I stared down my weekly to-do list. Lines and lines filed down the sheet of paper of all the assignments and extra-curricular obligations. My friend watched as I shriveled down into the chair and mumbled, “Ugh, I just wanna die.” I was being sarcastic of course, but now that I think about it, I and many others use this term, or something of its nature, all too willingly it seems. Yet personally experiencing the grief and sorrow death brings upon us, it feels disrespectful to just splash around this saying; however, it’s a daily accessory in our vocabulary.
My hands plumped up the cream-like clay I was molding. Somehow it was already three in the morning, but I often forget all relevance of time when down in the ceramics room cushioned below the worn-down brick building called the Art Annex. Back and forth I kneaded the soft material, listening to my most current hyperfixation song on repeat: Die with a Smile, a duo with Lady Gaga and Bruno Mars (the mashup we never knew we needed). And as I created a slab my mind began to think about the message I was listening to. The idea of dying with your lover. Why do we embrace such a bleak concept? Why is it such an accessory? Throughout human history and cultures, we have molded death like clay into a muse, and it has become manipulated down to something almost too casual yet also extremely powerful if we paint it out to be that way. But I think that though these are complicated questions, it has a simple answer: death is a mystery.
I always hated how gray and sad the doctor’s office felt. There is no color, and the taste of stale crackers mixed with hand sanitizer gets stuck in the back of my throat. I awaited the test results, this time hoping for a fail instead of a pass. I looked over at my mom, flipping through a magazine, and knew the one thing that would make me feel better was to make a joke about my circumstances. It’s easier to ingest hard truths when you poke fun at them. So I turned to her and said something sarcastic, and laughing it off made things feel lighter. Luckily, I was okay and the rampant delusions I built in my head slowly faded away. It was not so much the diagnosis I was afraid of since I had already looked up what all the potential things could be. I prepared myself for what was to come, yet it was still one giant question mark shaking in fear.
Most religions have their own theories on what will happen after we pass away. As a Christian I refer back to Revelation 22:1-5 ESV: “Then the angel showed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of life with its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed, but the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him. They will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads. And night will be no more. They will need no light of lamp or sun, for the Lord God will be their light, and they will reign forever and ever.” My eyes scan through the texts just like when I read all those hypothetical diagnoses. I understand the meaning, yet there is a whiff of uncertainty.
According to an article published by the University of Oxford titled “Study into who is least afraid of death”, it says “they found that higher levels of religiosity were weakly linked with lower levels of death anxiety. The effects were similar whether they looked at religious beliefs such as belief in God, and an afterlife, or religious behavior like going to church, and praying… [and] 18% of the studies found that religious people were more afraid of death than non-religious people; and over half the research showed no link at all between the fear of death and religiosity. This mixed picture shows that the relationship between religiosity and death anxiety may not be fixed, but may differ from context to context” (2017).
For centuries we have created paintings and sculptures and stories and plays and, of course, poetry. We are taking what is tragic and turning it into something we can cope with. We laugh off death because it’s frighteningly tragic. It’s a reality that we all will go through at some point. It’s the string that brings humanity back together – oddly enough. If we take a look back two millenniums ago, we find that even our ancient ancestors had their own ideas on death. Take, for example, the ancient Egyptians and their embalming rituals, or the ancient Greeks who believed in mythology. From ancient civilization to modern day, it is quite evident that death has always kept a corner of society’s culture and attitudes.
