​Planning on dying? [9 Years Ago Today]

Face the question and move on

[Published originally on July 25, 2013, 9 years more timely now than it was then.]

By Moristotle

My wife and I are [were] planning to go on a big trip with a friend next year and, because I genuinely don’t think I will ever want to do it again, I remarked, “It will be our last such trip.”
    My wife, who seems to think that maybe she will want to do it again, said, “Are you planning to die after 2014?”
    Now, I am usually not very witty when it comes to interchanging with my wife—she out-guns me in the wit department. Witness the question just quoted: Am I planning to die after 2014?
    But on this occasion I think I did pretty well: I replied, “Well, if not before or during, then, of course, after.”

...Which brings us to the question posed by today’s title: Are you planning on dying?
    That’s not an easy question—and not only because it’s ambiguous. It’s not easy because it asks us to think about something most of us don’t like to think about. We even tend to go out of our way to avoid thinking about it.
    But first, the ambiguities. The question can be interpreted to mean all of the following, plus others that I’ve simply not thought of:

• Have you written your will?
• Have you decided whether you want extraordinary medical intervention to keep you alive a little longer if your body gets in a very bad way?
• Have you signed appropriate orders to refuse or allow such intervention?
• Have you decided whether to donate your body for organ transplants or scientific research?
• Have you signed appropriate orders to effect such donation?
• Have you cleaned out your attic and disposed of stuff you don’t want your survivors to see or have to deal with?
• Have you arranged all your documents and fiscal information so your survivors can easily do what needs to be done?
• Have you made arrangements for someone to adopt your children or pets?
• Have you made arrangements for cremation or burial of your remains?
• Have you purchased a niche for the urn or a plot for the casket?
• Have you told certain people that you forgive them, or that you apologize for what you did, or that you love them?
• Have you thought about whether you will take your own life?
• Have you thought about how to do it?
• Would you be as tidy as possible out of consideration for whoever discovers your body?
• If you are going to be tidy, have you figured out how you’re going to achieve that?

    I’m sure there are other considerations. Those are just the ones I’ve been able to think of so far.

Now, what question precedes the practical ones above and opens the door to them? I think it’s the question, “Do you expect to die?” Or, to put it another way, “Have you accepted that you are going to die?”
    For the truth is that many—maybe most—people seem to live as though they don’t expect to die—which is fine. It’s clear why they wouldn’t want to. But they have never expected to; they’ve never faced the question straight on. They’ve always lived in denial, and they still are.
    Living as though we’re not going to die is, ironically, the way to live best. After all, living is all we know, and living is best when we concentrate on it, really go for it. Hit the throttle and hang on, as a younger colleague of mine says.
    But we can really do that only after we’ve come to grips with the dying question. If we’ve always pushed it away—always denied there’s a use for all those practical questions—our lives are not going to mean quite so much to us, and neither are the lives of others, including the lives of [non-human] beings.
    Life on Earth won’t seem quite so sweet to us. We won’t be quite so here for it if we haven’t faced the fact that it isn’t going to go on forever. And for the older ones of us it isn’t going to go on that much longer at all. We might die before or during 2014 [2022 or 2023].
    ...You actually don’t have to be that old for that to be true. Stuff happens.

Copyright © 2013, 2022 by Morris Dean (aka Moristotle)