Living in Light of Death: Thoughts inspired by Lewis H. Lapham’s essay, “Memento Mori”

Never blame a patient, family member, friend, caregiver, or yourself for having difficulty in dropping Denial. It does serve a purpose at times. But it is pathologically reinforced by almost everything and everybody around us, all the time. Still, the mistaken belief in our own immortality is a dangerous delusion. Correcting that mistake, breaking through Denial, and awakening one another to the reality of mortality is a holy calling to which hospice workers should be among the most devoted.

 

In an essay entitled “Memento Mori” (Latin for “Remember you must die.”), Lewis H. Lapham is commenting on Woody Allen’s famous quote about death: “It’s not that I’m afraid to die, I just don’t want to be there when it happens.” Lapham writes,

 

I admire the stoic fortitude, but at the age of seventy-eight I know I won’t be skipping out on the appointment, and I notice that it gets harder to remember just why it is that I’m not afraid to die. My body routinely produces fresh and insistent signs of its mortality, and within the surrounding biosphere of the news and entertainment media it is the fear of death—24/7 in every shade of hospital white and doomsday black—that sells the pharmaceutical, political, financial, film, and food product promising to make good the wish to live forever.

 

Lapham explores some literature, and especially his experiences of how up-close and personal death can be, before making his recommendation that we turn away and pretend, that we resume our devotion to Denial. The final sentence of his essay reads, “Certain only that the cause of my death is one that I can neither foresee nor forestall, I’m content, at least for the time being, to let the sleeping dog lie.”

 

Though everyone and everything around is always telling us differently, you and I are going to die. And that knowledge can make us ever more determined to live. Unless, much as Woody Allen wants to play hooky from his death, you choose to sleep through your life.