Another lesson in mortality and humanity

There are somethings in life that are unavoidable. And as a society, we talk a lot about taxes. Death; not so much. And maybe for some things, the old ways helped us make sense of things in the circle of life.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
When it rains at poor, asthey say, and with sadness, I
tell you that the man I wentto see a week ago in a long
term care facility has passed away.It was with a son at his side
early yesterday morning. Now, whenhe'd been admitted to the facility. We
all knew it would be for palliativecare at some point, and a few
of those days over the last weekwere better than others for him and the
people who loved him and visited withhim. And soon the announcement will come

(00:21):
out and there will be a servicefor him. But there's another service being
planned for another family friend. Herpassing was unexpected. She'd gone to the
hospital recently for pneumonia and was givena prescription, and her wife found her
the next morning. She was onlya few years older than I am,
and none of us had time tobrace ourselves for that shocking outcome. And
that's one thing to have weeks ormonths or even years to watch as an

(00:43):
older friend or relative moves closer tothe place we're all heading. You know,
that inevitable outcome, and once againour own mortality, my mortality is
hard not to think about. We'realso insulated from that inevitable. I heard
a comment the other day. Asa society, we didn't really talk about
menstruation or men openly until just afew generations ago, even though it's something
that half of the population experiences andlives with. We're even less open to

(01:07):
discussing death, and that's something thatevery single one of us, past,
present, in future have in common. Now, the death process has become
institutionalized. An entire industry has evolvedaround helping people through grief and loss.
It used to be much more communal. Funerals took place in the home,
women and men from the community assistingthe family and preparing the body for burial

(01:27):
by washing it and laying them out. Someone would sit up with the body
for three days to ensure the deathhad occurred, and the men would dig
graves. Visitation would be in aroom in the house, and that time
of intense mourning was done in supportof each other. In many cases,
today, with cremation, we don'teven see our loved ones or family in
that state. Bodies aren't laid out. Even viewing hours with an open coffin

(01:49):
are becoming less and less common.We have celebration of life services that mostly
avoid any of the rituals of deaththat are still practiced in many non Western
cultures. That seems to me thatwe're making it much less normal, and
what we don't know or understand canbe frightening and uncomfortable to think about,
let alone talk about. And atthe other end of the spectrum are the

(02:10):
new parents. The first newborn thatthey've ever held is their own. We
don't have large, extended families likewe used to ones where the eldest or
caring for the youngest. That's reallythe only way of family of six,
seven or more would have been ableto make it now as a family.
And that's what I mean by this, and maybe that's what the book Ends

(02:30):
of Life were always about. AnthropologistMargaret Meade was asked once what she considered
the first sign of civilization. Itwasn't clay pots or hunting tools or religious
artifacts. It was a fifteen thousandyear old fractured femur that was found at
a site and a bone that takessix weeks to heal. Shows someone else
helped them, cared for them ratherthan abandoning them to save themselves. And

(02:53):
that's a powerful lesson in humanity thatit's rooted in taking care of one another.
I'm Sheldon McCloud. Turn off thenoise, tune in to what matters.
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(03:15):
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