Teaching the World to Die

Emerson's Grave:
Sleepy Hollow Cemetery

[I've just submitted an essay to Kindle Singles on Unitarian attitudes on death and dying that converge in a contemporary Unitarian Universalist sensibility.  Here's my conclusion--my take on UUism's understanding of the overarching reality of mortality.]

Death and Dying Among Contemporary Unitarian Universalists

Unitarians had an abiding interest in reforming American deathways.  They significantly influenced, intellectually and practically, how the greater culture deals with the overarching reality of the human condition: mortality and death.  Unitarian innovations and reforms cited in this essay served to domesticate death in the name of the universal human condition; challenged traditions and the supernaturalisms that supported those traditions; resisted the commercialization of death by a funeral industry; and lifted up the dignity and worth of the deceased through artful and meaningful “celebrations of life.”

 

There is a palpable Unitarian Universalist way for meeting death, though that way is not prescribed.  Remember, Unitarian Universalism is non-creedal, as well as progressive. Its ethos has continually encouraged the proving of all things while holding on to that which is good.  This search for truth has been tempered, humanized, by love. To seek the truth in love is an enduring mantra.  That notion of love has many dimensions, ranging from love of self and others like one’s self to a love of Life and its often inscrutable ways.

Here are markers of Unitarian Universalism’s contemporary, convergent attitudes and understandings regarding death.

Death should not be invisible.  Death is a hard reality both to accept within one’s own mortality and to experience through a beloved. The American culture has devised strategies of denial. Yet death is a pathway to living fully, even joyfully, in the moment.  The ancient philosophers, the Stoics in particular, counseled memento mori to be regularly reminded that living is dying, not obsessively, but now and again to give living context and perspective. 

Think of Unitarian Universalist ways in terms of the domestication of death, coming to a certain intimacy with death through a variety of attitudes, behaviors, and strategies: memento mori, including contemplation of mortality in a garden cemetery or similar setting, not sequestering the aged or dying, leaving the body in a natural (unembalmed) state, tangibly commemorating the deceased, and through subsequent years remembering.

Death should be conditioned by Nature.  This might be literal, that is, interring the body or cremation remains in a garden cemetery or similar natural setting.  Cremation allows many options, including scattering at a meaningful site or several sites.  Unitarian Universalist churches may have a carefully designed cremation garden or more informally include the ashes in a planting, the tree or shrub serving as a living memorial.  Furthermore, death should be construed as part and parcel of Nature’s cycles of Life continuing through the generations—a natural phenomenon.  Being natural, death is right and fitting in Nature’s scheme.  Nature inspires a richer living through acceptance of mortality’s place in the Web of Life.

Death of a loved one, friend, or member of a community should be observed in an artfully crafted funeral or memorial service. In this service a formal eulogy or a series of individual remembrances speak with loving truth of the life that the deceased chose to live, the influences that played on her or him through the years, how she or he shaped our common world, and what of that person endures in us. With a dignified service and the promise to remember, the deceased have has a blessed assurance that in death and repose there might be a peace said to pass understanding.

Unitarian Universalist ministers should be, and generally are, well-prepared to plan and conduct funeral and memorial services, entrusted by their congregations and a larger community to navigate the complexities of end of life concerns and rituals.  This includes grief counseling skills.  A Unitarian Universalist minister seeks to subtly express transcendent meanings, such as the continuing influence of love that the deceased brought into the world—a love that endures and is passed on through the generations.

The funeral and memorial service should address the varied grief that the family and gathered community are experiencing. This includes a continuing promise to remain steadfast for those who grieve, acknowledging that grief is an extended process, unique to each person who grieves.

Death should be planned for.  This planning has certain aspects.  Every individual should leave instructions about final wishes.  This includes the practical and existential, what is often included in a Living Will, regarding the parameters of medical procedures to take or not to take in one’s final days. A Living Will often designates a trusted person to have Power of Attorney for Health Care, charged to make ultimate decisions.  Such a directive often is accompanied by a designation of the same or other person to have a fiscal Power of Attorney.  Of course, a legally drawn will alleviates hindrances and complications of the deceased’s estate.  Valuable, too, are instructions regarding final rites; this includes disposition of the body, burial or scattering. Instructions might include memorialization, such as cemetery plot and monument, but also designated charities for contributions in the deceased’s memory. It is good to memorialize in tangible forms; and for those who survive, it is good to visit memorials, respecting and remembering. Also important are directives for the funeral or memorial service: music, readings, participants, officiant, location, and the like, again in consultation with family and clergy.

