The Last Taboo Subject: Death

By Julia Habel Thompson

My husband and I were told last year by hospice nurses that people die pretty much in the same way they have lived their lives. Some see evil and the demonic while others like my dad see angels, Jesus, Light, and in Dad's case, his two parents whom he, quite lucidly and happily related, looked great!

We live in a culture of denial about death, and it is the last taboo for conversation. Yet, both death and resurrection are imprinted all about us in nature. A seed falls in the ground like a corpse laid to rest, but it is planted by a seed sower -- either the proverbial heavenly hand or a human hand--with the expectation that, in due course, new life will emerge from the sown entity.

Jesus's teaching about resurrection corresponds, so to think that the concept and the reality of resurrection is "unnatural" or to write them off as supernatural mumbo jumbo -- hence impossible -- really, in my mind, goes against the grain of basic science here. Matter is not destroyed; it can and does change forms, though, as when ice melts into a liquid state (Law of the Conservation of Matter).

Medical science has prolonged life and, thus, has put off the discussion of death in many families unlike during The Middle Ages or in periods such as when The Black Plague ravaged Europe. In my view, as an educator, young people are overly shielded from the reality that awaits all. They hear about the Grim Reaper in literature and learn to dread what is really as normal a part of life as being born. Yet, they have not been taught it is normal because some parents believe they should protect their children from the subject matter. Or, too, some parents live in denial of their own deaths to come.

I believe though, when one faces the inevitability of his or her death early on, he or she can live more intentionally. I love Quaker Anne Bradstreet's poems for this reason. Knowing that she would one day be departed, by death, from her beloved husband, she resolves, therefore, to love all the more.

I see, too, a whole generation of young people today outside faith communities who are secularized and unchurched and have scant knowledge about the hopeful message of death followed by resurrection that is expressed by Christ. Moreover, many have unwittingly opened themselves up to any and every message both positive and negative that is put out in cyberspace and, thus, are tossed and turned like ships with no rudder. Really, it's not surprising to me that we are hearing more and more stories about some such young people showing up at schools and killing others. They are what people in another generation would label as being lost. Not only have they not been given tools to handle the reality of death, they have not been given the tools to handle life, and in many cases, because God is not a part of the equation, there is no barometer with which to evaluate what is good and evil. Many choices are based, thus, on shifting emotions. The concept -- and reality -- of good and evil, too, has been muted by those who believe solely in biological determinism and, thus, one’s genes as being THE determinant of all human behavior and that what we see in this life is all there is. Yet, Christ talks about an imparted and transformative nature -- given by the Spirit of God to biological man -- that causes him or her to triumph over those human impulses that can destroy a person and others, too. He also embodies for humans the promise of what is inherent in all of nature: resurrected life and in the case of humans, resurrected personhood: “I am the resurrection and the light; he who believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live” (John 11:26).

The subject of a judgment to come, too, is seen to be antiquated today by many, and the message thus, that gets translated to young minds in some twisted cases is that behaviors -- whatever they might be -- also should have no consequences, a reworking of Nietzsche’s “beyond good and evil" philosophy. Dostoevsky incidentally debunked this view of human nature that was going around Western Europe and Russia in his day in his didactic novel Crime and Punishment. Perhaps we need to resurrect this novel again for widespread discussion in our culture.

As for myself, I am thankful for a clergy father who took me to funerals at a young age, and in my mind they were synonymous with weddings.

Watching him die joyfully, as a 94-year saint, really, I felt like a nurse midwife birthing someone into eternity. He, like his great, great, great Cornish grandmother (who also had lived to be a nonagenarian) who was converted to the Christian faith when John Wesley preached in her father’s home, was eager to be with Christ in heaven.

My comment when he passed was that I wish everyone on the planet could witness one death such as this, for they would never again fear dying.

Note: Julia Habel Thompson is a retired public school English teacher now teaching in a parochial school in Fairfax Country and is the daughter, grandchild, niece, and great, great grandchild of Virginia clergy. A graduate of both The University of Richmond and The University of Virginia, Julia considered ordination when she attended Union Theological Seminary in Virginia, but felt there was a greater need outside the church amongst young people. She continues to feel that way, especially with the secularization of American society as a whole. With taboos about any and everything eroded, the last taboo, though is the subject of death.

Julia Habel Thompson can be reached at JuliaThmsn12@gmail.com.

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