When you study history or other cultures you might be surprised at the amount of death that is incorporated in their art and holidays. Painters used to include Memento Mori, like tiny skulls as reminders of our mortality. The Mexicans celebrate Dias de los Muertos in the fall and the Chinese have Qing Ming in the spring. Both to honor and celebrate their ancestors and clean and decorate graves. I guess we have Memorial Day for fallen soldiers, but not for everyone else. The closest thing we have is Halloween and it’s kind of silly and spooky. We’ve turned desth into a cheap thrill that can be rinsed away with a Pumpkin Spiced Latte.
Modern Americans tend to hide from real death. Everything we eat was once alive, but neatly cleaned and packaged for consumption. Bread is sold sliced and bagged, full of preservatives to keep it from molding. Yet, every planting season the farmers sew a new wheat fields and after harvest, they plow them under. Forests get cleared to build new homes. Our chickens come plucked and cleaned, and cows and pigs are skinned and butchered far from the edge of town. Our clothes are made of cotton and our cars burn fossil fuels. Many things must die for us to live.
Our own elderly and sick are hidden away for their decline, and when they pass, we hire strangers to clean and dress the bodies. Death has been deleted from our daily experience.
This removal of loss makes us feel immortal. Perhaps that is why so many people speed, or ignored the masking rules during Covid, or insist on letting everyone carry guns around. 9/11 was the closest thing we’ve had to war in our land and that was 22 years ago. Death and loss is for other places and time. We like to think we’re immune.
Then it happens to someone in our circle: a friend, a parent, or a child. Then it’s like we’re the first person in whole world who has lost someone. Nobody else has experienced a loss as terrible as ours. We aren’t prepared, people avoid us and everyone tries to forget as soon as possible. In some cultures the whole community comes and sits for three, five or seven days. Here, you are expected back at work right away. You get a pile of condolences, sad emojis and everyone moves on.
I know it’s not helpful to cling to the past or the ones we’ve lost, but when they go they take a piece of us with them. Our shared memories, the parts of us that connected to them are like holes. The more connections, the more tears in the fabric of our souls. Perhaps we will be reunited, perhaps all will be restored, yet no one knows for sure what is on the other side, but we will all go.
