Death is for the Living
“Life is for the living.
Death is for the dead.
Let life be like music.
And death a note unsaid.”
― Langston Hughes, The Collected Poems
Death. We all know it’s coming, but we resist, we ignore, we make bad choices. We obsess over the topic. We fear it, fight it, plan for it, and even pay for it all while carrying out our daily activities. And this is why I must disagree with Mr. Hughes, and assert death is for the living.
From the ancient Greeks placing money over the eyes of their dead, paying for crossing the river Styx to the Tibetans leaving the now empty shells for the animals to consume, the rituals we associate with death have little to do with the deceased. They are ways for the living people to handle and control their own insecurities surrounding death.
Recently, there was a podcast on Radiolab discussing the story of “L’inconnue de la Seine”, who you may know more closely as the face of CPR training dolls. Basically, the story is rumoured that she jumped off of a bridge and drowned. A pathologist was so enamoured by her face encased her face in plaster to be forever remembered. Her suicide evoked an emotion of anger for being cowardice. How could she take her own life and not try and persevere. What did this act do to people who knew her? What would people I know think if I jumped off a bridge?
That’s when I realized death is not about the deceased. Death is about the living people who are affected by one’s death. We cannot say for sure there is no afterlife, but if you take the stance that death is the final curtain, it’s no wonder we obsess about death while we are living.
We are connected to the people in our lives whether we like it or not. Our actions have consequences which change our reality, our friendships, and even our physical brain chemistry. We have to think about death because we care about others and how our passing will affect them. Larger egos may believe their death will shatter the world while the humble may only show concern for the well being of a single person, but we are all concerned about how death impacts the people we leave behind.
Death is for the living because the emphasis we put on death is not about the dead, it’s about how it changes the living.