7.23.06, Fear of Death, Pt. 1 Breaking It Down

“Fear of Death”

[If I get high enough I can push the pain away, just a thought I had.]

One’s first thought of death is fear. One gets scared, of necessity. For numerous reasons, too deep to delve today, fear of death has been carefully, complexly, and socially constructed for millennia; very sophisticated and plausible (for many) systems of belief have been established to assuage this fear. As if it were hardwired into our thinking. But. One critical question, from a genuinely open mind, cuts to the heart of it all: what is it we’re afraid of? Why fear death?

Among the books I’ve found on death, some of which I noted and commented on earlier, perhaps the best of them has been Facing Death: Epicurus and His Critics, by James Warren. It's genuinely insightful, a dry but very good book. Epicurus worked out logical reasons for fearing death, or rather for why we should not fear death, based on extrapolations from common questions about what we might fear about death. They fall into that oddly mystical grouping of “four” — have you ever noticed these groups of four? Buddhism’s noble truths; the Biblical heart-might-mind-strength; four Christian gospels; the Mormon Temple ceremony (don’t worry I won’t let out any secrets) has four big lessons to learn, four covenants you enter into, four signs, four tokens of these signs; etc.

When facing death one’s primary task is to determine what is the fear of death, and then realize that is not a singular but rather complex fear that is generalized when we speak of it. Epicurus’ analysis brings him to see four types of fear concerning death (these are summarized from Warren):

1 – The fear of being dead.
2 – The fear that one will die, that one’s life is going to end.
3 – The fear of premature death.
4 – The fear of the process of dying.

So the commonplace “fear of death” is more accurately composed of, potentially, four more specific fears. Number one and number two don’t seem to be issues for me. The possibility of experiencing number three has been pulled out from under me. At the end of March, early April the diagnosis I was given made turned my world upside down. I think that fear number three is one you experience while going through the process of “normal” life, while in the back of your mind you also assume that you’ll live another 30 years. What you fear is that someday someone, some doctor, will walk into the exam room and tell you what Dr. Whiting told me. Since it’s already happened, no more fear.

That leaves number four. This one does frighten me, what can I say? Even if they tell you “We will do everything in our power to make sure you are totally free from pain in this process.” There’s that word, “process,” even they used it. Euphemism for “dying.” Perhaps the pain can be avoided. But what of people? Will we be closer, split apart, fight, simply drift, bond tightly, what? What of my cats? It looks like, now, they will outlive me. The job, I guess it just goes away. The… the… and so on. You can see what the thinking is like. When you know the egg timer will buzz and you’re supposed to go on puttering around the kitchen pretending it’s not there. Is that what you do? You can also see the whole “process” is odd, unexpected, surprising, and taxing. That’s the fear to analyze further.

Along these lines, I’ve realized already how the nature of this “fear,” singular for shorthand but referring to all four as “fear of death,” is really of a dual or even dialectical nature. There is my fear and then others’ fear. These can be distinguished chronologically: I can experience fear in the time between now and when I die; after that, it’s time for the fear of others takes over. True, others can fear it now also, but the personal fear lasts only a short time, then I’m done; the collective or other fear has the quality of possibly existing now but really kicking in once I die. When others see me, despite what they know about my disease, my appearance largely deceives them. So the fear is allayed somewhat. That later time, when it kicks in. (I’m prognosticating here…) It might turn to memory, remorse, fondness (I can hope), relief, trauma, or a myriad of other feelings. I think the moment of my death, particularly clearly, marks off the difference in whose fear has primacy.

This fear analysis has made a lot of sense to me; and the self / other divide is what developed in my mind very soon after I was given my prognosis and began seeing people’s reactions. At times even those closest to me have surprised me, some times in the extreme, often subtly. Some have been rock solid, on the outside at least. The devoutly religious, for whom there should theoretically be little to no fear, have demonstrated the profoundly human side of their nature. I don’t know what any of this really means, whether there are conclusions to be drawn, snappy closers to be tacked on. All I know is there is ineluctable movement, and we all exist within it.

Here would be a nice place for a poignant line of poetry to cap it all off, instead, I’m just stuck. . . in the movement, in the analysis of fears, in thinking through it, feeling through it. No big answers for this day. Any brilliant thoughts?

Franky Scale: 6-7, up higher but with the heat and some poor pain management on my part earlier, took a wee dive.