A Death Worth Dying

Martin Brest’s 1998 film Meet Joe Black follows the last days of William Parrish (Anthony Hopkins) as he shows Death (Brad Pitt) what life is like. Death wonders about life—what is this life, this humanity, everyone leads? And we, the audience, can’t help but wonder about Death.

Death, however, is not exactly a topic of conversation for polite company. Even personified in Brad Pitt’s body, Death is an incredibly awkward dinner party guest. Yet this Death is the other characters’ imminent and common bond. Some face Death directly by name; others only interact with Death as disguised under the pseudonym Joe Black. Yet regardless of each character’s familiarity with Death, the film follows its protagonists as they question: How should they live the life that precedes death? What relationship should they maintain with Death? While the audience must explore these questions alongside the movie’s protagonists, our own work here on the Life Worth Living team also has us wondering what, if anything, death has to do with the life worth living.

Death itself is hard to define biologically, let alone as something that can be “good”, or as one Yale Center for Faith & Culture team member describes it, “a death worth dying.” The questions we ask about death mirror the questions we ask about life. Life, too, can be hard to define biologically; its boundaries dance ephemerally just beyond our reach. Which organ must fail for an individual to no longer be alive? Are people in persistent vegetative states alive? Can we find life in seemingly inanimate objects—the rivers, rocks, and winds we live our lives alongside? What relationship might exist, if one exists at all, between biological life, spiritual life, eternal life, or the afterlife? Even if we could offer definitive answers to these questions, would it change our daily rhythms of morning alarms, teeth-brushing, traffic, dishes, laundry, post-offices, and grocery stores?

In other words, what difference does it make?

These questions have inspired a number of Life Worth Living courses across our network, which take focus at the intersection of the good life and death, dying, and bereavement.

Throughout our instructor’s experiences, they emphasize the connection this topic fosters between their students. Deborah Streahle, lecturer in the History of Science and Medicine at Yale, describes the history of death and dying in the United States, saying it is “not a flat event.” Similarly, our conversations about death should be anything but flat. Narratives surrounding death and dying are far from monolithic, but the multiplicity of student responses to and experiences with death breeds curiosity. Student connection especially builds a meaningful scholastic experience in these LWL courses, inviting students into curiosity about one another’s perspectives and experiences. Natalie Reynoso, who teaches “Life, Death, and Afterlife” at Elon University, describes students’ initial skepticism, hesitancy to engage in conversations, and falling into initial “that’s weird” reactions. Throughout her time with students, though, she invited them into pluralism, and describes witnessing their growing curiosity as her favorite part of teaching her course.

Beyond student to student connection, other instructors highlight connection with the dying and the bereaved. Having been a caregiver herself, Maggie Ornstein uses care as the guiding principle of her course at Sarah Lawrence College, questioning, ”Is it a burden to care for those who are dying, and is an unburdened life preferable to a burdened one?” Furthermore, she asks how we might make meaning out of an increasingly long dying process and how the need for care at the end of life requires connection with others as it breaks down the myth of absolute individualism. Similarly, Kailey Bradley directs her course towards grief care. Though not a counseling course, she examines how any of us may hold space for those experiencing loss. Her suggestion: presence. “There don't have to be magic formulas for supporting grieving people. It’s just about being present.”

[.alt-blockquote]“Is it a burden to care for those who are dying, and is an unburdened life preferable to a burdened one?”[.alt-blockquote]

[.alt-blockquote-attribution]-Maggie Ornstein[.alt-blockquote-attribution]

While Life Worth Living courses dealing with death and dying take many forms, they have proved so meaningful that Dylan Bailey, a postdoctoral research scholar at the University of South Florida, encourages teachers outside of LWL classes to incorporate existential questions in their own course plans. He reminds instructors, “For many students this is their only philosophy or religious studies course to consider these matters.” Even outside of philosophy and religion, death, dying, and the good life can be incorporated into most course plans “without doing violence to the material you need to cover.” On the whole, our professors have had incredibly positive experiences with death and dying courses in a life worth living framework, despite the sensitivity of course materials. Natalie Reynoso emphasizes the importance of trusting students to engage in difficult subject matter, saying, “You really do have to trust them. The students are capable of engaging with difficult topics.”

