I’m not sure dying is the worst thing to happen. Admittedly, though I’m 93 and my own dying can’t be very far off, I’d rather not do it tomorrow; but I am not particularly afraid of it anymore. The remarkable thing is, I am also no longer alone in having this attitude. Americans are facing death with what could pass for gusto: gathering for “death cafés,” training to be death doulas or hospice volunteers, filling out MOLST or POLST forms (Medical/Physician Orders for Life Sustaining Treatment) and talking about things like Do Not Resuscitate forms and Advance Directives. Acting, suddenly, as if we might not live forever.
What happened? For the past century or more it has been somewhere between impolite and verboten to talk about death and dying in the U.S. In the very olden days, an approaching death was accepted as part of the community lifecycle. When it seemed imminent the family doctor would make a house call, announce that it was time to say goodbye to grandma, and give everyone time to do so. He (it was always a ‘he’) would then return to the sick room and close the door, quietly ending grandma’s pain with a little extra morphine. With the disappearance of the family doctor, death turned sterile and unmentionable. Dying started happening, more often than not, in a hospital, out of sight of all but the closest family. Fitness crazes, marathons, miracle drugs, Botox – the universal focus turned to living well, and why not forever?
Beginning about the middle of the 20th century, death became something to push away, deny, ignore and above all not talk about. This might have been a logical aftermath of two horrific wars that brought death to everyone’s doorsteps with no rhyme or reason; more likely it was the dizzying pace of advances in life-prolonging science and medicine that helped the shift.
Most of us came slowly to a cautious familiarity with dying. I came to it through the back door of abject terror. Having lost close to a dozen people near and dear to me before I turned 21, I was as frightened of the Grim Reaper as the next guy. Added atop the terrifying sight of corpses in the town funeral home that my childhood friends and I would regularly sneak into, the deaths I confronted were of contemporaries felled by war or sudden tragedy: Here one minute, gone the next. So throughout my young adulthood I kept my focus sharply on the lively if not the living, volunteering for jobs like leading children’s tours at art museums, hosting historical society galas, those sorts of things.
Then one day somebody suggested training to be a hospice volunteer. I reflexively thought, “Eeek! Being around people who are dying? I could never do that. Maybe I should give it a try.” And whammo. The. Most. Rewarding thing I’ve ever done. I went from there to heading an HIV Support Group in San Francisco in the 1990s at the height of the AIDS pandemic and later, on to some Medical Aid in Dying volunteer work and voilá: a total turnaround. It doesn’t take seeing very many good people showing you how to die before suddenly you’ve gone from being afraid to being obnoxiously unafraid. Talking incessantly about it in public, keeping a soapbox ever ready to enlist recruits in the cause of improving life’s end for others, and confronting one’s own.
My own fearlessness does not apply to pain, loneliness or anybody’s wars. I am deathly afraid of dementia, neurodegenerative diseases and other afflictions of the aged, a demographic I’ve been in for quite a while. Anyone struggling with those issues understands the abundance of things worse than death that humankind has to fear.
In a category all their own are near-death experiences. I’ve not personally had one, but by now we have all heard stories of bright light and peaceable tunnels wreathed in white mist. Perhaps that’s what happens when you die. It seems eminently reasonable; though I am less sure about fiery furnaces and devils with pitchforks greeting those who go straight to hell. But unless you’ve been running drug cartels or starting foreign wars, chances are you’ll skip the furnace.
Fearless dying has been on a roll of late. More than 11,000 non-profit ‘death café’s – meet-ups wherein people of all ages and political persuasions trade ideas (and occasional fears) have been listed across the U.S.; and the number of death doulas, who usher people off the planet much as birth doulas welcome them onto it, has grown from just several hundred five years ago to well over 1,500 today. Which surely indicates something big, probably even fearless.
It is much easier to be unafraid of dying if you live in a state that has legal Medical Aid in Dying. Currently thirteen states and the District of Columbia offer this compassionate option; Oregon was the first (1994) and New York the most recent (2026.) You must be terminally ill, mentally competent and an adult to qualify for MAiD; you don’t have to believe in tunnels or shining lights, although some MAiD users do. I have learned the multiplicity of fearless attitudes toward dying as a volunteer and board member of End of Life Choices California.
Fearless dying, for most of us, equates with peaceful dying. There is nothing peaceful about dying by gunshot, or missile, or violence in general; those issues are outside the fearless realm. Wars are also not good ways to die, and I have serious misgivings about people who beat their chests claiming to be fearless warriors. I do not, furthermore, advocate feeling okay about those sorts of deaths; I generally avoid people who do. But those of us who think dying of natural causes – including with MAiD – need not be scary tend to be peaceful humans.
I don’t know about animals, or what they think about dying. Although humans believe we are the superior creatures and our animal friends don’t think, I personally know several cats who are profoundly contemplative, and who’s to say they are not contemplating mortality? This applies also to several golden labradors of my acquaintance. My guess is that it’s not about fear, more about acceptance. Which is probably not a bad idea for human beings. If you want not to be afraid of dying, just don’t take up with drug cartels or start any wars. Or practice cruelty in its many contemporary forms, or torment fellow creatures. Any of the above might well send someone straight to hell.
If you’re in one of those categories, you should probably be very afraid.
