Our new reality, the looming threat of the corona virus, or Covid-19, really means one thing. It means that one way or the other, all of us are now facing, up close and personal, the threat of death. And we don’t even know what that means exactly. We see death nightly on our screens, we see someone gunned down and pronounced “dead” in a TV drama, but we seldom actually face the reality of what that word signifies. And I suspect that’s because in our era of remote viewing and quarantining death in hospitals or nursing homes and cremating rather than sitting with dead bodies in coffins, we really don’t quite know what death means, even though it terrifies us. Terrifies us precisely because, in fact, we don’t know what it means.
We used to know, or thought we knew, what death meant. It meant for most of us in the West that something called the soul was leaving our body and going somewhere else. Either a lovely place where all would be happy and joyful because we were in the very presence of God and angels—a place usually termed “heaven” or paradise or some variation thereof—or the bad place where we would be punished for our sins, which we termed “hell” or Hades. And that place derived its power from its endlessness, its infinity of flames and suffering that would never end. Any Catholic with an imagination could be terrified by just thinking for a moment about that. Other religions had different scenarios, but all more or less depended on the same idea of an afterlife: be good and be rewarded, or you will be punished in what is to come after death. As Hamlet so enduringly puts it, “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/ When we have shuffled off this mortal coil/ Must give us pause.”
In our time, however, there are few people who still subscribe to this view. Oh yes, there are still fundamentalists or those who still adhere to the faith of their childhoods, who are quite sure that they will be taken up bodily into “heaven,” but I have nothing to say to such people in any case. I am talking about the mass of modern, so-called ‘civilized’ people for whom these ideas have taken on the literary aura of fairy tales. They may have been comforting stories ‘once upon a time’ but they are simply that—stories that people used to believe and which can no longer be given credence. For this mass of people, death is something that is terminal, the final stop; which is why they generally are frantic to live as much of life as possible, and as well as they can. ‘You only get to come around once, so you’d better enjoy it,’ is the idea. So death has this one meaning for most of us in our time: the end of the only thing that matters, which is living. Staying alive, for as long as possible. And anything that threatens that, that threatens to end that precious living before its time, is to be avoided at all costs. Shunned. Quarantined in some faraway place and fought off, if at all possible, forever. It should go without saying that Covid-19 is a direct threat to all that.
With so much freight and weight attached to it, one would think that we all knew exactly what death is. To keep such an adversary at bay for as long as possible, that is, one should really know all about it. Study it. Know exactly what it does, and what it holds in store. But the truth is, we do not. We do not know what death portends for this thing we call our “self”, nor do we know, even scientifically, what it means to die. This is why we have terms such as “brain death.” A person can be “brain dead,” that is, totally unconscious and unaware and unable to maintain even the basic elements of breathing and heartbeat and metabolism, and still be considered technically “alive” by means of breathing ventilators and heart pumps. The body can be kept warm thereby, and the organs of that artificially-kept-alive person can still be transplanted to another live body and used for several more years. Indeed, that is an offered option for many people who are “brain dead.” Their organs, still ‘alive,’ can be cut out and transplanted quickly to another body to keep that other body alive.
So when is a person “dead?” This question occurred to me personally when my late wife suffered a cerebral aneurysm that left her “brain dead,” though the doctors never used that terrifying term. And it was proposed to us that her organs could be harvested, and donated to others (to begin a new life?). But that isn’t the real point here. The point is, in the face of someone artificially kept alive by a ventilator and heart drugs, when did we, keeping vigil, know she was actually dead? Because at a certain point, she certainly was. There was no doubt about that. From a warm body with color that showed indelible signs of life, she transformed, at a certain point, into something rigid and cold and pale. It is a phase shift as common as it could be. And we all recognize it. But what actually happens? What causes that transition that is feared above all else in our world? The common, inevitable transition from life to death? It happens all the time, so often that we fail to notice it usually: leaves turn brown, wither, and fall. Animals become rigid and begin to waste away. And still, we don’t really know what it is, what happens. And if what is left is really all there ever was to “us.”
