Why is it So Hard to Accept Death?

Death, the ever-present thought of an ending we either try to avoid, pursue to an end, push down to pretend, or accept its inevitability. It’s the root of existential philosophies and the outcome of life on earth.

We use it as a motivator to live well, the time we have, or to justify choices we might otherwise not have made. I’ve seen it up close as it pulls its prey into its mouth, its suspecting victim willing and resistant to what lies beyond and its audience left helpless to prevent.

As I write this article, I have now lived over a decade longer than my mother had on earth. I dreaded my 46^th birthday, 23 years after the year that marked the end of life as I knew it. How is it that I should live more years than she? Unfair as goes the cliché. Survivor’s guilt. My mother was an Angel in my eyes and her wings were now above the clouds.

Just why? After her death, I pursued a career in law enforcement, not caring if I lived or died but wanting to live a life with meaning and purpose, and later captured my trauma in the form of experience, wisdom, and passion to help others navigate life’s tragedies.

“Live authentically and color outside the lines” is my philosophy born of both direct and vicarious trauma. My mother, who was my best friend, passed away in my arms, her lifeless body riddled with cancer as she took in her last breath, her face contorted with what I perceived to be anguish and fear.

My father drank himself into oblivion leaving a blood trail to the front door he no longer had the strength to open, to escape his destiny after shedding his valued possessions in the weeks prior. My chosen family whom I called “aunt” as a teen was found with her brain matter splattered as evidence onto her car window, the apparent victim of a mob hit contracted by her once adoring husband, as her unsuspecting young children lain in wait for her return from the store.

As a law enforcement officer in a prior profession, I viewed the body of a seemingly slim white man weighted down with cement blocks, submerging his gaping gunshot wound to the back of his head under the dark waters of the lake and reemerging from his temporary grave a “heavyset black” man, the bloating having masked his true identity.

The two-year-old son of a friend plays in the front yard with his mommy’s gun just cleaned and set down for a moment but his tiny hand, excited to be like daddy, was but a flash and he was no more, the family’s last memory that of his blood-soaked hair.

These and other stories, many more horrific than those in my own memory banks, form an umbrella of dread that plagues mankind. The fear of dying is exacerbated by the horrors that accompany its dreadful outcome. Along with the fear of death is the anger that accompanies the lack of understanding as to why humans must suffer.

It may not be death itself but the tragedy of the circumstances. And for what purpose? Often, clients ask why bad things happen to good people. My only answer is that there is evil in the world because Satan is at war with God and we are in the battle. God is not the captain of the boat of despair and suffering, but He is the Comforter.

Blessed are those who mourn, For they shall be comforted. – Matthew 5:4, NKJV

None of us knows how our end will play out and to some that is the scary part and that which causes anxiety in anticipation and anger when the loss is felt deeply. If only we could predict and control that process for ourselves and our loved ones.

To some, death becomes a welcomed friend, an escape from the pit of life. To others, it is a gateway to the bright light of angelic beings. And to those left behind, either it becomes a ticket to act in the prelude or to hide in the wings awaiting and fearing its attack.

Death may not be physical, but emotional, and we try to escape its claws by pushing down the very emotions that are the antithesis to joy, yet they are necessary to truly feel alive. You can’t have up without down, light without darkness.

My longest friend Bev, after over thirty years of doing life together across the country, went to meet her maker at the young age of sixty-seven, after years of West Nile Virus eating away her brain and her muscles, rendering her former person a memory and her memory lost to the past. Her life exemplified the fight to see the light in the darkness.

In one letter to me, she quoted from a book I sent her titled Friends are the Family We Choose, a statement by Woodrow Wilson, “At every crisis in one’s life, it is absolute salvation to have some sympathetic friend to whom you can think aloud without restraint or misgiving.”

In other words, sharing with another emotional highs and lows facilitates the incorporation of pure joy and love and the dissipation of grief, sorrow, and despair. In her epitaph dictated to a dear friend, she declared her hope in death as this, “…that when she dies, the strife is finally over! She will no longer use this imperfect vessel. She can rest in the circle of life surrounded by those she loves.”

It is in the hope of what is to come, of what is, that we simply cannot change, that we can let go of the fear that often grips our souls and inhibits us from truly living in the present.

Weeping may endure for a night, But joy comes in the morning. – Psalm 30:5b, NKJV

In the Western culture, people, especially men, grieve individually their sorrows and losses. It is a diagnosable mental health disorder if grief lasts more than one year in Western cultures; this is known as prolonged grief disorder. Yet, in other cultures, the grief process is longer. In Tibet, Buddhists participate in funeral proceedings for forty-nine days and, in Egypt, grief is considered normal for over seven years!

It is even seen as a weakness to express intense sadness and overwhelming emotion in many cultures, yet, what we know is that acknowledging pain, to accepting death and its impact, is freeing and promotes a healthy adjustment to loss. Coming together to mourn collectively can be healing as in support groups or family gatherings and communal rituals.

How do we move through the grief process? How do we accept death as part of life? It is not a linear process, so don’t expect to check off the boxes one by one and assume step one naturally leads to step two, and so on, and soon you will feel relief. It is a roller coaster. And no one’s ride is the same. Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. Here are some key components of navigating the grief process, to accept death, and to move on:

• Not holding onto your pain and not feeling the loss 24/7 does not mean that you have forgotten your loved one.
• Embrace the memories as ones you would not have had if you had not loved. You know the cliché: It is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.
• Find meaning in the loss, e.g., what did you and others gain from being in relationship with the person who died.
• No matter how long you avoid accepting death, its reality will still be waiting for you; acceptance is about letting go of control of how you thought life should be and embracing what it is.
• Live like you were dying (because you never know when today will be our last day on earth.)

Embrace your grief. For there, your soul will grow. – Carl Jung

If you need help navigating grief and the loss of a loved one, or know that death is on the horizon for you or your loved one, contact any one of the counselors at Seattle Christian Counseling.