I was reading in a book on culture analysis - the chapter on final things in the Middle Ages. I paused to reflect on the comment that in the Middle Ages death was a part of daily life and thinking. It was a part of life. Today it apparantly is not a part of life.
In earlier generations people died at home (as they were born at home), you had wakes at home, and the cemetary was around the corner. You saw the undertaker go down the street, and you knew someone close by had died. So much of medieval literature and art directly speaks to the moments just before death - in those days anasthetics were not known, so dying was very painful. And then a sketch depicts an angel pulling the soul out of a dead person via the mouth.
Today we die in hospitals, often with no family or friends at the bedside at the hour of death. We embalm the dead, so that they look like they are asleeep dreaming pleasantly, and we cart them to massive cemetaries far from our daily lives. And the last hours before death are experienced - if at all - as a doped stupor, since morphine and other narcotics supress all pain. Birth has the epidural for the mother, so why not more drugs at the other end of life?
What has happened? I think we have shoved death out of life. We run from it, ignore, pretty it up, as if it were another event that can happen to some people who aren't careful.
We can't be certain about a lot of things in life - about money, marriage, children, our health, the weather. But we can all be certain that we will all die, the only question is when. This one experience we will all share together. And how will we look back on it when we are on the other side?
All Saints Day - or Day of the Dead - can help us remember some of these things. Commerical Halloween sweetens it all up, which can be good in some aspects. But where's the sweetness in death? Well, that's another topic.
2 Kommentare:
In todays society putting death as far away from us as possible is an epidural in itself. So long as it is not close, we can pretend that it does not happen. Which works until it DOES happen of course. Then people wonder why they are shocked to the core. A reminder of our own mortality and enforced separation (for a time) from those we love) ... always a sobering thought. Halloween or no.
I agree. Death seems to be something you just swept under the rug and never talked about when it needs to be discussed in great detail.
You should watch the movie The Final Cut with Robin Williams about a guy who's job is to edit out all the bad things the deceased person did and only show the good things. Not the best movie in the world but the premise was interesting.
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