That is the real question. If we sense that the dead body left to us is not really “her,” that what was “her” in the first place is not there anymore, then what was her? What was the essence of who she was? It’s not a question of movement (the cells and elements that make up a dead body still are made up of atoms and electrons that ‘move’), nor of breath or heartbeat, both of which can be kept artificially active. So what is it then? What is the crucial difference between a living thing and a dead one? This became glaringly obvious to me when contemplating my above-mentioned wife’s dead body. Something crucial had left. Was, as if, gone. We used to call this the “soul.” But that overused term doesn’t quite signify any more. Some religions still use it, but many religions, especially eastern ones like Buddhism, specifically disbelieve in it. It is considered an illusion. So then, what is it that departs, if “departs” is the proper term? We don’t know. We really do not know what the animating principle is that enlivens us and surrounds us. We can identify it without any trouble. We can easily see that machines, computers, though they appear to operate like living things, are not alive. They are dead metal and plastic until they are animated by electric current. And need to be programmed—told what to do—by live beings like ourselves. We know this without question and normally don’t require reasons. But again, what is it, precisely, that animates that which is living? And leaves, or seems to leave when they, we, are dead?
We should be able to define this. State it in no uncertain terms. Especially at times like these when death is so near. Especially for those of us who are “old,” because every verifiable opinion says that we are most at risk. Most likely to die as a result of this deadly virus getting into us—whatever that means. We should know, then, what is going to happen to “us” if we should succumb. Which we will, all of us, be it now or later. That precious something that we call “life” will have to depart. And we will be “dead.” But again, what is dead? Am I—my brain, my consciousness, my awareness—what I mean by “me” in the first place, and alone constitutive of that which dies? Or is it my body? Or, are we making a fundamental error here in trying to see the two—body and mind (or brain or consciousness)—as separate? And that there is no discernible element that “leaves” to signify death, but rather that it is all one indissoluble entity that breathes or doesn’t breathe, whose heart beats or doesn’t beat, together. But then, what of “brain death?” What of a body that is still “alive” even though its lungs and heart cannot operate on their own? But whose organs, just parts of them, are still useful, i.e., alive, for and in another body?
Science, in other words, has put our language, our intuition, up against a knotty problem. Before life support systems, there was rarely any room for doubt. If a person got to the point where he or she could not breathe, that was it. If the heart stopped, that was it. Death ensued. No organs were discernibly alive afterwards, either. The whole thing was dead. And the soul had, presumably, left for another life. And that was that. Aside from a few alleged ‘miracles’ where a person was supposed to have come back to life, there was no problem telling the dead from the living.
Now, however, the line has become more obscure, and so has the definition. And that may be the core of the problem after all. Definition. Language. Our language has not kept up with what we see. Or think we see; and want to define, that is, separate. Life and death may not be separable in the way we would like them to be. Consider, for example, the lowly virus that now has us transfixed. As a virus, it is said to hover somewhere between life and non-life. And so is hard to define. So may our own life/death be. It may be that we cannot say what life consists of, what defines it, what separates it from non-life because the dividing line is cloudy. As in quantum mechanics, as in Schrodinger’s cat. Life is life and, more or less simultaneously, it is not. And there is death. And there may be nothing to define or see. And if we analogize it with all other forms of life, we see that life commonly shades into death and then again into life with hardly a by your leave. It’s a closed system. That which dies is immediately or before long filtered right back into the system (whatever that is), to become part of the living again, and so on. Leaves become humus, animals become food for bugs and other animals which eventually die to become nitrogen and other chemicals, all of which nourishes the plant life around it, to in turn nourish the animal life around it, and nothing is lost. Life and death shade into each other and the cycle simply (it is by no means simple) continues. And no one asks where did life go, where did death come from, where will I go when I die, and will I be happy there? It simply never occurs as a question. Language and thought and trying to frame the unframeable are what create the question and the problem. Trying to make an open system, an escape hatch to keep us from recycling back into the whole mess (hence our mania to bury our dead and preserve them from decay and merging with all else), is what creates the problem.
So does that mean we should simply forget about it? I think not. Otherwise, why did I write this whole discourse in the first place? No, we ought to at least be aware of what we’re doing. What we are—these creatures that are terrified of something that we cannot figure out, cannot place in a frame that will suit us, that will ease our anxious minds. When really, a better thing to do is just see: how hopeless is our endeavor, how basically unnecessary. We simply cannot know, in the way we would like to know, what will happen. Not only after death, but in the next two seconds. And the idea that we can, the idea that we somehow should know is what gets us into trouble in the first place. Life and death are inextricably intertwined, like night and day, like front and back, and like them always will be. And however much we would love to separate them, however much it discomfits us that we can't, however desperate is our need to know, doesn’t really matter in the end. What matters is seeing what we do; and how we are; and how the entirety is all we can and always do see, even if we don’t realize it.
Lawrence DiStasi
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