While many consider philosophy an exploration of how to live well—and we here with Life Worth Living are, as our name suggests, especially sympathetic to this view— for many of our LWL network instructors, the question of a good life necessarily raises the question of a good death. The two are radically intertwined. Take, for example, Plato’s Phaedo, in which the philosopher Socrates, sentenced to death by Athens, speaks with his students prior to his execution. Shocked at their grief, he responds to their weeping with the exclamation, “What are you doing, my friends?” After all, what has he taught them, if not how to die well?: “In truth, then, Simmias, he said, the true philosopher studies to die, and to him of all men is death least terrible.” Dylan Bailey cites Socrates as one of many examples in which the act of contemplating death plays an important role in the life worth living. This reflection brings forward our mortality, the values we aspire to in our finite lives, and the meaning we make out of the life we are given.

Throughout our conversations with LWL instructors, the aesthetics of death continue to arise in their pedagogies. Some, such as Bailey’s course “Movies and the Good Life,” examine course subjects through art. After all, in the words of Andrey Tarkovsky, “The aim of art is to prepare a person for death.” For others, the aesthetics of death itself plays a pivotal role in students’ learning. Reynoso describes how her students change their minds about their ideal burial after visiting a funeral home. The harsh, industrial appearance of a crematorium shocks many. Yet amidst their horror, curiosity strikes them. They cannot help but look on despite their unsettling confrontation with the burial practice some preferred just hours before.

[.alt-blockquote]...to integrate death and dying into class discussions of the good life “keeps us from idealizing it.” Yet death’s pain, its horror, fear, and gruel, highlight what gives our lives meaning.[.alt-blockquote]

Like the students’ fascination with the aesthetics of burial practices, many of our instructors study death not in spite of its horror, but because it is grotesque. In both the aesthetics of a decaying body and the emotional weight of loss, death is painful. As Bailey notes, to integrate death and dying into class discussions of the good life “keeps us from idealizing it.” Yet death’s pain, its horror, fear, and gruel, highlight what gives our lives meaning. Despite the difficulties associated with death and dying, we see love and kinship in our grief. We see calls for justice after wrongful deaths. We see communal care for the dead and the bereaved in post-mortem rituals.

Thus, for many of our instructors, studies of death and dying are integrally connected to an examination of the good life, and an examination of the good life is best clarified in light of death and the afterlife. As Reynoso describes her course, “So much of this is an experiment of, ‘How can we be human together?’” Time and again, our professors find their students learning the most about their own values and the meaning they ascribe to their lives through their conversations about death. In Bailey’s words, “death is a clarifying question.” It forces us to examine the values we hold most deeply, the relationships we prioritize, and the daily practices worth our limited time.

[.alt-blockquote]“...death is a clarifying question.”[.alt-blockquote]

[.alt-blockquote-attribution]-Dylan Bailey[.alt-blockquote-attribution]

Not only is death clarifying on an individual level, but from a historical perspective it highlights significant questions of justice and connection. Deborah Streahle asks, “What is the manner we die? Who dies when and of what causes?” In considering these systemic and individual approaches to death, Maggie Ornstein states, ”I have this approach to life that the way things are isn’t the way they need to be.” What kind of world might we build where unjust deaths need not be repeated? How might we reimagine our approaches to care for the dying and bereaved? What do you notice that needs changing?

Lastly, we invite you to consider again: what difference does death make to the way you live?

The following questions were offered by LWL instructors for your reflection:

• What words do you associate with grief? Are they generally positive or negative?
• Oftentimes caring for the dying is considered to be a burden. Do you agree or disagree with this assertion? If so, is a burdened life necessarily better or worse than an unburdened one?
• In what ways and for what reasons do you think life is valuable? What might it mean for life to be finite?
• Do you think there is a “right” way to die, and if so what would a good death look like? Do you want death to be something you can get right?
• What would you want your ideal death room to look like? Use all five senses to describe this environment. Consider where you would like it to be, who you want present, and how you would like them to enter the room.
• What would you like for others to include in your obituary? That is, how would you like to be remembered?

‍

The following resources were offered by LWL instructors to guide your reflections on death, dying, and grief in the good life:

Books and Articles

• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End by Atul Gawande
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom
• Briefly Perfectly Human: Making an Authentic Life by Getting Real About the End by Alua Arthur
• Companioning the Bereaved: A Soulful Guide for Caregivers by Alan Wolfelt
• The Craft of Dying by Lyn Lofland
• “On the Shortness of Life” by Seneca

Online Resources

• Collective for Radical Death Studies (CRDS)
• What’s Your Grief?

Films

• The Seventh Seal directed by Ignmar Bergman
• Alternate Endings: Six New Ways to Die in America directed by Perri Peltz and Matthew O’Neill

‍