. Most of the time, I love my life passionately, and accept the inevitability of death with a fair amount of peace. And the fact that despair creeps in from time to time does not, I think, make me a failure as a person, or a failure as an atheist. It just makes me human.

Other posts in this series:
Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing To Do With God
The Meaning of Death: Part One of Many
The Meaning of Death, Part 2 of Many: Motivation and Mid-Life Crises

Comments

[Elaine Williams]

As a widow of four years, I find this is a wonderful, poignant post about death and dying, a topic many times that is pushed aside or ignored, if possible. I agree with you....I've found myself that facing the demon, the fear of death and the ensuing grief of losing a loved one, is one of the best remedies for moving through your grief, in your own time. Thank you. elaine

Thank you once again for an excellent post... nah...Article! Better than many I find in the MSM. And dealing with a tough subject too.
My own luvly midlife crisis at the moment was thrown into stark rekief yesterday when our fat cuddly ginger cat Winston up and croaked suddenly. I knew something was really wrong, so I picked him up and took him into the kitchen away from my lil girls (a 3 year old doesn't need to watch the cat die) and he just went limp in my arms gave a last big gasp as I put him down, and was gone. It was just so sad to see this part of your life just stop like that. I feel it will be quite some time before I can get that image out of my mind.
And of course I am so not the type to handle dead animals well unless they've been adequately prepared for the kitchen, not dead on the kitchen floor, so I had to call my wife home from work and take the kids to Nana's until the poor guy was taken away.

So once again Thank you Greta for another timely and poignant piece.

Lets talk about sex next time, Death can be a bit of a bummer...
;)

[Nathan]

Yes! Thank you for yet another inspiring post providing a new look at a common problem.

As an atheist in a very religious family, I've often felt even more pressure to ignore the fear of death, as well as any feelings of despair. I'm afraid to let myself feel those things because that is exactly what my Christian family expects from atheists.

How many times have we heard someone equate atheism (or existentialism, for that matter) with a hopeless, nihilistic worldview? I want to scream at people who make this sweeping generalization, because I know that I am generally a very happy person.

But damn it, I'm allowed to feel these feelings once in a while. Death sucks, and sometimes it makes me feel sucky. When I need the courage to allow myself to have these feelings, I'm coming back to this post.

[Donna Gore]

Greta,

I tend to agree with your view that death is a part of the whole process, that nobody is supposed to live forever.

I would love to read your thoughts about this scientist whose goal it is to extend life indefinitely.

http://www.technologyreview.com/Biotech/14147/
"Do You want to Live Forever?"

My first thought was, if everyone lives forever, then where the hell are we gonna put all of them?? We better find some other planets to live on fast, cause if every person who was ever born lived forever, we'd run out of room in a hurry!

What other implications would this have? How about the QUALITY of life vs. the QUANTITY of life? How would it affect people's attitudes about "the sanctity of life"?

I see the classic sci-fi scenario of technology moving faster than the human beings' ability to deal with the consequences. . .

[Louise Lewis]

Let me join in praising your wonderful article. Your generousity of spirit in sharing what you have learned -- and are continuing to learn -- with others is what it's all about.

Usually, we all have more questions than answers. But 'fessing up to that fact is ok. We all must, at some point in our life, own up to the fact that we are merely human. And that's ok.

As my simple way of giving back, I would like to offer you (and all who read this) a gift copy of my book, "No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You!" No strings attached... really!

E-mail me your request from my web site: www.noexpertsneeded.com and it'll be own its way. That's all it takes.

Again, thank you for the great post.

take care,
Louise Lewis, Author
No Experts Needed: The Meaning of Life According to You!
www.noexpertsneeded.coom

[Jane Know]

Great article. You are so right about this "the best way to deal with difficult and painful emotions is to stop trying to fix them and just let myself feel them." Also through the help of an excellent therapist, I got through this fear (and meta-fear).

She just told me flat-out, "So what? You feel [the emotion I was scared of] and then what? What is the worst that can happen?"

Nothing. You just feel the emotion.

[Beth Terry]

Greta, I just finished reading this woman's gorgeous tribute to her atheist father in the wake of his recent death, and thought of you and your blog:

http://longlivethevillagegreen.blogspot.com/2008/02/upon-rack-of-this-tough-world.html

It's highly relevant to your post today, but more important, it's beautifully written and very moving.

[Stacey C.]

I very unexpectedly lost my favorite cousin this weekend. She'd struggled all her life and just when things were looking up for her...she died suddenly and without warning. I hadn't even known she'd been sick. She was one of the few members of my actual family that I felt the better for knowing and having, however obliquely, in my life. This comes after losing our shared grandmother not six months ago. It's been a hard ride...but I take solace in the knowledge that I can honor her through my memories and my works. I plan on donating to a woman's shelter in her name. I plan on writing more about what a wonderful person she was even though she was trapped in a pretty awful set of circumstances. And I'll probably cry some more. Thank you for this wonderful post. It really echoed what I'm feeling right now. I am a complete devotee of yours and this is definitely one of the reasons why.