OF DEATH
At this particular time in our nation's history, when we are on the brink of one, or perhaps two wars, the subject of death is going to find itself in our thinking and talking as a normal reaction to conditions.
I, personally, have never been afraid of dying. I think most people are offended by the circumstances of death as we tend to define them. Most people, dislike the idea of dying because it is disruptive, bloody, associated with broken bones, associated with th decaying matter, corpses and that unique smell that seems to be conjoined with the process of it all happening. This is what, I think, we most hate and fear rather than the progression to another existence. We may not comprehend it all, but we are not fearful of it taking place. We accept dying as a part of living - .the outgoing end of it.
How many will die? Who?
During wartime such figures are formed and they vary greatly. We can expect several million people to die each year on about every fifteen second or so. Sixty of those will be suicides. That's just one estimate from some years ago, and it does very little for us to formulate such approximations. There are far too many variables, and war is just one of them.
There was a time when we accepted the idea that death came when we stopped breathing, but scientific progress has led is to realize that such may not always be the case. Many individuals could be resuscitated from such a condition.. We then came to refer to a person being “brain dead” - at that point where oxygen had been held from the tissues of the brain until they cannot function. Even then, it is indefinite, because a heart may still respond to various restorative measures even though the brain may is not able to respond
We have modified our psychological view of death repeatedly. We have taken verbal liberties as well. There was time when we started referred to death by other names - “passing on”, “leave-taking”, “going to the Lord.”going to the Lord..”going back to whence he or she came”, for example a host of other such expressions. We have even tried humor when facing death with such terms “to kick the bucket”,.”to cash one's chips”, or one could be “deep-nixed” or “bumped off.” We change the term “corpse” to “a loved one”. Such shifting of words seems to help in some cases and not in others.
There's also a “spooky”side to death you can't ignore. The complexities of the human body and of mental processes, in particular are of such myriad dimensions that many people find it necessary to assign what little they know to some weird metaphysical manifestations and find solace and comfort in darkness rather than in light. Tele-logical
tangents are taken and semi-religious attitudes are found connecting to strange realms of magic, chance, secret desires and wishful thinking to comfort the overawing presence of actual death and even deny it.
Those men nd women who have viewed death often - doctors, surgeons, undertakers, some news people and many members of our armed forces, have a comforting feeling in accepting the idea that something departed from the physical body which which, then, became just a mass of chemicals and substances of which the world consists. Both poets and doctors have said that the beginning of death is birth. It seems, too simple, doesn't it, but there is are strong elements of truth therein.. We prepare for death from the moment we are born. The French thinker Pascal, said: :We spend our lives trying to keep our minds from death”: :And here's another such statement from a book listing scores of them. A man we call a “philosopher” said it in his later years. As death came near he is reported to have said: ”But I am just now learning to live!”
We live to die. All of us.
A.L.M. March 4, 2003 [c673wds]