It is good to do such planning in conversation with family and perhaps clergy.  This models how to confront death, honestly and compassionately, letting genuine feeling have its full day. Such planning has benefits when death does come and the grief it brings in its wake.  

Such planning addresses considerations around consumer concerns regarding funeral providers.  A valuable resource is the not-for-profit  Funeral Consumers Alliance (FCA) successor to the memorial society movement’s national organization.  The FCA declares: “We are the only 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization dedicated to protecting a consumer's right to choose a meaningful, dignified, affordable funeral. We offer education and advocacy to consumers nationwide and are not affiliated with the funeral industry.” The FCA website has many valuable resources to inform and guide.

Typically, after a house and car, a funeral is a person’s third greatest life expenditure.  End of life arrangements should not be undertaken during duress, when circumstances are pressing and emotions are vulnerable to compliance techniques.  All involved should counsel together about desired arrangements before death comes.

Hospice care, often at home, has become an increasing choice for Unitarian Universalists.  This fits earlier considerations regarding the domestication of death.

An emerging option among Unitarian Universalists is green burial, allowing the unembalmed body, often in a simple shroud, to decompose naturally in a natural setting.  This reflects scruples about cremation’s effects on the environment, particularly the energy required to fire the crematorium.  Green burial also looks to the body’s constituent parts leaching back into Nature.  (In advocating for a rural cemetery in the early nineteenth century, Unitarians cited a dramatic example of Nature’s embrace of the body.  When the body of Major John Andre was exhumed in 1821, his skull was held and pierced by roots of a peach tree. For those advocates of the taking death into the countryside, this offered a romantic and compelling example.)  Today, green burial resonates to the Unitarian Universalist seventh principle: “respect for the interdependent web of existence of which we are all a part.”

There is no doubt that the first principle of Unitarian Universalism, “the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” summarizes, as well informs this liberal religion’s attitudes regarding its deathways.  Through two centuries Unitarian Universalists have increasingly emphasized the personal and universally human, especially above traditional dogma and theology.  

Unitarian Universalist reforms and innovations around death and dying emphasize essential human dignity.  Unitarian Universalists find the human condition transcendent and sacred.

As the author intoned in In Memoriam:

A human life is sacred.
It is sacred in its being born.
It is sacred in its living.
And it is sacred in its dying.

Third Story: Death

2005 Standford University

"My third story is about death," Steve Jobs said in his now famous “The Commencement Speech, delivered in the throes of pancreatic cancer. His third story was an intimate personal story--a story that resonates to a universal human story. 

I've spent thirty years putting death into its proper context. Steve Jobs did so in this single speech.  He spoke from personal experience with brevity, sensitivity, and just the right tone and authority for our age. That’s why it’s appearing everywhere, offering sobering inspiration. For example, CNN played the speech in its entirety during the morning broadcast following Mr. Jobs’ death.

“No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.”

The he told the newly minted graduates, “Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Such carpe diem counsel is nothing new.

I'm completing a book, Wisdom for the Ages: A Season with Ecclesiastes that highlights Ecclesiastes down-to-earth philosophy of life, dating from 2300 years ago.  It draws from an even older vein of wisdom found on 4000-year-old Babylonian tablets, collected as the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Similar advice comes from a variety of ages and cultures:  Experience and gain knowledge. Enjoy life with the one whom you love. Work hard and enjoy the fruits of your toil-- figuratively, wine and bread in moderation.  Don't let the things you pursue and acquire overwhelm you.  Never forget, even in your youth, that death is your fate.

Steve Jobs’ death is a "Big Chill" moment for Baby Boomers.  We’ve paused and are reflecting.

He's given us incredible technologies. He's also given us something more valuable via that simple, remarkable speech, yet another expression of a timeless philosophy of life: know that you are mortal and that your death can come at any moment; nevertheless, live and enjoy the life you have to its fullness.  

And by example, he recommended that when death comes, meet it with dignity, grace, and no regrets.