An old epitaph reads:
Remember friend as you pass by
As you are now so once was I.
As I am now so you will be
Prepare thyself to follow me.
The latter years of life are the crucible in which our spirituality is honed.
There are more jokes about aging, sex and death than anything else. These phenomena have huge impacts on our lives although they remain poorly understood. Jokes help us manage anxiety.
As our end draws nearer, it precipitates even closer reflections on our beginnings. Eldering is the time for a hard look at the big picture. For elders, the backdrop of this big picture is in knowing we will die. Nobody likes the thought, although there are surprisingly different takes on it. I discovered this when, in a recent workshop on aging I conducted called “Composing a Spiritual Life for Elders,” I invited participants to first write their obituary or their eulogy. An odd exercise, but for sure it gets everyone thinking.
I’d heard of this exercise, but had never done it myself. This time I committed myself to write mine along with my class. In the past I had resisted writing either an obituary or a eulogy. Why, I thought, does this exercise make me so edgy? To save face in our group I knew I had to do my homework and share my thoughts at our next class. I pumped up my courage and started writing.
As I contemplated my death, I was sitting in my studio. I first tried to imagine that I was gone, that the place I once inhabited knew me no more. I looked around the room where I spend a lot of time. I saw familiar objects: mostly photographs I’d made, the various cameras I’ve used for years, the bookshelves where I keep my favorite books – the artifacts of my life that would survive me. I felt melancholy, but I don’t know that I successfully managed to think I was gone. These objects, so central to my daily life, I couldn’t imagine would ever cease being a part of it. At the end of the day I suspect it’s all about how to let go.
Trying to imagine that I was gone, truth be told, didn’t work for me. As hard as I might try, I knew I held a two-way ticket. As I imagined being gone, there’s that particular observer in me that knew I was only imagining my absence. The observer assured me I had my return trip covered. I think it’s impossible for anyone to conceive of not being. All we’ve ever known is life.
For some reason, I found writing the obituary more ominous than delivering my eulogy. An obituary, with some exceptions, contains far fewer tributes than eulogies. Eulogies usually include reflective remarks on the deceased, flattering ones. Obituaries mostly deliver the facts, the hard data. The obituary form I used was from one of our class readings. To contemplate my death in general terms always felt safer to me than getting into the particulars such as time, place, cause, locale of interment, naming those surviving me and where to send contributions. That’s getting uncomfortably personal.
I gritted my teeth and started writing: “George Merrill was born in 1934 on Staten Island New York . . . “ and then I started freezing up. I didn’t want to go further. What bothered me so? I finally figured it out. I discovered that the magic thinking of my childhood had never really left me. It was alive and well. If I write or say I am going to die of a heart attack or a stroke in 2016, saying it means it’s going to happen. I didn’t want to write it down. I wanted to keep options open to preserve the illusion that I was in control of the outcome.
The easiest part of the exercise was listing various positions I’d held – associations I belonged to, jobs I had, even some honors, in short, credentials. I discovered why. Much easier to introduce myself as a clergyman who did this and that, than saying, “Hello, “I’m me,” in the way God told Moses that his name was “I AM.” Only God gets away with that. To say, who I am, sans credentials and status, is challenging. It begs the two timeless questions; “Who am I,” and “Why am I here?” Those questions remain the heart of the matter.
Some participants expressed mixed feelings about writing their eulogy. Eulogies treat death (and by implication, life) in a different way than obituaries. Whoever gives my eulogy hopefully loves me. They will say kind things about me, showcasing me through my best days. A eulogy is my life interpreted through another’s eyes. As I considered the discomfort some had with writing their own eulogies, I wondered if they feared that in hearing themselves described in the flattering words of eulogies they’d appear to be bragging? Some allowed as to how that was the case. Personally, I think elders, perhaps more than any age group, should toot their own horns.
At first blush one might think that gathering elders to talk about death and dying is a total downer. Not so. Talking about our mortality in not talking about death, but trying to understand life’s big picture. We know something about dying and nothing about death. Except we first confront the facts of life it’s hard to compose a spirituality that sustains us. Our mortality is like meeting a deadline; with limited time it’s best we get going now and tend to what’s most important.
Part 2 Listening to Your Life
KCD says
George, I hope I get to meet you one of these days. I love your writing and always take time to read it. This particular piece resonated with me for two reasons.
I took a graduate philosophy class on Death and Dying when I was 20 and at Villanova. In the very first session the professor asked us to draw a line on paper to indicate how much time we though we had left in life. Well my line went to nearly the end of the page of course but I looked at a the page of a Nun in front of me and hers was about four inches long. I was dumbstruck. She didn’t look ill and I would have guessed that she was in her mid years. My world shifted as I took this in. How was someone expected to contemplate such knowledge and get on with their day to day life?
Fast forward to now and I have been a hospice volunteer for 20 years. I have gone over your assignment many times in my head. And while my line would still go to the end of the page I am so aware that my dying doesn’t really matter in the long run – it’s what I’m doing now that matters. My things will be tossed around by the kids and relatives, hopefully some will pause over different objects and want them. But I’ve moved on. To where who knows but this life has been good enough that I trust in what comes next. Most of the time:)
George Merrill says
Thank you for your comments on my article. Sounds like you have a firm grasp of matters of the spirit It’s so full of paradoxes.
Stay well.
George.
Caroline Gabel says
Reading the opening verse, I was reminded of an addendum which, I was told, was added to the tombstone (‘m sure it was
not)
“To follow you I’m not content
Until I know which way you went.”
Obit and elegy will be up to someone else. I’m working on my AD, and I’d better get it right or I WILL LIVE TO REGRET IT.
Howard McCoy says
The Buddha gave a set of instructions on mindfulness of the body to his followers. He told them to contemplate corpses in various stages of decay. For most of us there is a limited opportunity to take on such a practice (charnel grounds aren’t readily available), let alone a desire on our part to wish to do so. What the Buddha was getting at, however, was that when we reflect deeply on the decaying nature of a body and what happens to it after death, that reflection is a way of reminding ourselves that the same thing’s going to happen to our own body. So, don’t get too attached to that image you see in the mirror because it’s going to change, change and change again, throughout your life, finally ending in your death and the decaying of your body.
That’s the thing about impermanence… Nothing stays the same. But, it’s nothing to get too horribly depressed about. By embracing the fact that all that stuff is going to happen to you, be assured the same thing is going to happen to everyone else. It’s one of those “we’re all in this together” things. And, because it’s going to happen to all of us we should be able to say, “That make me feel closer to you because you’re having the same concerns as I am.” It should also make us closer to other species because it happens to them as well. This reflection on death and dying should bring us all closer. Maybe this is the “big picture” George speaks about in his last paragraph. Looking at the big picture gives us the opportunity to embrace every day of our lives like it is our last. We get to love life. We get to love the little things as well as big things. We get to love our friends, family and neighbors. And we even get to love all those we’ve never met and never will. As George says we need to “get going now and tend to what’s most important.”