What Can Death Teach Us About Living?
Written By Jerry Buie
This may feel like an odd topic for a newsletter, this topic of death. The month of December was a challenging month for me and Bruce. We literally found ourselves faced with the death of a friend each week of the month. In some cases, they were expected losses and in others complete surprises. We had the privilege of aiding an elder of ours face his final days in this world. This was a profound honor and privilege to share in that transition. Perhaps you find yourself like me contemplating your own mortality and asking what’s this fleshy experience of life all about? I find that people are avoidant of the medicine of death, culturally we are painfully inadequate in the conversations and processes around death, for the dying as well as for those grieving. Subconsciously we think life is forever, even at 99 it’s interesting that folks were surprised to hear that Betty White had died.
Many rites and rituals of spirit are metaphors surrounding death. The sweat lodge ceremony is about going into the mother’s womb, to face our own mortality, each direction an exploration of the life cycle. When we emerge, we are coming out of the lodge renewed to our birthing process, which must cross the threshold of death to get to rebirth. Ayahuasca is often referred to as “death medicine” teaching us “how to die.” We honor the dead with ancestral offerings and often seek to commune with those who have crossed over before us. Truly our ceremonies are an invitation to keep all facets of life in our consciousness and to utilize the tools the Creator has offered to pilot the ship of life to its destination, which ends in death, to await what’s on the other side as most traditions consider the spirit to be immortal.
Betty White recently passed away and was asked in an interview why she wasn’t afraid of dying.
“My mother had the most wonderful outlook on death, She would always say, ‘Nobody knows. People think they do — you can believe whatever you want to believe what happens at that last moment — but nobody ever knows until it happens.'”
White noted that her mom, Tess, always described death and what may come after it as a “secret.”
“Growing up, whenever we’d lose somebody, she’d always say, ‘Now, they know the secret,'
I’ve come to appreciate death as an inevitable which provokes me to live as fully as I can.
Live life with meaning and purpose.
Be fully engaged.
Be the fertilizer of good will and cheer amongst your neighbors.
There is medicine in life as there is also medicine in death.
I was recently referred to a book called The Five Invitations: Discovering What Death Can Teach Us about Living Life Fully by Frank Ostaseki. The author is a Buddhist teacher who worked in the Hospice community for many years but his observations and guidance is absolutely relevant for all of us living!
I found this book insightful in this timely exploration on mortality. https://fiveinvitations.com