Death

Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die.
Joe Louis (1914-1981)

I was reading the business section of the Denver Post last Sunday when I came across the obituary page. It caught my eye because this edition of the paper had two pages of death notices instead of the usual one. I started to glance through them, stopping at any notice with a photo included, and I was struck something interesting. I carefully read every notice to see if what I thought I observed was actually true.

Of the 89 obituaries only 18 of the people mentioned had died. Twenty-six people had "passed away." Another person had "passed quietly at home." Two people had "passed away peacefully" while someone else "peacefully passed away." One person just "passed peacefully," while another just "passed on."

Other people had "left this life,"or "joined God", or "unexpectedly entered eternal life," or went to eternal rest." I have also read these other euphemisms when describing death: "went to be with her lord and savior," "went to join her savior," "went home to see Jesus," "went on to glory," and "departed to a greater place."

But the most interesting thing about these two pages worth of obituaries is that out of the 80 listed there, the greatest number of them, 39, never mentioned the word died or any of the other euphemisms used instead of the word died. These 39 people just happened to be at a funeral home and were waiting for people to stop by for a visit.

I am not negating the pain that the death of a loved one brings to the living. I know that pain and saying my mother passed away or that she unexpectedly entered eternal life does not lessen it. The fact is society usually hides behind euphemisms when talking about something that it considers shameful. I remember when the world Cancer was never see in an obituary because people thought that it was a shameful way to die. You must have done something "bad" to died of cancer. Ironically AIDS brought that word out of the closet. People would rather other people know that their male relatives died of cancer at a young age than have them think it was from AIDS.

Is death shameful because it is seen as the ultimate weakness? To die you have to give up in a way. Let go. Turn control over to something else. Is death shameful because of the feelings it brings up in some people? Fear? Anger? Loss? Or is death shameful because we live in a youth obsessed culture? We don't want to acknowledge death because to do so is to acknowledge that fact that we ourselves are going to die some day. How can that be if we never grow old?