We Are Not Prepared to Deal with Death
This is a good sign for medical advancement, but a bad sign for mental health
Background
The other week, one of my wife’s relatives passed away after a short period of illness. We are friendly and acquainted with her daughter who lives here in Israel, so typically we would have gone to the shiva, but because the relative passed away so close to Shavuot, there was not much time to go and pay respects.
When we asked if she wanted us to bring food for Shabbat and come anyway, the response was “Thanks, but I’m not sure I can handle it”. Now I’m not here to take away from the full range of legitimate emotions and actions that result from the death of a loved one. All of them are required and appropriate. What strikes me, though, and it is confirmed by my wife who has also lost both of her parents, is that we as a society are not prepared or equipped to handle death when it inevitably comes to our doorstep.
The Cause
I think the main culprit (though it isn’t a bad thing at all) here is that for those of us who live in First World countries, healthcare has advanced so much that death seems unlikely both because care is just that good, but also because illness and decline is hidden away from us in sterile buildings and then dealt with discreetly all the way to the grave. High life expectancy also means that while in earlier generations kids would be at the funerals for their grandparents in elementary school (or at least know that they died), nowadays adults can be well into their 30s or 40s when their grandparents pass away, meaning that early exposure to one of the most natural things in “life” gets postponed to a point where theoretically we should be able to handle it more easily, yet it also means that we may be forced to face emotions that have never been tapped, which can make dealing with them that much more difficult.
This is in contrast to how it would have been seen in earlier times, even as little as a century ago. Life expectancy was lower and death among juveniles (God forbid) was much more common. Families were more nuclear and lived within close proximity of one another, meaning that everyone saw when grandma was dying and then subsequently died. It wasn’t hidden away, and people probably talked about how grandma was doing at the dinner table, or the kids brought her food since she lived next door.
Another factor is the general immaturity of the current generation in combination with “helicopter parenting”. In child psychology (a field not without its issues), the teenage years are generally associated with an overall sense of invincibility and immortality. If society on-the-whole has not aged out of teenage mentality, then it is no surprise that when death does occur and we are woken up to the fact that we are not immortal, then yes, I imagine that it would be quite a shocking change of mindset. And if you were unlucky enough to have a parent that didn’t let you out of their sight for 18 whole years (or more) till you left the house, then losing your leash and being “free” might make for some very uncomfortable realizations that can take a long time to sort through and which may never be resolved without professional help.
I also think that death in popular culture is not portrayed accurately, meaning that when our raw emotions are activated in this instance, we expect to feel like it does on TV. Either that means that people die in cold blood, as is seen in action movies, or it means that grandpa just kind of keels over after some sudden illness. The movies don’t deal with the emotions that surround that (or just show that death/killing is fun and games). I recall vaguely that “How I Met Your Mother” did work this into their shows when Marshall’s father dies suddenly, but again, we only hear about a sudden death, and don’t work with the character through a long and protracted one (I agree that this does not sound like a very entertaining premise for a show or movie).
The Solution
So what are some things we can do to help ourselves, our kids, and our society so that we can better cope when we do, unfortunately, need to confront death ourselves? If it isn’t obvious from what I have written so far, exposing ourselves to these aspects of life can help us be more prepared. I remember my father (may he live a long life) bringing me to funerals and shiva homes basically as soon as I was Bar Mitzvah. It was here that one, I felt like I was contributing to the community (in high school my time was a lot more flexible than some professionals who couldn’t leave work early to make it to a mincha in a shiva house in the middle of the afternoon in the middle of winter) but also got to see people who were struggling with these emotions and how being surrounded by people who were trying to comfort them helped them and kept them from losing control.
We also need to be teaching more about death and dying in schools. If opportunities for actual encounters with death are limited because we have advanced as a society, then we need to teach as much as we can to make up for it. We need to teach the stages of grief, we need to teach proper behavior in a shiva home and when it is best to reach out the mourning individual. We need to teach how a funeral takes place and visit a cemetery where kids are shown graves and the process of burial. Lectures from members of the Chevra Kadisha can also shed light on the highly-discreet process of what happens between death and arrival at the funeral home.
Conclusion
For better or for worse, what I wrote about death has become the norm for another formerly taboo topic, sex. We lecture about it in our schools, we make jokes about it and base TV shows and movies about people’s needs to have it. Now it is very easy to make the case that we have gone too far with this topic and that may be subject of another post. But I think there is a lot of value in bringing a lot more about death (in a healthy way) into our lives and how to appropriately process when it occurs instead of leaving us alone and unable to confront it.
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